Gore's Message To Climate Change Skeptics on 60 Minutes Confronted by Stahl with the fact some prominent people, including the nation’s vice president, are not convinced that global warming is man-made, Gore responds: "You're talking about Dick Cheney. I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat,” says Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off," he tells Stahl. Gore’s campaign to make the world more aware of man’s role in global warming won him the Nobel Peace Prize last year. He donated the $750,000 prize money to The Alliance for Climate Protection, the non-profit he started to help him on his quest. He and his wife, Tipper, tell Stahl they not only matched the Nobel money with their own, but they are also donating to the organization the significant profits from his book and Oscar-winning documentary film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." The funds will help The Alliance for Climate Protection execute a new $300 million ad campaign on global warming set to start next week. Some of the ads will feature unlikely alliances to drive home the message that people of all stripes are concerned about global warming. These include the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Pat Robertson, Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks, and Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich....
Governors to Gather at Yale for Climate Change Conference Governors from across the United States will meet at Yale University on April 17 and 18 to review state-level programs to combat global climate change and to develop a strategy for future action. The gathering will also celebrate the centennial of President Theodore Roosevelt’s landmark 1908 Conference of Governors, which launched the modern conservation movement, planted the seed for the National Parks System, and inspired significant state efforts to protect land. The event will celebrate 100 years of state leadership on critical environmental issues, confront the present climate challenge, and set out a vision of a federal-state partnership for future action. “Roosevelt showed remarkable foresight a century ago in engaging the states’ chief executive officers to preserve and protect the nation’s natural resources,” said Yale President Richard C. Levin. “Now, we face a new and critical challenge—global climate change—and leadership in the United States is coming from visionary state governors.” Governors who plan to attend the conference include M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Jon Corzine of New Jersey, Christine Gregoire of Washington, and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. Canadian Premier Jean Charest will also be present, and a dozen other governors are exploring whether their schedules will permit participation....
State deals blow to zero-emission vehicle supporters California's Air Resources Board voted Thursday to slash by 70% the number of emission-free vehicles that carmakers must sell in the state in coming years, a significant blow for environmentalists and transportation activists. But the panel set new rules requiring automakers to build tens of thousands of plug-in hybrid cars, which run on electricity and gasoline. And it adopted a motion to overhaul its entire Zero Emission Vehicle program to align it with tougher greenhouse-gas emission standards enacted in California in recent years. That could lead to the production of many more clean vehicles, but the overhaul won't happen until at least the end of 2009. Under the new standards, passed unanimously, the board will require the largest companies selling cars in the state to produce 7,500 electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles for sale, lease or loan in California from 2012 to 2014 -- down from the 25,000 required in the period under the previous rules. In addition, carmakers will be called upon to make about 58,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the same period. The previous regulation, passed in 2003, made no provisions for plug-in hybrids because they were not considered viable at the time....
Radical Tucson environmentalist gets 1 year, 1 day for speech A radical environmentalist was sentenced Thursday to one year and one day in federal prison for speaking publicly about how to make a homemade Molotov cocktail. Rodney Coronado apologized for his past use of violent tactics in the name of animal rights and the environment, and said he had cut his ties to groups, including the Earth Liberation Front. "I have done things in my past that I now regret," Coronado told U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Miller. He said he wanted to serve his sentence and then get on with his life in Tucson, Ariz. The 41-year-old activist pleaded guilty in December to distributing information on destructive devices during an August 2003 speech about militant environmental activism at a community center in San Diego. According to an account and photos of the speech posted on the Internet, Coronado demonstrated how to build a crude ignition device using a plastic jug filled with gasoline and oil. The speech was given just hours after an arson fire destroyed a San Diego condominium project that was under construction a few miles away. A banner at the site indicated that the ELF claimed responsibility for the $50 million blaze, which at the time was the costliest act of eco-terrorism in U.S. history....
Commissioners voice opposition to any expansion of Pinon Canyon Pueblo County commissioners told opponents of the Pinon Canyon expansion efforts Thursday that they will approve a resolution urging the Army to go elsewhere to acquire more training land. The commissioners previously had endorsed a one-year ban on the Army spending money on the effort, but they took a bigger step by saying they oppose any future expansion of the 238,000-acre training area northeast of Trinidad. Commissioner Jeff Chostner, a retired Air Force colonel, said he understood the military's need for training land, but he believed the Defense Department has adequate training acreage elsewhere in Texas, California, Nevada and other states. "This expansion would effectively seal off Southeastern Colorado from the public," Chostner said, referring to the plan to add 414,000 more acres to Pinon Canyon. "I think this is a case of the Army overreaching."....
America's grasslands vanishing amid agricultural boom To the west of this small town, which helped inspire Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic book series that included Little House on the Prairie, the view opens to a vast, unbroken landscape that seems to roll on forever. But this untamed vista is shrinking. The USA's open plains and prairies are threatened by soaring grain prices that have increased their value as cropland. Grain prices have been driven up by a seemingly insatiable worldwide appetite for food and by federal energy policies promoting corn-based ethanol that are working at cross purposes with government programs designed to conserve open spaces. As a result, landowners in South Dakota and across the USA's Farm Belt are converting to cropland marginally productive acres that for decades — in some cases, centuries — have remained uncultivated because farming them wouldn't have been profitable or because of their environmental value. "We're kind of in an ag revolution," says Bill Wilkinson, a farmer-rancher near De Smet....One government intervention messin' up another government intervention. Kinda fun to watch...but in reality it's pretty sad that they never learn.
As Uranium Firms Eye N.M., Navajos Are Wary Twenty years after uranium mining ceased in New Mexico amid plummeting prices for the ore, global warming and the soaring cost of oil are renewing interest in nuclear power -- and in the state's uranium belt. At least five companies are seeking state permits to mine the uranium reserves, estimated at 500 million pounds or more, and Uranium Resources Inc. (URI), a Texas-based company, wants to reopen a uranium mill in Ambrosia Lake. Industry officials say a uranium boom could mean thousands of jobs and billions in mineral royalties and taxes for the state. But the deposits are largely in and around Navajo land, and the industry's poor record on health and safety as it extracted tons of the ore in past decades has soured many Navajos on uranium mining. In 2005, the Navajo Nation banned uranium mining and milling on its land, and thousands of tribe members are receiving or seeking federal compensation for the health effects of past uranium exposure. During mining's peak, from the early 1950s to the early 1980s, about 400 million pounds of uranium were extracted from the region. At the end of the boom, around 1984, the price of uranium languished below $10 a pound. Mines shut down, and the United States began importing nearly all of its uranium, with the bulk coming now from Canada, Russia and Australia. But by last summer, the price had rebounded to a record high of $136 a pound....
NOAA to Assess Whether Melting Ice Endangers Seals The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced yesterday that it will evaluate whether four kinds of seals inhabiting Alaska's Bering Sea should be placed on the endangered species list because of melting sea ice. In December, an environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, petitioned NOAA's Fisheries Service to list ribbon seals as facing extinction because global warming has affected the extent of ice cover in both the Bering and Chukchi seas, where the seals live. NOAA officials said they will review the status of bearded, spotted and ringed seals, as well, because they all use the same sea ice in different ways, at different times of the year. The decision highlights the extent to which federal officials are grappling with climate change's impact on vulnerable species. The Fisheries Service has placed two species of coral on the endangered species list in part because of global warming, and the Interior Department was supposed to announce in January whether it would declare the polar bear in danger of extinction....
