GAO
Highways and Environment: Transportation Agencies Are Acting to Involve Others in Planning and Environmental Decisions. GAO-08-512R, April 25.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-512R
Friday, April 25, 2008
Do mountain bison still roam Yellowstone? The National Park Service needs to investigate whether a subspecies of bison might still roam Yellowstone National Park, a former park ranger said. Bob Jackson, a critic of the Park Service and former Yellowstone ranger, says mountain bison lived on the high-elevation Mirror Plateau south of Lamar Valley for thousands of years before the plains bison were reintroduced to the park. Though the bison have likely interbred, he said, the Mirror Plateau bison likely retained much of their genetic heritage and their “culture,” which has enabled them to survive for thousands of years without leaving the park. “This is an animal that doesn’t go outside of Yellowstone because they are so wary,” Jackson said of the mountain bison. The mountain herd numbers roughly 300 animals and spends winters in Yellowstone, he said. But outfitter camps set up in and around the area where the bison roam could be disturbing the herd, he said. Jackson, who is a private bison rancher, said Yellowstone biologists need to step up their research on the Mirror Plateau to ensure the mountain bison’s long-term viability. Further, he said wildlife managers need to give the herd access to more backcountry areas. Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash said recent reviews of scientific literature suggest that there is no difference between the Mirror Plateau bison and reintroduced bison....
Neighbor county OKs drilling ban The Rio Arriba County Commissioners unanimously passed an amended moratorium on new oil and gas drilling within their county, approving a four-month ban while it continues to study environmental concerns. Local oil and gas producers say the move by San Juan County's eastern neighbors will limit new orders for area energy production and will affect local jobs. The four-month ban exempts municipal and American Indian lands. It allows Rio Arriba County to assert its authority over federal and state lands unless it is pre-empted by the federal or state governments. The ban originally was written for a six-month period. Approach Resources, the Fort Worth, Texas-based company that wants to drill test wells for oil east of Tierra Amarilla, sent a letter to county commissioners that stopped shy of saying the company would sue if the moratorium passed, according to Gobernador rancher Don Schreiber. "They didn't say they would sue, they said everything but sue,' but the threat was imminent," Schreiber said. He calls the commissioners' action, "A fabulous victory for oil and gas responsibility in the nation."....
Sheep aid in fire prevention Hundreds of sheep are once again helping prepare Carson City for the summer fire season, Assistant Open Space Manager Anne Bollinger said this week. Beginning in early April, two bands of about 1,000 animals each were released on C Hill and in the Timberline area and encouraged to graze on flammable cheat grass to their hearts’ content. The project, a joint effort of the city, the United States Forest Service and other agencies, is cheaper, safer and easier than other fuel reduction methods, Bollinger said. “Due to the slopes in the mountains, you simply can’t bring a mower in,” she said. “All the sheep need is water.” As in previous years, rancher Ted Borda provided the animals at almost no cost to the city. All told, Carson pays just $5,000 for the sheep’s services, most of which goes toward transporting the creatures. The sheep will remain in the area until mid-May, at which point workers will herd them across town and on to their summer grounds, Bollinger said.
Wyo Range environmental study should start over Gov. Dave Freudenthal was right to protest a Denver energy company's influence over proposed oil and gas leasing in the Wyoming Range. The U.S. Forest Service has breached the public's trust and should start the process over. In his letter to the Forest Service, the governor exposed the unbelievable control Stanley Energy has had over an environmental study of leasing in the Big Piney Ranger District in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The company is the high bidder for some of the leases in question in a 44,720-acre area of the district, but it's important to remember that leasing has not been authorized. Despite that procedural omission, Stanley has been allowed to guide and fund planning and studies for the proposed leasing. The Forest Service even let the company recommend a consultant for the environmental study, though the agency ultimately chose a different one. A memorandum of understanding between the Forest Service and Stanley aptly demonstrates the too-cozy relationship. The document protects oral and written communication between the two parties from disclosure "to preserve the integrity of the deliberative process." Freudenthal correctly noted, "In my mind, the integrity of a deliberative process is best safe guarded by transparency rather than secrecy." The memorandum offered Stanley the opportunity to review public comments and offer input on them while the study was being written. The Forest Service would be obligated to "accept and utilize information" submitted by the company. The Forest Service has proposed lifting the current suspension of earlier leases, and issuing leases that were sold but not issued in 2006. "It could be suggested that Stanley has purchased a favorable outcome," Freudenthal told the feds....