Agency Yields to Concerns of Flood-Weary Missourians Heeding concerns of flood-weary Missourians, the Army Corps of Engineers announced Thursday that it would counteract the release of millions of gallons of water into the Missouri River. The corps, which early Wednesday morning began its planned 48-hour release of water from Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, S.D., said it had begun reducing flow rates at tributary dams on the lower river. Corps officials said the reduced flow rates would effectively cancel the river’s upstream rise as it enters Missouri, which last week suffered extensive flooding. The so-called spring rise, a pulse of water released by the corps, is to help the endangered pallid sturgeon, but it met fierce opposition after floods last week displaced hundreds of people and led President Bush to approve federal disaster aid for St. Louis and 70 Missouri counties. On Tuesday, the state attorney general, Jay Nixon, unsuccessfully petitioned two federal courts to block the water’s planned release. After winning the court fight, however, the corps changed its mind.... Redford-backed film gives account of Texas activists Robert Redford, movie icon, Oscar-winning director and founder of the Sundance Film Festival, knows the power of a good story. So when he heard about the battle waged by an unlike- ly assortment of activists to fight the proposed construction of more than a dozen coal-burning power plants in Texas, Redford knew that it was a powerful story waiting to be told. It is a tale of Texas ranchers, farmers, and small-town and big-city mayors who rallied to protect their back yards, their land and their children's health. They largely succeeded. Redford, through The Redford Center at the Sundance Preserve, commissioned a documentary about the fight: Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, a 34-minute documentary directed by Mat Hames and George Sledge that chronicles the campaign to stop the plants....
Fair game It is now lawful to shoot wolves on sight in most of the Cowboy State, but it might be more difficult to bag the predators than many people imagine, several hunters and licensed guides said this week. Although some outfitters expressed interest in offering guided wolf hunts, all of them said they are still waiting to see if the decision to remove wolves' federal protection holds up in court. Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies were officially removed from the endangered species list this morning. Of the roughly 360 gray wolves living in Wyoming, more than 90 percent are within a new wolf trophy game zone in the northwest corner of the state. The 30 to 35 wolves outside the trophy area are now classified as predators in Wyoming, and they can be killed, without limits, much like coyotes. But several hunters and outfitters said they’d be surprised if many of the wolves in the predator zone were taken by sport hunters. The majority of wolves killed likely will be those shot by USDA Wildlife Services, which will do aerial hunting of the animals at the request of ranchers and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “The simple reason is, they’re dang tough to hunt,” said Maury Jones, a former outfitter and co-owner of Jackson Hole Outfitters. “It’s like going out and hunting for mountain lions. They’re out there, you see their tracks, but good luck trying to find them.”....
Conservationists push for meadow jumping mouse protections Conservationists want the federal government to take notice of the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse, saying climate change and unchecked livestock grazing are pushing the rare rodent closer to extinction. The mouse once lived in nearly 100 locations along rivers and streams around New Mexico and in parts of Arizona, but recent surveys have shown that the furry rodent is now found only in about a dozens places in the two states. The mouse, considered endangered by the New Mexico Game and Fish Department, was recently added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's list of plants and animals that are candidates for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. "We've argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service should emergency list this mouse and so we believe that all federal agencies should take steps now to protect the mouse in order to prevent its extinction. It is that imperiled," said Nicole Rosmarino, director of WildEarth Guardians' wildlife program. Conservationists and state and federal biologists agree the biggest threats facing the mouse are grazing and the loss of habitat. The mouse depends on moist meadows along streams and rivers to make its home, find food and reproduce. WildEarth Guardians sent the U.S. Forest Service a letter last week asking that the agency take a close look at grazing practices and other activities on forest land considering the mouse's status....
Hayman Fire Starter Gets 15 Years Probation The former U.S. Forest Service worker who started the most-destructive wildfire in Colorado history has been ordered to serve 15 years of probation and perform 1,500 hours of community service on state charges. Terry Barton, who started the 2002 Hayman Fire, was resentenced Thursday in District Court. Her original 12-year prison sentence was thrown out by the Colorado Court of Appeals in 2004 after the panel ruled the judge who presided over Barton’s trial may have compromised due to the fact that he was evacuated during the fire. The court also said that the maximum sentence without a jury finding aggravating circumstances was six years – the same as Barton’s federal sentence. The two sentences were to be served concurrently, which means Barton will have completed her prison terms on June 2. She is currently incarcerated in Texas. The 2002 Hayman fire burned 138,000 acres in the Pike National Forest, destroying 133 home and 466 outbuildings. More than 8,000 people were evacuated....
Silent Insect Killer Ravages American West The American West is under attack by a silent killer that's causing some of the worst-ever destruction to hit the nation's forestland: the mountain pine beetle. "People are looking out their windows and seeing dead trees where they used to see green," said Sandy Briggs from the Forest Health Task Force in Aspen, Colo. Despite their small size (approximately 5 millimeters when fully grown), these beetles are doing enormous damage, wiping out millions of acres of lodgepole pines as an epidemic of them explodes across the West. "We have about 1,500,000 acres of trees that have been infested," said Clint Kyhl, an incident commander for the U.S. Forest Service, referring to devastation in Colorado and Wyoming alone. That's roughly twice the size of Rhode Island. The epidemic began in 1996, but in the last year it has really taken off. Five years from now all of Colorado's lodgepole pine forests, another 6 million acres, will be wiped out, and the beetles are expected to infest the entire West over the next 15 years, state forestry officials say. Colorado is just one of eight states across the West that has been impacted, along with Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Montana and Idaho, as well as large parts of Canada in British Columbia and Alberta....
Timber industry argues the opposite in beetle response A conservation group has filed a petition asking the Medicine Bow National Forest to stop logging until the agency has a better scientific understanding of the effects the pine beetle epidemic, combined with continued clear-cutting, will have on species including goshawks and lynx. A U.S. Forest Service representative said this week the staff was studying the petition from Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and would respond in the near future. Biodiversity contends that the road-building and other impacts associated with large logging projects exacerbate the negative effects on the forest from the beetle epidemic, damaging watersheds and habitat. In an interview, Biodiversity program director Duane Short said large logging projects in the backcountry -- such as the impending Spruce Gulch fuels reduction project west of Fox Park -- entail large clear-cuts and "will do nothing to stem the beetle epidemic or protect homes from wildfires." A timber industry spokesman, on the other hand, said logging of the beetle-killed trees should be accelerated. Tom Troxel, a director of the Intermountain Forest Association in Rapid City, S.D., said the Medicine Bow is facing a crisis and as many of the dead trees should be removed as possible during the five years they are still marketable. That would limit the chance of large-scale fires and begin the process of regeneration. "We don�t have time to waste with any more studies and litigation," he said....
Napolitano: ‘Special areas’ need protection from mining Gov. Janet Napolitano has written a letter to U.S. Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., saying she supports their legislation to withdraw Coronado National Forest lands in Pima and Santa Cruz counties from future mining. HR 4228, the Southern Arizona Public Lands Protection Act of 2007, was introduced in November by Grijalva, who hopes to have a first public hearing by the full House Natural Resources Committee this spring. The bill was motivated by concerns over the Augusta Resource Rosemont Mine. But it also addresses potential future mining over a much larger area of concern identified by the Pima and Santa Cruz boards of supervisors. All Coronado lands and some other public lands are included. “While mining will always be a vital part of Arizona's economy, there are certain places where mining is simply not appropriate, such as the lands identified in HR 4228,” Napolitano wrote. “We recognize the importance of healthy watersheds, wildlife habitat, and recreation for our communities. There is no longer a need to incentivize the development of the West; we are the fastest growing area in the country.”....
Bald calf earns 'Kojak' nickname When cattle rancher Ben Gullett first saw a brand-new calf born just last week, images of Lt. Theo Kojak with his bald head and lollipop came to mind. The name, Kojak, is fitting for this newborn calf, born with a bald head and hairless legs. Gullett, whose family has raised cattle for generations, has welcomed thousands of newborn calves in his lifetime, but never one as unusual as Kojak, who lives on brother Flint's 125-acre farm in Duette. "I never saw one quite like that," he said. "I don't know whether she's going to make it or not." Kojak's bald head and hairless legs are one of nature's oddities, when the normally flawless orchestration of chromosomes suddenly goes awry, surmised John Arthington, range cattle research and education center director for the University of Florida. "It's a genetic condition," Arthington said....