The Eagle Cam: A new reality show in your National Forest There is a life and death struggle going on right now in the snowy Cascades of your Deschutes National Forest. Eagles are battling the cold to protect their precious eggs. Will they succeed? Will they survive? Live streaming video of bald eagles in the wild is now available via a website from the Forest Service at http://www.fs.fed.us/outdoors/naturewatch/eaglecam.html. In the fall of 2003 two video cameras were placed near the nest by Phil Allen and Tim Brown (Installation Contractors) under the direction of Don Virgovic, the National Naturewatch Program Leader for the Forest Service, and Joan Kittrell, Crescent Ranger District Wildlife Biologist. After several years of technical difficulties the camera and the birds are finally cooperating. The purpose of this cooperative project is to bring live video of wild eagles and wild salmon onto the World Wide Web and to the Oregon Zoo's Great Northwest Exhibit where the same species are kept in captivity....
Court sides with Forest Service in Bitterroot backfire case An appeals court panel stood behind U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy's ruling that the U.S. Forest Service firefighters can not be sued for negligence for setting a backfire in the Bitterroot Valley in 2000. 100 Bitterroot Valley residents filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service for violating policy when they lit the backfire. Residents claimed firefighters were negligent and burned dozens of homes and cost $54 million in damages. Judge Molloy ruled the firefighters have immunity and exercised discretion....There's that immunity again.
BLM issues proposals The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has issued its list for the latest round of proposed land conservation purchases and public land projects under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. The federal law allows the sale of federally owned land around Las Vegas, with part of the proceeds being used to buy environmentally sensitive parcels elsewhere in the state, as well as for upgrades to parks and other public land amenities. More than 40 projects are proposed totaling more than $80.25 million. Two proposed conservation acquisitions are in Douglas County, including 350 acres of Nevada's oldest ranch near Genoa. Known as Ranch No. 1, the property is located along Genoa's eastern boundary, and the recommendation is for nearly $5.2 million. The former Trimmer Ranch is owned and operated under the Ranch No. 1 Limited Partnership. It was the first ranch established after Genoa was settled in 1851. Under the program, property owners would continue to use the land for livestock grazing and hay farming, but all nonagricultural commercial, industrial, mining and residential development rights would be purchased by the BLM. The easement would tie the water rights to the land and prior approval would be required to modify vegetation near the river and creeks....
Lawsuit: Cedar City prairie dogs endangered by golf course relocation bid A colony of Utah prairie dogs living on a Cedar City golf course could be wiped out if a federal wildlife agency insists of relocating them to other habitats, conservationists say in a lawsuit. Under a plan crafted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, prairie dog trapping is set to resume at the Cedar Ridge public golf course on July 1. Captured animals would be taken to U.S. Forest Service land. But previous relocation experience shows all but a few of the animals would die, said Nicole Rosmarino of New Mexico-based WildEarth Guardians, formerly called Forest Guardians. "They should be protected where they are. As it stands, it is little more than an extermination program. Forest Guardians, the Utah Environmental Congress, the Center for Native Ecosystems and naturalist-author Terry Tempest Williams on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City seeking a court order to stop the prairie dog management plan. The conservationists filed a similar lawsuit in October, but the case is moving too slowly through the court to avert this summer's trapping season, Rosmarino said....
State agents begin trapping sea lions at Bonneville Dam; judge bars killing The on-again, off-again permission for Oregon and Washington officials to kill salmon-gobbling sea lions below Bonneville Dam is off again, courtesy of a federal appeals court injunction issued Wednesday. But the appeals court said state officials could capture problem sea lions and ship them to zoos. On Thursday, state agents began the trapping effort. Oregon wildlife officials said two sea lions were captured at the dam Thursday morning. One was branded C-739, a sea lion whose hearty appetite was known to officials. The other was unbranded and will get a reprieve. It was to be taken downriver to Astoria, branded and released. The sea lions gather at Bonneville Dam to feast on salmon, including imperiled species, gathering to climb the dam's fish ladder. Frustrated fishermen and biologists fear the animals' appetite is cutting into billion-dollar efforts to restore Northwest salmon. Roughly 25 to 30 sea lions have stationed themselves at the dam, but as many as 60 - a new record - gathered there a few weeks ago, said Brian Gorman of the National Marine Fisheries Service. He said the sea lions eat a total of 50 to 100 adult chinook salmon a day....
Biodiversity claims will make you sick ‘Biodiversity loss — it will make you sick.” This is the latest claim from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, the huge environmental organization and supposed guardian of endangered species. According to an IUCN-sponsored book, Sustaining Life, the world stands to lose a whole range of undiscovered medicinal marvels because of fast-disappearing plant, fish and animal species: “The experts warn that we may lose many of the land and marine-based life forms of economic and medical interest before we can learn their secrets, or, in some cases, before we know they exist.” But hang on. According to the IUCN’s own figures, the annual rate of extinction of known species is around zero! Meanwhile claims of species loss of 40,000 a year, which are endlessly regurgitated, are based on ultra-pessimistic assumptions about the ongoing fate of undiscovered species. Obviously no medicinal benefits could have come from species that we don’t know. And to deliver a list of cures that might come from unknown species is disingenuous, especially if you are part of a scheme that is effectively holding up pharmaceutical research. The authors do provide one example: of the extinction of “gastric brooding frogs” which they claim “could have” led to new insights into the treatment of peptic ulcers. But if these frogs were only found in “undisturbed rain forests” in Australia in the 1980s, and had such potential value, why were they allowed to go extinct? The story sounds fishy, but not as fishy as the whole thesis of a “biotic holocaust” that allegedly endangers the future of medicinal discovery. In fact, the IUCN book is pure propaganda ahead of the massive meeting on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is due to bog down expensively in Bonn next month....
Hundreds of EPA scientists report political interference More than half of the scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who responded to a survey said they had experienced political interference in their work. The survey results show "an agency under siege from political pressures," said the Union of Concerned Scientists report, which was released Wednesday and sent to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. The online questionnaire was sent to 5,419 EPA scientists last summer; 1,586 replied, and of those, 889 reported that they had experienced at least one type of interference within the last five years. Such allegations are not new: During much of the Bush administration, there have been reports of the White House watering down documents on climate change, industry language inserted into EPA power-plant regulations and scientific advisory panels' conclusions about toxic chemicals going unheeded. She acknowledged that scientists who were frustrated or upset might have been more likely than those who were satisfied to respond to her organization's survey, but added: "Nearly 900 EPA scientists reported political interference in their scientific work. That's 900 too many."....Most long term observers will have noticed that science drifts to the left under Democrats and to the right under Republicans. The only difference is they don't seem to object to the leftward drift. The Union of Concerned Scientists is well known to be left-of-center. Did they do similar surveys under Clinton and Carter?
Environmental groups target Schaffer Bob Schaffer will find himself a target of a major campaign attack by five national environmental groups determined to elect his opponent, Mark Udall, to the U.S. Senate this fall. The League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Action, the Sierra Club, Environment America and Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund today announced a coordinated campaign focusing on three U.S. Senate races, in Colorado, New Hampshire and New Mexico. Benefiting will be Udall, a Democrat and current U.S. representative viewed by activists as a candidate with strong green credentials for his support of alternative energy. Schaffer, a Republican and former member of Congress from Colorado, will be tied to big energy companies based on previous votes and his work for an oil company after leaving Congress. Campaign planners said it was the same coalition of green organizations that spent more than $1.7 million in 2006 to defeat Rep. Richard Pombo of California, a Republican who spent much of his congressional career battling environmentalists, and the Endangered Species Act in particular. Pombo's lifetime LCV score was 7 percent, the groups said. Environmental organizers said they would also focus on electing Democrats Tom Udall in New Mexico and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire to the Senate....