Buoy Meets Gore As Lorne Gunter reported Monday in Canada's National Post, the first of 3,000 new automated ocean buoys were deployed in 2003. They amounted to a significant improvement over earlier buoys that took their measurements mostly at the ocean's surface. The new buoys, known as Argos, drift along the oceans at a depth of about 6,000 feet constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity and speed of ocean currents. Every 10 days or so a bladder inflates, bringing to the surface readings taken at various depths. Once on the surface, they transmit their readings to satellites that retransmit them to land-based computers. The Argos buoys have disappointed the global warm-mongers in that they have failed to detect any signs of imminent climate change. As Dr. Josh Willis, who works for NASA in its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in an interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoys' five years of observation, but that drop was "not anything really significant." Certainly not enough to shut down the Gulf Stream. Climate-change promoters also are perplexed by the observations of NASA's eight weather satellites. In contrast to some 7,000 land-based stations, they take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the surface of the Earth. In 30 years of operation, the satellites have recorded a warming trend of just 0.14C — well within the range of normal variations....
Western Antarctic Ice Chunk Collapses A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday. Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started Feb. 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years. This is the result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan. Because scientists noticed satellite images within hours, they diverted satellite cameras and even flew an airplane over the ongoing collapse for rare pictures and video. "It's an event we don't get to see very often," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "The cracks fill with water and slice off and topple... That gets to be a runaway situation." While icebergs naturally break away from the mainland, collapses like this are unusual but are happening more frequently in recent decades, Vaughan said. The collapse is similar to what happens to hardened glass when it is smashed with a hammer, he said....
Ranchers outside wolf zone say they'll only target offending animals Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies will no longer be protected as an endangered species starting Friday. But Wyoming ranchers and county predator control boards outside the wolves' trophy game zone say they won't send up airplanes that morning to haphazardly hunt the predators. Going after wolves that aren't killing livestock would not only be a fools' mission for the ranchers and the boards, but it also would be exorbitantly expensive, according to board members. "The only time we'll fly them is when there is a problem," said Truman Julian, a sheep rancher in Kemmerer and chairman of Lincoln County's predator control board. "Just to put a plane up there looking for a wolf is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and it's expensive, and we have to pay for it. We don't have the money, and that's not our goal. Our goal is to remove the offending animals." Beginning Friday, ranchers in Wyoming's predator zone for wolves -- which includes most of the state, save the extreme northwest -- will be able to call USDA Wildlife Services directly if there is a wolf bothering or hunting livestock. Inside the trophy game zone, wolves will be managed by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department similar to the way they are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service statewide today. Ranchers will not be able to kill any wolves on sight, but instead must enlist the help of Game and Fish, or obtain take permits from the department. Outside the trophy game zone, Wildlife Services will be paid through continuing contracts with county predator control boards to aerial hunt and kill wolves, the same way these boards currently pay the agency to destroy animals such as coyotes and foxes....
Wolves trapped by shift in status The five wolves reportedly sighted last month near the Dutch John airport may be part of a Wyoming pack checking out a new Utah neighborhood. If so, they have a better chance of survival if they make the Beehive State their permanent home. Beginning Friday, because of a federal decision to take gray wolves off the endangered species list, anyone can kill wolves for any reason across most of Wyoming. Only a small area near Yellowstone National Park will be off-limits, though Cowboy State wildlife officials plan to allow restricted hunting there for trophy animals. In Utah, wolves would continue to have full protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. But if they step across the state line, they'll be in the same varmint category as coyotes, skunks, jack rabbits and stray cats. "Anyone can kill those animals by just about any means possible. That's how wacky Wyoming's plan is," said Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance. That organization is one of several wildlife advocacy and conservation groups poised to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its delisting decision made Feb. 27 and set to go into effect Friday. The groups argue that the action was premature because wolf management plans in Wyoming and Idaho are unacceptable. But they can't file the lawsuit until April 28, leaving open at least a 30-day wolf free-fire zone in Wyoming....
Short-Cut Conundrum A rancher's efforts to close a corridor across the San Pedro River has prompted Pinal County officials to try to seize the property through eminent domain--an action that has conservation groups upset. More than a decade ago, ranchers Jean and Eric Schwennesen bought 215 acres to venture into the grass-fed beef business and holistic-resource management. Their son, Paul, now ranches there with his wife, Sarah, and their toddler. (See "Tales From the Outskirts," July 5, 2007.) To protect the riparian area, the elder Schwennesens sold a conservation easement to the Nature Conservancy in 1996. In 1997, that easement--which specifies that public access be restricted to nonmotorized traffic such as birdwatchers, hikers and horses--was transferred to the Bureau of Land Management. The Schwennesens bought the property from George Gordon, who, a few years earlier, had signed an agreement with Pinal County, temporarily allowing vehicles across the river until the county replaced a bridge, on Romero Road to the north, that had been washed out by flooding. The highway easement with the county was supposed to end on Dec. 31, 1995, but it contained a provision that extended automatically each year, pending written cancellation by either the county or the landowner. Fast-forward to 2007. The Schwennesens, fed up with off-roaders, learned from the county that it had no plans to fix the bridge. However, there is a well-maintained public road that crosses the river a few miles north--a route known as the ASARCO crossing, named for the nearby mining-company operation. Paul Schwennesen contacted the county to see if there would be any objections if he terminated the temporary easement....
Bison shooters stayed on land of rancher who sued The 14 men suspected of shooting and killing at least 32 bison belonging to ranchers Monte and Tracy Downare were camped in and around the old ranch house of the nearby Hawn Ranch, an investigator said today. Park County Undersheriff Monte Gore said that some of the men were actually staying in the old ranch house on the property while others were staying in various outbuildings, such as the barn, near the old house. The shootings of the Downares' bison happened just days after Austin, Texas, businessman Jeff Hawn filed suit in Park County District Court claiming that the Downares' bison were stampeding onto his property in South Park. Hawn, who identifies himself as 50 percent shareholder and manager of Wateredge Properties, claims that "herds" of the Downares' bison had repeatedly broken through the fences erected to keep the buffalo off Wateredge property, damaging or destroying the fences in 50 places. "The damage that (the Downares') buffalo have caused to the property is staggering," said the lawsuit....
Three new conservation easements signed on Front Third-generation rancher Brodie Gollehon thought long and hard about selling a conservation easement to The Nature Conservancy, but with the money he got, he purchased additional rangeland adjacent to his working family ranch west of Choteau along the Rocky Mountain Front. Landowners Gollehon and his father, Wayne, operating under the company name, Gollehon Ranch LLC, are owners of one of three ranch operations that sold conservation easements totaling 20,108 acres to the Conservancy in March. The easements, recorded in the Teton County Clerk and Recorder's office on March 5, increase by 45 percent, the number of acres along the front that have conservation easements. While the land under conservation easements is only 4 percent of Teton County as a whole, the figure rises to 15 percent of the land along the 425,000-acre Rocky Mountain Front. Gollehon said he got involved with The Nature Conservancy because the organization offered the least restrictive conservation easement and placed no restrictions on grazing. In addition, the family could still produce hay. When Lew and Christy Clark offered to sell a "chunk of land" to his family, he used the funds obtained from the Conservancy to clinch the deal for the 3,400-acre Clark property, Gollehon said. He declined to name the prices involved....