Harrison Ford's 'green' wax Harrison Ford had his chest waxed to highlight the problem of deforestation. The Hollywood star - who is the Vice Chairman of environmental group Conservation International - underwent the hair removal treatment in a bid to shock people into going 'green'. Afterwards, the 65-year-old star reportedly remarked he felt "naked". The 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' actor was joined during his treatment by Spice Girl Mel B, who was reporting for US TV show 'Access Hollywood'. Harrison - who has worked with Conservation International for 15 years - was handed the Global Environmental Citizen Award in 2002 by Harvard University in recognition of his conservation campaigning. Speaking at the time, he said: "Our exploitation of the Earth has reached alarming proportions in the short time we've come to dominate the environment."....
Brazil Oil Finds May End Reliance on Middle East Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting Inc. said. Saudi Arabia's influence as the biggest oil exporter would wane if the fields are as big as advertised, and China and India would become dominant buyers of Persian Gulf oil, said Peter Zeihan, vice president of analysis at Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas. Zeihan's firm, which consults for companies and governments around the world, was described in a 2001 Barron's article as ``the shadow CIA.'' Brazil may be pumping ``several million'' barrels of crude daily by 2020, vaulting the nation into the ranks of the world's seven biggest producers, Zeihan said in a telephone interview. The U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf and adjacent waters would be reduced, leaving the region exposed to more conflict, he said....
Greenpeace founder now backs nuclear power Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power - a concept tied closely to the underground nuclear testing his former environmental group formed to oppose. The chemistry of the atmosphere is changing, and there is a high-enough risk that "true believers" like Al Gore are right that world economies need to wean themselves off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases, he said. "It's like buying fire insurance," Moore said. "We all own fire insurance even though there is a low risk we are going to get into an accident." The only viable solution is to build hundreds of nuclear power plants over the next century, Moore told the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. There isn't enough potential for wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal or other renewable energy sources, he said....
Century-old farmstead holds history, happiness for family Maggie Smart McCormick used to say, "Children, even if you have to eat dirt and go naked, don't ever sell this land." They didn't. Today, the Smart-McCormick House in northern Williamson County stands solidly on the 4-foot-thick limestone foundation laid by Bryce Miller Smart in 1853. Surrounded by nearly 1,100 acres of rolling countryside and shaded by huge oak trees, it is still a home to the family, including its patriarch, Charles McCormick, 89, who heeded his great-grandmother's plea. "We raised everything here from cotton and oats to corn and hay," McCormick said last week as he sat in the living room of the old homestead near Florence. "Every morning, my brother and I got up at 6 a.m. and milked the cows. Then, we'd eat a breakfast of sausage, eggs and biscuits with honey and head off for a mile-and-a-half walk to school." Completed just a few years before the start of the Civil War, the home's 18-inch-thick limestone walls provided ample insulation. Doors and windows were placed to catch the slightest breeze from every angle. The oak plank floor is so thick that even today, it barely creaks. Although the interior walls were stuccoed years ago, the original reddish-brown wood molding still frames doorways and windows. A few pieces of furniture still survive, including the carved, 5-foot-tall "hall rack" near the front door, where men of the family hung their sweat-stained Stetsons....
Neighbor county OKs drilling ban The Rio Arriba County Commissioners unanimously passed an amended moratorium on new oil and gas drilling within their county, approving a four-month ban while it continues to study environmental concerns. Local oil and gas producers say the move by San Juan County's eastern neighbors will limit new orders for area energy production and will affect local jobs. The four-month ban exempts municipal and American Indian lands. It allows Rio Arriba County to assert its authority over federal and state lands unless it is pre-empted by the federal or state governments. The ban originally was written for a six-month period. Approach Resources, the Fort Worth, Texas-based company that wants to drill test wells for oil east of Tierra Amarilla, sent a letter to county commissioners that stopped shy of saying the company would sue if the moratorium passed, according to Gobernador rancher Don Schreiber. "They didn't say they would sue, they said everything but sue,' but the threat was imminent," Schreiber said. He calls the commissioners' action, "A fabulous victory for oil and gas responsibility in the nation."....
Sheep aid in fire prevention Hundreds of sheep are once again helping prepare Carson City for the summer fire season, Assistant Open Space Manager Anne Bollinger said this week. Beginning in early April, two bands of about 1,000 animals each were released on C Hill and in the Timberline area and encouraged to graze on flammable cheat grass to their hearts’ content. The project, a joint effort of the city, the United States Forest Service and other agencies, is cheaper, safer and easier than other fuel reduction methods, Bollinger said. “Due to the slopes in the mountains, you simply can’t bring a mower in,” she said. “All the sheep need is water.” As in previous years, rancher Ted Borda provided the animals at almost no cost to the city. All told, Carson pays just $5,000 for the sheep’s services, most of which goes toward transporting the creatures. The sheep will remain in the area until mid-May, at which point workers will herd them across town and on to their summer grounds, Bollinger said.
Wyo Range environmental study should start over Gov. Dave Freudenthal was right to protest a Denver energy company's influence over proposed oil and gas leasing in the Wyoming Range. The U.S. Forest Service has breached the public's trust and should start the process over. In his letter to the Forest Service, the governor exposed the unbelievable control Stanley Energy has had over an environmental study of leasing in the Big Piney Ranger District in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The company is the high bidder for some of the leases in question in a 44,720-acre area of the district, but it's important to remember that leasing has not been authorized. Despite that procedural omission, Stanley has been allowed to guide and fund planning and studies for the proposed leasing. The Forest Service even let the company recommend a consultant for the environmental study, though the agency ultimately chose a different one. A memorandum of understanding between the Forest Service and Stanley aptly demonstrates the too-cozy relationship. The document protects oral and written communication between the two parties from disclosure "to preserve the integrity of the deliberative process." Freudenthal correctly noted, "In my mind, the integrity of a deliberative process is best safe guarded by transparency rather than secrecy." The memorandum offered Stanley the opportunity to review public comments and offer input on them while the study was being written. The Forest Service would be obligated to "accept and utilize information" submitted by the company. The Forest Service has proposed lifting the current suspension of earlier leases, and issuing leases that were sold but not issued in 2006. "It could be suggested that Stanley has purchased a favorable outcome," Freudenthal told the feds....
The Eagle Cam: A new reality show in your National Forest There is a life and death struggle going on right now in the snowy Cascades of your Deschutes National Forest. Eagles are battling the cold to protect their precious eggs. Will they succeed? Will they survive? Live streaming video of bald eagles in the wild is now available via a website from the Forest Service at http://www.fs.fed.us/outdoors/naturewatch/eaglecam.html. In the fall of 2003 two video cameras were placed near the nest by Phil Allen and Tim Brown (Installation Contractors) under the direction of Don Virgovic, the National Naturewatch Program Leader for the Forest Service, and Joan Kittrell, Crescent Ranger District Wildlife Biologist. After several years of technical difficulties the camera and the birds are finally cooperating. The purpose of this cooperative project is to bring live video of wild eagles and wild salmon onto the World Wide Web and to the Oregon Zoo's Great Northwest Exhibit where the same species are kept in captivity....