No pass for the gas The economy might be nose-diving and the war in Iraq still languishing, but the happy days of the Bush administration seem to be going strong if you happen to be in the oil and gas industry. Residents of southern Colorado's San Luis Valley are now reacting to news that 144,000 acres of federal land will go on the auction block May 8. "I think we're the last hurrah," says Pauline Washburn, an activist from Del Norte, 180 driving miles southwest of Colorado Springs. Most leases are for mineral rights under the hilly country around Del Norte, a landscape now dominated by forest and cattle-grazed grasslands. Smaller parcels flank Crestone, an arts and spiritual community where many residents are battling plans to drill test wells on Baca National Wildlife Refuge, which is adjacent to their town and to Great Sand Dunes National Park. Dale Wiescamp, a Del Norte real estate broker and San Luis Valley native, says news of the proposed sales "dropped on us like a ton of bricks." "We don't know how to handle something like this," he says, emphasizing concern about potential conflicts between drillers and ranchers and possible contamination of the valley's crucial aquifers. "We're the last of the pristine areas left."....
Trust land talks reach an impasse Talks aimed at reaching a legislative compromise on a ballot measure on state trust land have hit an apparent impasse that likely means no proposal goes to voters in November, a top aide to Gov. Janet Napolitano said Wednesday. The talks hit a blockage over whether to prohibit use of impact fees on new homes from being used to purchase trust land for conservation as open space under a proposed new process for trust land, said Mike Haener, a deputy chief of staff to the governor. That at least dims, if not extinguishes, prospects for agreement this session on a consensus package that lawmakers could put on the November ballot, Haener told The Associated Press in an interview. The state's roughly 9.3 million acres of trust land represent a century-old legacy from statehood that has seen recent unsuccessful efforts to set aside large parcels for conservation as open space while protecting funding the land provides for public schools through sales and leases. onths of negotiations have taken place since Napolitano last summer convened a gathering of key legislators to try to forge a compromise on trust land proposals - a subject of frustration in recent years for lawmakers and advocacy groups as diverse as teachers, home builders, conservationists and cattle ranchers....
Feds sue Gorge resort over work on wetlands A Columbia River Gorge resort and its owners were sued Wednesday by the federal government for grading and filling 2.25 acres of wetlands on Forest Service property next to the Bonneville Hot Springs Resort. The U.S. Attorney’s Office sued the resort and owners Pete and Elena Cam of Woodburn, Ore., for violating the Clean Water Act and trespassing on federal land within the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. The Cams were unavailable for comment, but the resort’s general manager said Wednesday that the problem dates back to the resort’s construction. It will mark five years of operation in October. “I do know that Pete Cam has been working with the owners of the adjacent property, which was Longview Fibre, and the Forest Service and Corps of Engineers to do a reforestation in that area,” resort General Manager Gary Sorrels said late Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors allege the resort constructed trails on Forest Service land. After building the trail, according to prosecutors, workers used heavy equipment to build trenches in three different spots and fill 2.25 acres of wetlands in and around Greenleaf Creek. It’s also alleged that workers removed orange boundary markers delineating national forest land, then burned vegetation and used pesticide and herbicides....
Idaho studies rebuild of failed Teton Dam It’s an idea that has been on the books since that fateful day 32 years ago this June. Only this year, the prospect of rebuilding the Teton Dam took a larger step forward as the state of Idaho set aside $400,000 in a $1.8 million water budget to study resurrecting the structure in the Teton River Canyon in Fremont County, Idaho. Also included in the budget is money to study improvements on the Minidoka Dam with the plan of raising the structure another five feet for greater water storage. But it is the Teton Dam that comes with considerable baggage since its failure June 6, 1976, caused $300 million worth of damage, wiped out towns, eliminated entire herds of livestock and killed 11 people....
Farm Lobby Beats Back Assault On Subsidies With grain prices soaring, farm income at record highs and the federal budget deficit widening, the subsidies and handouts given to American farmers would seem vulnerable to a serious pruning. But it appears that farmers, at least so far, have succeeded in stopping the strongest effort in years to shrink the government safety net that doles out billions of dollars to them each year. "At some point, you have to step back and ask, 'Does this make sense for the American taxpayer?'" says Rep. Ron Kind. The Democrat from Wisconsin sponsored a measure that would have slashed about $10 billion over five years in subsidies -- and saw it get crushed on the House floor. Grain prices are on a tear this year. On Wednesday, corn prices closed at $5.52 a bushel, up from about $2.20 in 2006, and near the all-time high of $5.70 set earlier this month. U.S. farm income, buoyed by demand for grain from rising middle classes around the globe and the biofuels industry, is projected to reach a record $92.3 billion this year. Still, farmers are expected to collect $13 billion in federal subsidies this year, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department, including payments for commodities, land conservation and emergency assistance. The agribusiness industry plowed more than $80 million into lobbying last year, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks spending on lobbying. Much of that was focused on the farm bill. "We got rolled," says Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who worked closely with Rep. Kind. "The agriculture community circled the wagons."....
Bush Is As Much A Cowboy As He Is A Conservative The most glaring example of a Bush lie peddled to the American people by the press is the myth of the 'Bush family ranch' in Crawford, Texas as well as the role that Bush plays as a real Texas rancher. Despite the inferences, Bush's Crawford spread is not a working ranch, nor has it been in the Bush family for generations. Preparing for a White House run, Bush purchased the property in 1999 for $1.3 million. Unlike President Reagan who also owned a ranch and was an accomplished rider, Bush has never ridden a horse on his ranch. Instead, Bush uses the property to ride his bicycle, go jogging, and to clear brush for the news cameras. Despite his cowboy boots, Bush does not ride and is reportedly terrified of horses. In fact, while on his first visit to Mexico as President, Bush refused to go riding with his North American Union co-conspirator Vicente Fox. The former Mexican president wrote about the laughable episode in his autobiography "Revolution of Hope." Fox remembers Bush as "backing away" from one of his big palomino horses and repeatedly rejecting his requests to accompany him on his rides. Fox also went on to describe Bush as nothing more than a "windshield cowboy--who prefers to drive." I don't know about you, but there is something disconcerting to me about a man who wears cowboy boots but has never ridden a horse. Apparently, Bush's cowboy boots just like his self-reported conservative beliefs, are merely props with no real purpose....
State closer to banning horse tripping Arizona could soon join a handful of states that have outlawed the Mexican sport of horse-tripping, appeasing animal-rights activists who have deemed the cultural practice cruel and inhumane. The state House of Representatives on Wednesday gave tentative approval to a bill that would make the deliberate tripping of horses and other equine animals illegal. Horse-tripping mostly occurs in small, Mexican-style rodeos called charreadas, where cowboys score points by lassoing the legs of the galloping animal, forcing it to crash to the ground. Three rodeo events involve taking down a horse: roping the horse's hind legs, tripping the horse while on foot, and tripping the horse while on horseback. Hector Corona, the former longtime operations and ranch manager at Laveen's Corona Ranch, says he backs the bill. He points out that the legislation wouldn't affect the family-owned Baseline Road ranch because it hasn't allowed horse-tripping during its popular charreadas for the past 17 years. But Corona, 45, a former charro (cowboy) who has attended dozens of rodeos in both the U.S. and Mexico, says concerns about animals being injured during Mexican rodeos may be overblown. In all his years of watching and participating in charreadas, he has seen a horse seriously injured only once or twice....
Paint horse Got Country Grip looking for record 16th straight win What started as a gesture of kindness by a Texas cattle rancher toward a teenager has turned into a quest to equal one of the most hallowed records in horse racing. The rancher, Jimmy Maddux, and the teenager-turned-trainer, Brandon Parum, plan to be at Remington Park on Thursday night as Maddux's 5-year-old Oklahoma-bred paint horse, Got Country Grip, goes for his 16th win in as many career starts. Should Got Country Grip win the $15,000, 350-yard allowance race for paints and appaloosas, he will match the modern North American all-breeds record of 16 straight wins, now held by four thoroughbreds, including a pair of racing legends, Citation and Cigar. Maddux, 60, freely admits that before he met Parum in 1996, he was a racing novice. But there was something about Parum that made Maddux believe in him. The two met in the mid-1990s, when Parum's family operated a feed store not far from Maddux's ranch near Weatherford, Texas. When Maddux went to buy feed, he also looked at the paint horses Parum's father trained. Maddux soon offered the teen a winter job on his ranch, feeding cattle....