Court sides with Forest Service in Bitterroot backfire case An appeals court panel stood behind U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy's ruling that the U.S. Forest Service firefighters can not be sued for negligence for setting a backfire in the Bitterroot Valley in 2000. 100 Bitterroot Valley residents filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service for violating policy when they lit the backfire. Residents claimed firefighters were negligent and burned dozens of homes and cost $54 million in damages. Judge Molloy ruled the firefighters have immunity and exercised discretion....There's that immunity again.
BLM issues proposals The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has issued its list for the latest round of proposed land conservation purchases and public land projects under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. The federal law allows the sale of federally owned land around Las Vegas, with part of the proceeds being used to buy environmentally sensitive parcels elsewhere in the state, as well as for upgrades to parks and other public land amenities. More than 40 projects are proposed totaling more than $80.25 million. Two proposed conservation acquisitions are in Douglas County, including 350 acres of Nevada's oldest ranch near Genoa. Known as Ranch No. 1, the property is located along Genoa's eastern boundary, and the recommendation is for nearly $5.2 million. The former Trimmer Ranch is owned and operated under the Ranch No. 1 Limited Partnership. It was the first ranch established after Genoa was settled in 1851. Under the program, property owners would continue to use the land for livestock grazing and hay farming, but all nonagricultural commercial, industrial, mining and residential development rights would be purchased by the BLM. The easement would tie the water rights to the land and prior approval would be required to modify vegetation near the river and creeks....
Lawsuit: Cedar City prairie dogs endangered by golf course relocation bid A colony of Utah prairie dogs living on a Cedar City golf course could be wiped out if a federal wildlife agency insists of relocating them to other habitats, conservationists say in a lawsuit. Under a plan crafted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, prairie dog trapping is set to resume at the Cedar Ridge public golf course on July 1. Captured animals would be taken to U.S. Forest Service land. But previous relocation experience shows all but a few of the animals would die, said Nicole Rosmarino of New Mexico-based WildEarth Guardians, formerly called Forest Guardians. "They should be protected where they are. As it stands, it is little more than an extermination program. Forest Guardians, the Utah Environmental Congress, the Center for Native Ecosystems and naturalist-author Terry Tempest Williams on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City seeking a court order to stop the prairie dog management plan. The conservationists filed a similar lawsuit in October, but the case is moving too slowly through the court to avert this summer's trapping season, Rosmarino said....
State agents begin trapping sea lions at Bonneville Dam; judge bars killing The on-again, off-again permission for Oregon and Washington officials to kill salmon-gobbling sea lions below Bonneville Dam is off again, courtesy of a federal appeals court injunction issued Wednesday. But the appeals court said state officials could capture problem sea lions and ship them to zoos. On Thursday, state agents began the trapping effort. Oregon wildlife officials said two sea lions were captured at the dam Thursday morning. One was branded C-739, a sea lion whose hearty appetite was known to officials. The other was unbranded and will get a reprieve. It was to be taken downriver to Astoria, branded and released. The sea lions gather at Bonneville Dam to feast on salmon, including imperiled species, gathering to climb the dam's fish ladder. Frustrated fishermen and biologists fear the animals' appetite is cutting into billion-dollar efforts to restore Northwest salmon. Roughly 25 to 30 sea lions have stationed themselves at the dam, but as many as 60 - a new record - gathered there a few weeks ago, said Brian Gorman of the National Marine Fisheries Service. He said the sea lions eat a total of 50 to 100 adult chinook salmon a day....