Background on Proposed NCA for the Peloncillo Region:

David Hodges, Sky Island Alliance, submitted an Executive Summary proposal for a Natural Conservation Area (NCA) for this area to the Malpai Borderlands Group (MBG) at the MBG's February board meeting.

After receiving a copy of the Summary I initiated a dialogue with Bill McDonald, Executive Director for MBG, and David Hodges. I inquired of David why he thought federal management was superior to private management. David's response never directly addressed my question, although he had many reasons for including our area in a NCA.

David was gracious enough to give me a copy of the full Draft proposal: “The Greater Peloncillo Mountains Region: A Status Review and Management Recommendations” at the Jaguar Conservation Team meeting in Lordsburg a couple of weeks ago.

After reviewing the Draft proposal - 82 pages, including the bibliography - I am even more concerned with the proposal. Bill McDonald was also gracious enough to send me comments from him and Dr. Ben Brown in which they both discussed some of their concerns with the proposal in hopes of tweaking the Draft to address these concerns.

I have also visited with many of the landowners within the proposed NCA. As my letter to David reflects - based on these conversations, I can not in good conscience support this proposal. I truly believe one of the main reasons this area is in pristine condition lies in the fact that much of the area is held in private lands that have been managed for their highest and best uses in a sustainable manner for the individual landowners.

One of my favorite quotes comes from a Supreme Court decision, Buchanan vs Warley - 1917: "Property is more than the thing which a person owns..... It is elementary that it includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it.... There can not be conception of property aside from its control and use, and upon its use depends its value".

If this NCA comes to fruition it's inevitable it will eventually determine the "uses" for this area, including prohibiting all "over-flights by ultra-light aircraft” and all "exotic species". Exotic species could include; cattle, horses, emus, etc; and certain plants and grasses that are not "native" to this area. Is this the kind of restrictive uses we would like to see in this area?

I am sending this out in an effort to keep everyone in the loop. I've included the map of the proposed NCA for your review. If you'd like to read the Draft proposal, let me know.

The MBG will decide tomorrow whether to support the NCA. Hopefully, they will make the right choice for the benefit of all the landowners in this area.

Judy

----- Original Message -----
From: Keeler Ranch
To: David Hodges
Cc: Bill McDonald
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 11:49 AM
Subject: Proposed NCA

March 26, 2008

Dear David,

Thank you for the Draft copy of “The Greater Peloncillo Mountains Region: A Status Review and Management Recommendations”. You are right; it varies only slightly from the Executive Summary of the” Peloncillos Coordinated Management and Protected Area Plan” – just a little more fluff – beautiful pictures of the area and a history of its settlement.

After reviewing the document, reading the comments from Dr. Brown, Bill McDonald and others and visiting with the neighbors about the proposed National Conservation Area, I can say with certainty we are unequivocally opposed to the proposed NCA.

Without going into a page by page analysis, suffice it to say we do not see a need to add another layer of federal land management over the top of the many private property owners within the proposed NCA.

I think you will agree that our federal bureaucracies are not the best land managers. In fact, even the TNC acknowledges the larger percentage of endangered species is found on private land. Could this reflect the fact that private lands are better cared for than the federal (public) lands – where ingress and egress is mandated by elected officials and a judicial system that has no concept or concern for how the public actually “cares” for the land?

If you are thinking of proposing that the Malpai Borderland Group, or some other NGO, “manage” the proposed NCA you are only setting up a scenario for future conflict between friends and neighbors.

We see no benefit of applying some form of “management” over this area other than what already exits. Private property is one of the foundational principles that have made our nation so great. Even if we “tweak” the proposed NCA, we could end up with disastrous results – a management system by individuals that neither live in the area nor have a vested interest in its future well-being. In this there can be no compromise.

As I previously stated, we can not, in good conscience, support the proposed NCA. We are unequivocally opposed to a NCA being established in our area.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Sincerely,

Judy Keeler

Cc Bill McDonald

The New New Thing Every year, there is a new green technology that triggers eager predictions that the days of gasoline-powered engines are numbered. Last year, it was lithium-ion batteries. The year before that, it was hydrogen fuel cells. This year's buzz generator—a new biofuel developed by a small Illinois company called Coskata—holds genuine promise to become a cleaner and cheaper alternative to gasoline. But the fuel's efforts to achieve commercial viability will be hurt, not helped, if its well connected investors succeed in convincing the federal government to mandate a distribution infrastructure for it. Coskata's backers include General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner and Sun Microsystem co-founder and venture capitalist extraordinaire Vinod Khosla. They want every gas station in the country to replace half of their gas pumps with special units known as E-85 pumps. E-85 is a blend that contains 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Like diesel, it must be pumped through a different system than conventional gasoline. Most ethanol in the United States is produced from corn, but Coskata says that it has found a way to generate ethanol from woodchips and other biomass at potentially half the cost of gas and a third the cost of corn-based ethanol. What's more, it has done so without any research subsidies that many other alternative fuel ventures get. This is especially impressive since such "cellulosic ethanol" has to date been more expensive than corn-derived ethanol....
Mountain lion shot in Kansas A mountain lion has been shot in Kansas. A Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks official obtained the pelt Monday. A Barber County landowner shot the adult male mountain lion on his property west of Medicine Lodge in November. Tracy Galvin, a Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks game warden, began an investigation about three weeks ago after several tips from local residents, including a rancher who'd seen a photo of the dead animal. Galvin learned the cat's pelt was at a taxidermy studio in Texas and had it brought to Kansas. Officials believe it's probably the first documented wild mountain lion in Kansas in more than 100 years.
Wolf actions elsewhere won't affect Oregon rules Taking wolves off the federal Endangered Species Act could allow for the predators to be killed in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, but it will not lift protections for the small number of the animals that are in Oregon, state officials said. "They're still on the state ESA (Endangered Species Act), and they're going to stay there for quite some time," said Michelle Dennehy, the Wildlife Programs communications coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Gray wolves will be fair game for hunters and ranchers in most of Wyoming when that state, along with Montana and Idaho, takes over management of the animals with the delisting. But despite the fact that the northeastern corner of Oregon is in the area under the delisting decision, both state ESA protections and the provisions of the state's 2005 Wolf Management Plan preclude killing any wolves. Under the guidelines, at least four breeding pairs of wolves must be established in a delisted area for three consecutive years before lifting of protections can be discussed....
Major tomato producer quits, blames Congress Keith Eckel, the largest producer of fresh market tomatoes in Pennsylvania, is getting out of the business. Fearing that the labor needed to harvest his tomatoes won't be there when he needs it, Eckel announced yesterday that after decades of growing tomatoes, he was calling it quits. He placed the blame squarely at the feet of Congress and its failure to enact what he called a meaningful immigration reform measure. "The system is broken," Eckel said before a crowd of neighbors, employees and news media gathered in the packing house at his farm near Scranton. "It's a sad day," he said. "We're closing a part of our business that we really love." Eckel's problems are echoed coast to coast by farmers who are reliant on foreign farm workers allowed into the country each year to plant, pick and package crops. Eckel said the impact of the government's increased vigilance on illegal immigration and the lack of action on an immigration reform bill has sown doubt among farmers that they will be able to count on a predictable and sufficient work force....
Shepherds prove their worth is not a relic of pastoral times Tucked away in a snowy crease of the Casino Creek drainage south of Lewistown, Moe's ranch is one of a few farm operations these days using dogs to drive stock. Working canines, known for their herding instinct, were once a staple of Western ranching. But the animals require training, which some ranchers say they don't have time for and others have simply forgotten how to do. However, stock driving's popularity is surging among townies, who own dogs from herding bloodlines. The American Kennel Club, which offers herding tests and competition, has seen enrollment in those events increase 60 percent in the past five years, said Doug Ljungren, the AKC's director of performance events. Last year alone, participation increased 9 percent. Ranchers like Moe have been known, for $500, to take on a city dog for a month to see of the urban pup can cut it. The ones that have the right stuff work with her pack of Australian shepherds, sleeping outside like real ranch dogs and herding everything from ducks to cows. Those that don't measure up are on their way home after a couple of weeks. The AKC starts out by giving dogs an instinct test, which basically involves putting a dog in an arena with livestock and seeing if it is at all interested in fetching or driving livestock. A puppy that learns when to chase and when to stop on command is taking its first steps toward herding, according to the AKC. That's much less than what's expected from a ranch dog. Ranchers who make the investment in training a good stock dog expect more. They're looking for cheap labor that never balks at working weekends or holidays and never asks for an advance on Wednesday after drinking its paychecks away the previous Friday. They want hands that don't borrow the ranch truck and return it with an empty tank just as diesel hits $3.94 a gallon....
Laxalt was Mother of the State of Nevada Therese Alpetche was born in 1891 in the Basque province of Basse Navarre in France. Her family operated a hotel and travel agency in France. She graduated from the cooking school Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. After World War I, she came to Reno and in 1921 married Dominique Laxalt, a sheep and cattle rancher. A failing economy and heavy winter storms caused Dominique to lose his holdings, so he became a sheepherder. Therese traveled with him, sometimes cooking three meals a day for 30 ranch hands, a far cry from the Cordon Bleu. The Laxalts moved to Carson City in 1926, operated the French Hotel and owned the original Ormsby House. When Dominique returned to the sheep business, Therese tended to their business interests and assumed much of the task of raising their family. The Laxalts had six children, and Therese's dream was that they would all go to college and earn their livings with their minds rather than their hands....