Biodiversity claims will make you sick ‘Biodiversity loss — it will make you sick.” This is the latest claim from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, the huge environmental organization and supposed guardian of endangered species. According to an IUCN-sponsored book, Sustaining Life, the world stands to lose a whole range of undiscovered medicinal marvels because of fast-disappearing plant, fish and animal species: “The experts warn that we may lose many of the land and marine-based life forms of economic and medical interest before we can learn their secrets, or, in some cases, before we know they exist.” But hang on. According to the IUCN’s own figures, the annual rate of extinction of known species is around zero! Meanwhile claims of species loss of 40,000 a year, which are endlessly regurgitated, are based on ultra-pessimistic assumptions about the ongoing fate of undiscovered species. Obviously no medicinal benefits could have come from species that we don’t know. And to deliver a list of cures that might come from unknown species is disingenuous, especially if you are part of a scheme that is effectively holding up pharmaceutical research. The authors do provide one example: of the extinction of “gastric brooding frogs” which they claim “could have” led to new insights into the treatment of peptic ulcers. But if these frogs were only found in “undisturbed rain forests” in Australia in the 1980s, and had such potential value, why were they allowed to go extinct? The story sounds fishy, but not as fishy as the whole thesis of a “biotic holocaust” that allegedly endangers the future of medicinal discovery. In fact, the IUCN book is pure propaganda ahead of the massive meeting on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is due to bog down expensively in Bonn next month....
Hundreds of EPA scientists report political interference More than half of the scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who responded to a survey said they had experienced political interference in their work. The survey results show "an agency under siege from political pressures," said the Union of Concerned Scientists report, which was released Wednesday and sent to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. The online questionnaire was sent to 5,419 EPA scientists last summer; 1,586 replied, and of those, 889 reported that they had experienced at least one type of interference within the last five years. Such allegations are not new: During much of the Bush administration, there have been reports of the White House watering down documents on climate change, industry language inserted into EPA power-plant regulations and scientific advisory panels' conclusions about toxic chemicals going unheeded. She acknowledged that scientists who were frustrated or upset might have been more likely than those who were satisfied to respond to her organization's survey, but added: "Nearly 900 EPA scientists reported political interference in their scientific work. That's 900 too many."....Most long term observers will have noticed that science drifts to the left under Democrats and to the right under Republicans. The only difference is they don't seem to object to the leftward drift. The Union of Concerned Scientists is well known to be left-of-center. Did they do similar surveys under Clinton and Carter?
Environmental groups target Schaffer Bob Schaffer will find himself a target of a major campaign attack by five national environmental groups determined to elect his opponent, Mark Udall, to the U.S. Senate this fall. The League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Action, the Sierra Club, Environment America and Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund today announced a coordinated campaign focusing on three U.S. Senate races, in Colorado, New Hampshire and New Mexico. Benefiting will be Udall, a Democrat and current U.S. representative viewed by activists as a candidate with strong green credentials for his support of alternative energy. Schaffer, a Republican and former member of Congress from Colorado, will be tied to big energy companies based on previous votes and his work for an oil company after leaving Congress. Campaign planners said it was the same coalition of green organizations that spent more than $1.7 million in 2006 to defeat Rep. Richard Pombo of California, a Republican who spent much of his congressional career battling environmentalists, and the Endangered Species Act in particular. Pombo's lifetime LCV score was 7 percent, the groups said. Environmental organizers said they would also focus on electing Democrats Tom Udall in New Mexico and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire to the Senate....
Harrison Ford's 'green' wax Harrison Ford had his chest waxed to highlight the problem of deforestation. The Hollywood star - who is the Vice Chairman of environmental group Conservation International - underwent the hair removal treatment in a bid to shock people into going 'green'. Afterwards, the 65-year-old star reportedly remarked he felt "naked". The 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' actor was joined during his treatment by Spice Girl Mel B, who was reporting for US TV show 'Access Hollywood'. Harrison - who has worked with Conservation International for 15 years - was handed the Global Environmental Citizen Award in 2002 by Harvard University in recognition of his conservation campaigning. Speaking at the time, he said: "Our exploitation of the Earth has reached alarming proportions in the short time we've come to dominate the environment."....
Brazil Oil Finds May End Reliance on Middle East Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting Inc. said. Saudi Arabia's influence as the biggest oil exporter would wane if the fields are as big as advertised, and China and India would become dominant buyers of Persian Gulf oil, said Peter Zeihan, vice president of analysis at Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas. Zeihan's firm, which consults for companies and governments around the world, was described in a 2001 Barron's article as ``the shadow CIA.'' Brazil may be pumping ``several million'' barrels of crude daily by 2020, vaulting the nation into the ranks of the world's seven biggest producers, Zeihan said in a telephone interview. The U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf and adjacent waters would be reduced, leaving the region exposed to more conflict, he said....