FLE

Top court backs Texas over Bush The Supreme Court dealt a defeat to President Bush on Tuesday and ruled he does not have the "unilateral authority" to force state officials to comply with international treaties. Chief Justice John Roberts said the Constitution gives the president the power "to execute the laws, not make them." Unless Congress passes a law to enforce a treaty, the president usually cannot do it on his own, Roberts said. The case arose from an unusual dispute and unexpected intervention by Bush. The justices used it to make a strong statement about the limits of presidential power. The International Court of Justice in The Hague, acting on a lawsuit by Mexico, ruled the United States had failed to carry out its treaty duty to inform a native country when one of its citizens was arrested and charged with a serious crime. The decision pointed to 51 Mexican nationals who were under death sentences in Texas, California and several other states. It was unclear how this ruling could be enforced. But in a surprise move, President Bush in 2005 told Texas officials they must reopen and reconsider the cases of the Mexican-born murderers on Death Row. Bush, a former Texas governor, said he was acting "pursuant to the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and laws of the United States." Texas officials refused to go along with Bush's order and fought him in court over the case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, facing the death penalty for killing two teens in 1993....
D.C. Gun Crackdown Meets Community Resistance A crackdown on guns is meeting some resistance in the District. Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District's gun ban. They passed out fliers requesting cooperation on Monday. Officers will go door to door asking residents for permission to search their homes. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the "safe homes initiative" is aimed at residents who want to cooperate with police. She gave the example of parents or grandparents who know or suspect their children have guns in the home. Community leaders went door to door in Ward 8 Monday to advise residents not to invite police into their homes to search for weapons. "Bad idea," said D.C. School Board member William Lockridge. "I think the people should not open your doors under any circumstances, don't even crack your door, unless someone has a warrant for your arrest." Ron Hampton, of the Black Police Officers Association, said he doesn't expect many in the community to comply. f weapons are recovered, they will be tested and destroyed if they are not found to be linked to any other crimes....
Police limit searches for guns Boston police officials, surprised by intense opposition from residents, have significantly scaled back and delayed the start of a program that would allow officers to go into people's homes and search for guns without a warrant. The program, dubbed Safe Homes, was supposed to start in December, but has been delayed at least three times because of misgivings in the community. March 1 was the latest missed start date. One community group has been circulating a petition against the plan. Police officials trying to assuage residents' fears have been drowned out by criticism at some meetings with residents and elected officials. Officers may begin knocking on doors this week, officials said yesterday, but instead of heading into four troubled neighborhoods, as they had planned, officers will target only one, Egleston Square in Jamaica Plain, where police said they have received the most support. Police would ask parents or legal guardians for permission to search homes where juveniles ages 17 and under are believed to be holding illegal guns. Police would only enter homes into which they have been invited and, once inside, would only search the rooms of the juveniles. The goal, said Elaine Driscoll, spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, would be getting weapons off the streets, rather than making arrests....
The Reasonable Weasel The Supreme Court is deciding whether a complete ban on all handguns in Washington, D.C. violates the second amendment of the Constitution, which says that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." You might think, if you have even passing familiarity with the word "infringe," that the answer is obvious. And indeed early reports indicate the Supremes will decide that you do, in fact, have an individual right to bear arms. That might seem like a victory for freedom, but the court won't stop there. They have to decide whether the handgun ban in D.C. is constitutional or not and how to decide what restrictions on weapons are legit. Safety locks? Individually-identified bullets? Waiting periods? Assault-weapon bans? No one knows how they will decide yet. But the readers of the Weekly deserve to know ahead of time, so I'll tell you: they'll use the reasonable weasel. They'll say any law has to be "reasonable." It's a trap. Whenever a politician says, "Let's be reasonable," the ghosts of the founding fathers reach for their guns. Who decides what is reasonable? If you allow the government to decide what is a reasonable violation of your rights, then you no longer have unalienable rights to be protected by your elected officials, you have privileges granted to you by your prison warden. The text of the Constitution is clear. "Shall not be infringed" does not mean "shall not be infringed unless the person doing the infringing thinks it's okay."....
'And every other terrible instrument' In a "move that surprised some observers," the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday, attorney Alan Gura, appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the federal guard who sued the District of Columbia in 2003, claiming he feels unsafe because he's not allowed to keep his guns at home, "appeared to concede large chunks of his argument, moving away from an absolutist position on gun rights." "He concurred, at one point, with Justice Stephen Breyer that a ban on machine guns or plastic guns" (whatever those are) "would be constitutional because those weren't the kind of arms normally carried by members of state militias in the early days of the United States." Was it a failure of nerve under pressure, or did somebody get to this guy? The statement above is like saying "freedom of the press" doesn't apply to newspapers printed on modern, high-speed electric presses -- only to handbills printed one at a time on an old-fashioned hand-cranker, because that's the only kind they had back in Ben Franklin's day. Under such a rule, you could forget about the First Amendment protecting the free-speech rights of ministers (or anybody else) broadcasting over TV and radio -- didn't have any of that stuff back during "the early days of the United States," either. Nor did they have the revolvers or semi-automatic pistols you were supposed to be arguing for, Mr. Gura. (1836 and 1894, respectively.)....
Reactions to the Supreme Court Hearings on the D.C. Gun Ban If you believe that you have a God-given or natural right to own a handgun, you may be able to point to at least one good thing that President Bush has done for you in the last seven years: nominating Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice seemed very skeptical about arguments for Washington D.C.’s handgun ban as challenged in D.C. vs Heller during last Tuesday’s hearing, asking Walter Dellinger, who represents the city, “What is reasonable about a total ban on possession?” But while the Bush administration gave with one hand, it took with another. “I’m really disappointed in the Bush Administrations’ brief which would relegate that individual right to an inferior position,” says Frank DuBois, former New Mexico Secretary of Agriculture and editor of The Westerner website, which purveys and surveys all issues Western, old and new. DuBois is referring to U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement’s written argument for returning the case to the appellate court that initially struck down the ban. Columnist Robert Novak believes that Clement may have wanted to limit the scope of his argument against the ban, believing that Justice Kennedy would rule against an individual right to bear arms. Clement’s position was so far from the Bush administration’s, however, that Vice-President Dick Cheney sided with over 300 congressmen and senators on another argument requesting the Supreme Court declare the gun ban “unconstitutional per se,”—i.e. intrinsically unconstitutional, due to the clear meaning of the Second Amendment. But DuBois is cautiously optimistic, adding “It appears we have an excellent chance the Supreme Court will find an individual right to bear arms. I hope they will find those rights can only be limited by a ‘compelling state interest’”....Mr. Probasco is a great journalist. I mean, look who he's quoting. -:)
Gun paint company taunts Mayor Bloomberg with paints named after him A Wisconsin company that disguises deadly firearms with bright paints and camouflage has a new target: Mayor Bloomberg. Lauer Custom Weaponry, whose products were banned in the city in 2006 because they make dangerous guns look like innocent toys, is taunting the anti-gun mayor with a line of paints named "The Bloomberg Collection." The company - which named its purple hue after Barney, the dinosaur beloved by toddlers - is peddling a rainbow of candy-colored paints for each of the five boroughs. There's red for Manhattan, rose for the Bronx, blue for Brooklyn, green for Queens and orange for Staten Island. And as an extra slap - a stencil of the mayor's face for the barrel of the gun. Gun owners also can plunk down $129 for a "Bloomberg Collection EZ Camo Kit" to pimp out their semiautomatics and rifles with a brick wall and graffiti decoration. It's no joke. An outraged Bloomberg called gun-coloration kits "a tragedy in the making."....
D.B. Cooper's Parachute Possibly Found The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found buried by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said Tuesday. Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors. The children had seen recent media coverage of the case — the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips to solve the 36-year-old mystery — and they urged their dad to call the agency. "When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is going to bring the answers to us," Carr said. "This is exactly what we were hoping for." A man identifying himself as Dan Cooper — later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he had a bomb. When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. He apparently parachuted from the plane's back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border....

Forest Service May Move to Interior In Washington, the organizational chart helps bring order to chaos, sorting the many federal agencies of the vast bureaucracy into manageable boxes. Among some lawmakers who hold the purse strings, there is a belief that the U.S. Forest Service is out of place. The 103-year-old agency, which manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, is part of the Department of Agriculture. Its bureaucratic cousins -- the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, which manage 84 million acres, 96 million acres and 258 million acres of public land, respectively -- are in the Interior Department. The five agencies have overlapping missions that include fire prevention and suppression, natural resource conservation, fostering recreational uses, and regulating commercial activities such as logging, drilling, mining and livestock grazing. At the request of the House Appropriations subcommittee on interior, environment and related agencies, the Government Accountability Office this month began examining whether it would make sense to move the Forest Service to Interior's purview. The subcommittee has jurisdiction over both agencies. "The public perceives them as being very similar," said Robin M. Nazzaro, director of the Natural Resources and Environment group at GAO, which is conducting the study. "They've just asked us to look at, could any money be saved, and would it result in a more efficient, effective and coordinated management of federal lands and the natural resources?" Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the panel's chairman, believes such a move would help shore up the Forest Service's budget and align agencies with similar missions, said his spokesman, George Behan....
U.S. jaguars threatened by Mexico border fence Jaguar biologist Emil McCain stoops over a remote-sensing camera attached to a tree in these rugged mountains a few miles to the north of the Arizona-Mexico border. The researcher is checking for images of a handful of extremely rare jaguars that prowl up from Mexico over mountain trails in some of the wildest country in the southwest, although they are now under threat. Scrolling through images of bobcats and deer snapped by the camera, he explains how the habitat for one of the United States' most elusive predators is being pressured by illegal immigration from Mexico and the controversial remedies sought by the U.S. government to curb it: building fences. In this election year, Washington hopes to complete 670 miles (1,070 kilometres) of pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers in a bid to seal off some of the most heavily crossed areas of the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200 km) border, despite opposition from some landowners and environmentalists. "The low flat valleys are effectively walled off to wildlife. As a result everything is funneled up through the high mountain ranges that span the border" McCain said, standing by the camera box in an area spotted with trash tossed by illegal immigrants. "The border barriers are directly linked with the funneling of people into the last remaining habitats. Jaguars are very solitary animals, they can't move freely where there are a lot of people."....
Thawing oil spill sends "something" downstream Ruth Lindauer sets her lips in a tight line as she gazes at the milky gray water burbling down the cottonwood-lined creek behind her home. She and her rancher husband, Sid, don't know what's in that water — what the spring runoff is carrying down the creek from a giant, filthy monolith of frozen oil-and-gas-well spills melting in a gulch 10 miles upstream. The blackened ice formed from November through February when four oil-and-gas-well pits leaked 1 million gallons of something into Parachute Creek, the source for the Lindauers' irrigation water as well as the irrigation water for the town of Parachute. "Something" is the word people around here use because they don't know yet what's in the spills that froze as they poured into Garden Gulch. They didn't even know there were spills until two weeks ago, when it was reported in a local newspaper. Now that the frozen waterfall of gunk has melted into an estimated 100-foot-tall ice spire in a remote, rugged gulch and warmer temperatures are speeding up the melt, the wait for answers is starting to make some folks nervous....
End of the trail Jimenez would eventually become Wyoming's wolf recovery project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, after the canines were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s. Because wolves are set to lose their protection under the federal Endangered Species Act Friday, Wyoming will take over management of the animals. Jimenez's job will be phased out in September, after almost a decade in the state. In the mid-1980s, Jimenez got his start with wolves when he spent three summers and two winters in the remote mountain woods of British Columbia, tracking the animals and trying to catalog their interactions with livestock, deer and other wildlife. Now, after nine years of "wearing out trucks," traveling all over Wyoming's wolf country -- tracking and trapping them in the summer, darting them from helicopters in the winter, investigating livestock conflicts and doing research into wolves' eating habits -- Jimenez's job has a definite expiration date. Twenty-two years after his first winter with the wolves, the canines have been successfully reintroduced to the Northern Rockies. Their population has grown from just a handful in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho to more than 1,500 now roaming in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming....
It's true: wolverine is thriving near Tahoe Two more photographs of a wolverine lurking in the Tahoe National Forest were released Monday, extinguishing all doubt that the elusive predator exists in the wilds of California. The wolverine pictures, taken from remote digital cameras by U.S. Forest Service researchers, mean the muscular carnivore with the almond-colored stripe has either avoided detection for three-quarters of a century or returned to the state after an epic journey. An earlier image of what may be the same wolverine was captured inadvertently on Feb. 28 by a graduate student doing research on the wolverine's weasel family relative, the marten, and set off a near frenzy among giddy scientists and wildlife experts. Researchers, biologists and volunteers have fanned out over 155 square miles from the spot where the photo was taken in the forest north of Truckee, hunting for genetic material. Cameras and "hair snares," which capture animal hair, were rigged and all suspicious-looking animal deposits were scooped up. Dogs trained to detect wolverine scat were unleashed in the forest by the Center of Conservation Biology in Washington. Airplanes even flew overhead in an attempt to pick up signals from wolverines surgically fitted with radio transmitters during studies in Montana. Several wolverines with the internal transmitters have disappeared from study areas, but no signal was detected in the Tahoe area, Zielinski said....
Drilling plan exceeds new ozone rule The Bureau of Land Management's preferred plan for new natural gas drilling in the Pinedale Anticline would create more air pollution than would be allowed by recently announced federal air quality standards, according to the BLM's own projections. The BLM has proposed to permit the drilling of 4,400 new natural gas wells in the Pinedale Anticline in Sublette County. That development would result in high-end ozone concentrations of about 77 parts per billion, according to BLM computer models. The Environmental Protection Agency's new standard for ozone -- announced just two weeks ago -- will allow for high averages of only 75 parts per billion. Any eight-hour average above 75 will be considered unhealthy for children, the elderly and those with existing respiratory conditions. Wyoming's Department of Environmental Quality has issued a series of ozone advisories for the Pinedale area this winter, warning residents about anticipated unhealthy ozone spikes, including one each for Sunday and Monday. Those unhealthy levels, tied to energy development in the Upper Green River Basin, are being recorded even before the additional drilling is allowed. But an industry representative said Monday that air pollution generated by the 4,400 new wells, given year-round access, would actually be less than the BLM has projected....
Monument's science chief to take D.C. post From the redrock solitude of southern Utah to the bustling pace of Washington, D.C., Marietta Eaton is moving on. The science administrator of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be taking over a similar post for the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), based in the nation's capital. As part of the Bureau of Land Management, the conservation system oversees more than 850 scenic river, wilderness areas, wilderness study areas and historic and scenic trails on agency land. "We want to find more effective ways of implementing and applying science programs where we can," said Eaton, who takes over her new position on Tuesday. "We want to make science usable." She is well-suited for the job, having spent two years working with a diverse team of state and federal officials to devise the management plan for the Grand Staircase monument created in 1996 by President Clinton. Eaton, who was born in Albuquerque, N.M., describes herself as "a fifth-generation 'southwestern.' " After graduating from Northern Arizona University with a degree in archaeology, Eaton worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona and California until hired by the BLM in 1997....
Ancient legal concept may affect use of Delta A powerful state agency is coming under increasing pressure to apply an ancient, obscure and potent legal concept to sort out the state's untenable water mess and save the Delta's dying ecosystem for future generations. The public trust doctrine, which has roots in the Roman Empire, could lead to sweeping revisions in the amount of water that may be taken from the Delta. The doctrine, which has been buttressed in California's courts, says that certain values belong to present and future generations and that the state is obligated to protect those values. In the Delta, that could mean regulators might strike a new balance between the needs for Delta water and recreational fishing and water quality, for example. The idea is prompting fierce opposition from some of the state's largest water agencies, which fear water will be taken away from them for environmental benefits. Several months ago, an independent panel appointed to make recommendations on water policy and the Delta concluded that public trust and a related constitutional doctrine should become the very foundation of decision-making about California water. Then this week, environmental and sportfishing groups threatened to sue unless the state board agrees to restrict two mammoth water pumping projects owned by the state and federal governments that they blame for the bulk of the Delta's environmental problems....
Lawsuit seeks to save sea lions A new front opened Monday in the expanding war of sea lions versus salmon. The Humane Society of the United States, Wild Fish Conservancy and two citizens filed suit in U.S. District Court in Portland to halt the authorized killing of sea lions at the base of Bonneville Dam. The conservationists argue that the National Marine Fisheries Service was wrong in ruling last week that some sea lions can be shot if they won’t stop eating salmon that congregate below the dam. The lawsuit alleges the fisheries service has failed to show the hungry sea lions have a significant impact on salmon runs. But Congressmen Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, and Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, both said the killing is necessary to save salmon runs. They spoke in favor of plans to shoot as many as 85 sea lions annually, killing only those animals that can’t be driven away from the rich feeding waters. The fisheries service order encourages trapping the animals if possible and relocating them to sea parks, aquariums or similar facilities. Those that can’t be stopped in any other way would be destroyed....
Inspectors didn't catch cattle abuse in California The undercover videos were bad enough: packing-plant workers abusing sick or disabled cattle and dragging at least one of the cows to be slaughtered, a violation of federal food-safety standards. But consumer advocates say what's also disturbing is what happened within days of that video being shot at a California slaughterhouse. Independent inspectors from two auditing firms visited the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. plant and gave it glowing marks. Companies from McDonald's to Wal-Mart are increasingly relying on similar third-party inspections to assure the public that the meat, produce and other food they are eating was properly raised and processed. But the misleading reports from the Westland/Hallmark plant are prompting questions about how meaningful these audits really are. The Humane Society of the United States, whose undercover investigator shot the video that led to the largest beef recall in U.S. history, said Westland/Hallmark coached workers on safe-handling practices a day before one auditor visited the plant....
Worker Sentenced in Slaughterhouse Abuse A man caught on video dragging sick cows and shocking them at a Southern California slaughterhouse has been sentenced to six months in jail. Rafael Sanchez Herrera, 34, pleaded guilty Friday in San Bernardino Superior Court to three misdemeanor counts of illegal movement of a non-ambulatory animal. The undercover video shot by the Humane Society of the United States led to a federal investigation that spurred the largest beef recall in U.S. History on Feb 17. The video shows workers at the Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. dragging sick cows with metal chains and forklifts, shocking them with electric prods and shooting streams of water in their noses and faces. Downer cattle have been largely barred from the food supply since a mad cow disease scare in 2003. The cows pose a higher risk of disease, partly because they often wallow in feces. Under the plea deal, Herrera will be deported to his native Mexico after serving jail time. Prosecutors had said a conviction could have put him in jail for three years. Herrera was sentenced a day after his former supervisor, Daniel Ugarte Navarro, pleaded not guilty to five felony counts and three misdemeanor counts of animal abuse.
Senators Wary of USDA Move to Ease Ban on Beef Imports From Argentina A pending Agriculture Department rule that would open U.S. markets to some Argentine beef imports is forcing prairie state lawmakers to juggle their support for free trade with their advocacy of American ranchers. The department is preparing to declare southern Patagonia free of foot and mouth disease, which would exempt beef produced in that region from a blanket ban on imports of beef from Argentina. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus , D-Mont., joined three Democratic colleagues in expressing their concern about lifting the prohibition on beef from Patagonia. However, the senators are not currently planning legislation to bar meat imports from the region, aides said. Foot and mouth disease “is highly contagious, and an outbreak of this disease in the United States would be economically devastating for U.S. cattle and sheep producers,” the senators said in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer . “Any decision to allow regional access to U.S. markets in countries with a history of [the disease] must be carefully scrutinized.” The proposed rule highlights the dilemma facing ranching state lawmakers, who want to protect U.S. markets for domestic producers while opening foreign markets for U.S. exports....
Cattle Brands: XIT In 1879, The Seventeenth Texas Legislature made a deal with Charles B. and John V. Farwell agreed to build a new $3,000,000.00 Texas State Capitol and accept the 3,000,000 acres of Panhandle land in payment. Destruction of the old capitol building by fire on November 9, 1881, made construction of the new building urgent. The first herd of 2,500 head arrived at Buffalo Springs on July 1, 1885.. They had been driven from the Fort Concho area by Abner P. Blocker,qv who reportedly devised the XIT brand with his boot in the dust when Campbell, the general manager, sought a design that could not be changed easily. Although legend persists that the brand signified "ten in Texas" since the land covered all or portions of Dallam, Hartley, Oldham, Deaf Smith, Parmer, Castro, Bailey, Lamb, Cochran, and Hockley counties, that theory is doubtful; some speculate that it really meant "biggest in Texas." At any rate, Joe Collins, who brought in the second herd, served briefly as range foreman but was shortly afterward replaced by Berry Nations. Within the next year 781 miles of XIT range was fenced, and by November 1886 some 110,721 cattle valued at $1,322,587 had been purchased. After 1887 large-scale buying ceased, and the herd as carried averaged 150,000 head....
It's All Trew: Mail delivery often creative Time and again the first hints of a new town or settlement came when someone applied for a name for a post office. Tascosa, Mobeetie and many other early settlements had to submit name changes before being accepted as a site. Mail has been around a long time. Before post offices, mail made its way to a final destination carried by travelers, freighters, cowboys and mail hacks. Instead of mail boxes, there were mail drops left in canvas sacks often tied to a fence post. For example in 1905, near Quail a post office named Marilla was established in the dugout home of Lee Pierce. For eight years, Henry and Sarah Jones carried the mail back and forth to Quail three days each week. At first, Sarah rode side saddle with the canvas sack tied to her saddle. After starting a family, she drove a horse and buggy taking her babies along. Her duties included opening and closing seven barbed wire gates while checking on fourteen canvas sacks hanging on ranch fence posts. After reaching the Quail post office, she posted outgoing mail and sorted incoming mail in preparation for the return trip home. Many times patrons left lists of items needed at home that she purchased and delivered on her return. Salaries for post masters at the time were not great. Remote post masters were often paid a percentage of stamps and paper items sold to the public. Records show the Eldridge Post Office in Gray County paid its post master $1.03 for a 60-day period. Of interest, he only had six hen nests for post office boxes and a galvanized wash tub for general delivery, while housed in a surplus military tent....

Since '01, Guarding Species Is Harder With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws. The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection. Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines. As a result, listings plummeted. During Bush's more than seven years as president, his administration has placed 59 domestic species on the endangered list, almost the exact number that his father listed during each of his four years in office. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago. In a sign of how contentious the issue has become, the advocacy group WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking a court order to protect 681 Western species all at once, on the grounds that further delay would violate the law. Among the species cited are tiny snails, vibrant butterflies, and a wide assortment of plants and other creatures....
Warming models baffled by a cooling ocean National Public Radio has an interesting report on global warming and the oceans...A few years ago scientists put 3,000 “robots” into the oceans of the world, which are all part of the Argos System to monitor world climate patterns. NPR says that “Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.” They go on: In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans. Got that? Since 2003 there has been no discernible warming of the oceans which defies the theories. In fact, Willis says: “There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant.” Of course when all your models tell you that there ought to be warming and you get “very slight cooling” that in itself is significant. Certainly, it is troubling. Oddly, while Willis tells NPR the cooling was "not anything really significant" the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said otherwise. "The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has cooled significantly since 2003." Two years ago Willis was dismissing the cooling as just "natural variability" implying that this would end very soon. But another two years have gone by and the data still shows a cooling trend. Even more oddly, a pdf of a paper prepared by Willis and others for Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33 says: "A new estimate of sampling error in the heat content record suggests that both the recent and previous global cooling events are significant and unlikely to be artifacts of inadequate ocean sampling." They wrote: "The decrease [in ocean temperature] represents a signficant loss of heat over a 2-year period amounting to one-fifth of the long-term upper-ocean heat gain between 1955 and 2003..." They emphasized "the cooling event is real". They also argued this heat probably is not being stored anywhere on earth but "could be the result of a net loss of heat from the Earth to space."....
Anger Over Culling of Yellowstone’s Bison This was not the Yellowstone National Park that tourists see. At first light on Tuesday, at the end of a closed road, past a boneyard of junk cars, trailers and old cabins, more than 60 of the park’s wild bison were being loaded on a semi-trailer to be shipped to a slaughterhouse. With heavy snow still covering the park’s vast grasslands, hundreds of bison have been leaving Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations. A record number of the migrating animals — 1,195, or about a quarter of the park’s population — have been killed by hunters or rounded up and sent to slaughterhouses by park employees. The bison are being killed because they have ventured outside the park into Montana and some might carry a disease called brucellosis, which can be passed along to cattle. The large-scale culling, which is expected to continue through April, has outraged groups working to preserve the park’s bison herds, considered by scientists to be the largest genetically pure population in the country. It has also led to an angry exchange between Montana state officials and the federal government over a stalled agreement to create a haven for the bison that has not received the needed federal financing....
Beaver Deceiver expert coming to Pitkin County Pitkin County is calling in a ringer to help solve the beaver problem along Brush Creek near the town of Snowmass Village. Beavers are cutting off water flowing to a historic agricultural ditch running through some 232 acres of county open space along Brush Creek. For years, and still in many parts of the state, the solution to beaver problems was violent: either killing off beavers or destroying their dams. But county officials said they’re are looking for better, long-term solutions. Enter Skip Lisle, owner of Beaver Deceivers International based in Grafton, Vt. The trick — and the goal of county officials — is to protect the beavers and their created wetlands as well as keep water flowing to agricultural ditches. That’s where “beaver deceiving” comes in, Lisle said. Beavers are “hard-wired” to react and dam up any flowing water, whether in a narrow culvert or an open field, Lisle said. He installs what he called a “flow device,” which essentially sneaks water around beaver dams. In narrow culverts, a common spot for human/beaver confrontation, Lisle installs a fencing system that keeps beavers away from the flowing water. In open fields, such as the area along Brush Creek, Lisle installs a pipe system that draws water from far upstream of a beaver dam and releases the water below, essentially fooling the beavers and limiting their dam building....
Bighorns facing smaller habitat Today, about 800 bighorns roam the arid backcountry from the U.S.-Mexico border to the San Jacinto Mountains. Peninsular bighorn sheep also live in Baja California, but they are not included in the population classified as endangered by the U.S. government. In the spring, visitors to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park can sometimes spot lambs nimbly trailing their mothers across rocky outcroppings in search of water. But the sheep's recent run of good fortune may be about to end, according to some advocates for bighorn recovery. They are concerned that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed trimming protected sheep habitat by more than 50 percent, from 844,897 acres to 384,410. In October, Fish and Wildlife Service officials said their 2001 map of the lands considered essential to Peninsular bighorn recovery – classified as “critical habitat” – grossly overstated the core area. They said their current proposal is based on a revised method for identifying the territory needed for the protection of bighorn sheep. For instance, the agency excluded high-elevation and densely forested areas because federal officials said bighorns typically do not live there....
Cruelty charges weighed in hunters' killing of 32 bison Charges of aggravated cruelty to animals are being considered in the killing of 32 bison near Hartsel. Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said Friday that his office has determined the bison were owned by ranchers Monte and Tracy Downare and had wandered off their property. Last week, a group of hunters, who believed they had permission, began shooting and killing the animals. Several of the dead bison were found on the Hawn Ranch, near the Downares' ranch but not adjacent. Authorities have not located or spoken with the owner and caretaker of Hawn Ranch. Wegener said the bison were shot on the Hawn Ranch, other private property and Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands. Aggravated cruelty to animals is a Class 6 felony and is being looked at because of the way the carcasses were abandoned, the sheriff said....
U.S. shelters saddled with unwanted horses The forced closure of the last horse-killing facilities in the USA, done at the urging of animal rights activists, has caused a herd of unwanted horses in animal shelters nationwide, according to breeders, ranchers and horse rescuers. The surplus threatens to worsen if Congress passes a bill to ban the selling of unwanted horses to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. "It used to be I could take a horse that is unbreedable, untrainable, injured or unwanted and sell it for anywhere between $200 to $700," says Sheila Harmon, who has bred Arabian horses in Eagle, Idaho, for 28 years. "Now I have to pay a euthanasia fee to a veterinarian and a disposal fee to have the animal taken away." A ban on selling animals to a meat processor will "drive another nail in the coffin" of her business, Harmon says. Animal activists and some horse lovers say that's regrettable but that the issue is a moral one, not economic. Horses are pets, not an entree, says Julie Caramante of Habitat for Horses, a large horse rescue operation south of Houston.
Taking on the Western States Endurance Run Each year, on the last weekend in June, the world's toughest endurance runners gather in the former Olympic Village of Squaw Valley. Over the next 24 hours, they race each other over 100 miles of the historic Western States trail, through some of the most rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada. They climb more than 18,000 feet, and descend more than 23,000 feet while traversing deep canyons and high ridgelines before reaching the finish line in Auburn. It is one of the most grueling physical and psychological challenges many of them will ever face. If running 100 miles over unforgiving terrain through frequently ferocious weather conditions sounds crazy to you, rest assured that you're not alone. In fact, the contest was originally designed not for people, but for horses. Western States started out as the Tevis Cup, which originated when a bunch of old-time California cowboys decided to compare the toughness of their horses to legendary steeds from the days of the Pony Express. Riders who covered the 100-mile trail in a single day and night were awarded a silver belt buckle to recognize their accomplishment. For the first two decades of the Tevis Cup, the thought of anyone travelling the 100-mile trail on foot was inconceivable. Then in 1974, a 27-year-old cowboy named Gordy Ainsleigh learned that his horse was suffering from foot problems and was too lame to attempt the ride. Ainsleigh was a bit of a maverick — so instead of dropping out of the ride, he laced up his running shoes and lined up alongside nearly 200 horses to take on the trail singlehandedly. He not only finished the course, but did so faster than the 24-hour cutoff, earning a silver buckle. With Ainsleigh's effort, the 100-mile trail race was born....
Tulsa filmmaker captures the tales of the Tall grass Prairie There’s no way Ken Greenwood could have imagined that a reunion of cowboys who worked the Barnard Ranch would lead to an award-winning documentary years later. But it did. Greenwood recently received a Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum for his work on “Cowboys in Tall Grass.” He also received an Oklahoma Heritage Distinguished Service Award. “As a kid in the radio business I did some sensational things and no one said a thing. Now, to get all this, I don’t know how to handle it,” he said. The six-part documentary looks at Oklahoma’s rich Western heritage and some of its prominent figures. When the conservancy purchased the Barnard Ranch for inclusion in the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, many of the locals were opposed. So Greenwood helped set up a reunion of the cowboys who had worked the ranch and interviews with several of them were filmed. Years later, he salvaged what he could from those tapes and started his adventure of what would become “Cowboys in Tall Grass.”....
The fingerprint of a lonely profession A few hundred footsteps separate a two-track methane road in the Wyoming prairie and a stone obelisk that is a few feet taller than a grown man and twice as wide. But it seems a million steps away from the lonely lifestyle of a group of men whose boredom made them the first architects in the region. Creeping its toes to the edge of the sandstone altar stands what one Gillette man calls the “world’s greatest” sheepherder’s monument. The solitary figure’s only company, like the sheepherder who constructed it, is the wind that howls through its crevices in a pitch that resembles the faint cries of a man alone in the distance. Suppositions about the purpose for the meticulously assembled Rubik’s Cubes of stone that are spread across the region are as varied as the people who see them. Some say they are navigational markers. Others say they are predator deterrents. All suppose that boredom had much to do with it. Some monuments, like the “world’s greatest” that stands atop an altar of sandstone on the Gates-Yonkee Ranch, have more history than others — or at least their history has not yet passed with its owners. The massive pile of flat stones is a puzzle itself — not only in its almost snap-together design but in the rock itself. The gray stones coated with orange lichen bear no resemblance to the rocks scattered around its pedestal. Riss speculates that a lonely sheepherder constructed the structure carrying the stones one at time from distant hills. The solitary sentinel, which clings to its perch high above the grassy draw below, existed before the first homesteader claimed the land. It is an artifact from a time before people laid claim to the hills it lords over....
The mighty Warrior, who led one of history's last-ever cavalry charges One of the last great cavalry charges took place 90 years ago at Moreuil Wood. Brough Scott, whose grandfather led the field, tells the story of the special horse who fearlessly carried the general into battle. Warrior was ready. It was 9.30 on the morning of March 30, Holy Saturday, 1918. He had somehow survived four years of shell and bullet and privation, and Passchendaele, but now, in the little hamlet of Castel, not 10 miles south-west of Amiens, the horse faced his most dangerous mission of all. He would lead one of the last great cavalry charges in history - at Moreuil Wood, on the banks of the Avre river in France. Victory would not only secure the river bank, it would help stem the German Spring Offensive of 1918. Behind Warrior were the 1,000 horses of the Canadian Cavalry. If ever an animal was a symbol of indomitability for weary soldiers to follow, it was this short-legged, wide-eyed, star-foreheaded, independent-spirited but kindly gelding who, in January 1918 had been immortalised in the first of the portraits painted by Alfred Munnings as war artist to the Canadian Cavalry. Warrior was a survivor. In September 1914, his groom Jack Thompson had to gallop him 10 miles across country to escape encirclement by the advancing enemy. In 1915, a shell cut the horse beside Warrior clean in half, and a few days later another destroyed his stable, seconds after he had left it. On July 1, 1916, that fateful first day of the Somme, he and the Canadians were readied to gallop through a gap in the enemy line that never came. In 1917, only frantic digging extricated him from mud in Passchendaele, and only three days before March 30, 1918, a direct hit on the ruined villa in which he was housed left him trapped beneath a shattered beam. Yes, a survivor: but could he survive Moreuil Wood?....
Hundreds of bottles of booze with a bite seized in Palo Pinto Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents seized 411 bottles of illegal hooch Thursday at Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch in Palo Pinto County. But it wasn't your typical variety of moonshine: the bottles of vodka also contained 10-inch rattlesnakes. "In my 20 years with the TABC, I've never seen anything like it," Sgt. Charlie Cloud said Friday. TABC officials said they plan to file charges next week for the sale of alcohol without a permit and possession of alcohol with the intent to sell. Penalties for those charges include up to a year in the county jail and fines up to $1,000 upon conviction. There was no evidence that Popplewell was shipping the snake-infused alcohol from his business but Cloud said the investigation is ongoing. TABC officials said alcohol containing snakes or scorpions is popular in Asian cultures. An Internet search found operations selling Thai scorpion vodka, cobra whiskey, giant centipede whiskey, herbal gecko lizard wine and Mekong River eel wine....
Hospital bridles at horse in lift A Hawaiian hospital has restated its rules on pets after a man took a horse up in a lift in a bid to cheer up a sick relative with his favourite steed. Man and beast were stopped by security guards only after reaching the third floor, after apparently passing through the lobby unchallenged. The patient was allowed to see them but it turned out to be the wrong horse. A hospital spokeswoman said there was a visitation policy for dogs and cats, but not for horses. "We just hope people understand this is not a place for a horse," said Lani Yukimura at Wilcox Memorial Hospital. "It's a very dangerous thing. Our greatest concern is patient care." Security managed to remove the visitor and the horse with "just a few scuff marks", she added....