Greenpeace founder now backs nuclear power Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power - a concept tied closely to the underground nuclear testing his former environmental group formed to oppose. The chemistry of the atmosphere is changing, and there is a high-enough risk that "true believers" like Al Gore are right that world economies need to wean themselves off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases, he said. "It's like buying fire insurance," Moore said. "We all own fire insurance even though there is a low risk we are going to get into an accident." The only viable solution is to build hundreds of nuclear power plants over the next century, Moore told the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. There isn't enough potential for wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal or other renewable energy sources, he said....
Century-old farmstead holds history, happiness for family Maggie Smart McCormick used to say, "Children, even if you have to eat dirt and go naked, don't ever sell this land." They didn't. Today, the Smart-McCormick House in northern Williamson County stands solidly on the 4-foot-thick limestone foundation laid by Bryce Miller Smart in 1853. Surrounded by nearly 1,100 acres of rolling countryside and shaded by huge oak trees, it is still a home to the family, including its patriarch, Charles McCormick, 89, who heeded his great-grandmother's plea. "We raised everything here from cotton and oats to corn and hay," McCormick said last week as he sat in the living room of the old homestead near Florence. "Every morning, my brother and I got up at 6 a.m. and milked the cows. Then, we'd eat a breakfast of sausage, eggs and biscuits with honey and head off for a mile-and-a-half walk to school." Completed just a few years before the start of the Civil War, the home's 18-inch-thick limestone walls provided ample insulation. Doors and windows were placed to catch the slightest breeze from every angle. The oak plank floor is so thick that even today, it barely creaks. Although the interior walls were stuccoed years ago, the original reddish-brown wood molding still frames doorways and windows. A few pieces of furniture still survive, including the carved, 5-foot-tall "hall rack" near the front door, where men of the family hung their sweat-stained Stetsons....
Thursday, April 24, 2008
States Should Establish Ombudsmen To Protect Private Property Rights Private property rights have become one of the more prominent public policy concerns at the state level in recent years in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo vs. New London decision. Kelo gave local governments a green light to seize private homes and businesses for the sole purpose of generating higher tax revenues through redevelopment. While on the surface, this decision appeared to be a significant defeat to advocates for stronger protection of private property rights, the national Kelo backlash prompted legislation, constitutional amendments, and/or ballot measures in over 40 states to restrict the use of eminent domain to varying degrees. Unfortunately, the Kelo variety of eminent domain abuse is just one of many different ways in which private property rights are routinely threatened by government action. Land use regulations, development restrictions, and exactions are just some of the other means through which property rights may be infringed upon. Hence, state legislators should consider complimentary, alternative approaches to safeguard the rights of private property owners. As the state of Utah has shown, the establishment of a state property rights ombudsman can be a powerful and effective means of protecting private property rights. In Utah, the property rights ombudsman (established in Utah Code Title 13, Chapter 43) is appointed to receive and investigate complaints made by individuals against government property rights abuses and to achieve equitable settlements. Craig Call, Utah's first such ombudsman explained in a 2004 speech that, "my job […] is to help property owners understand and protect their constitutional property rights […] and avoid unconstitutional taking of private property without just compensation and then resolve property rights issues fairly in accordance with existing law and without expensive and time consuming litigation." The ombudsman has several means available to try and resolve property rights disputes. The first and simplest is conciliation-calling local or state officials to discuss a potential dispute and trying to find an objective resolution. Next is mediation; the ombudsman can meet with the parties to assist them in evaluating relevant laws and facts to reach a consensus. The ombudsman can also provide an advisory legal opinion to resolve a dispute in accordance with prevailing law. Finally, the ombudsman has the discretion to order arbitration at the request of the property owner and require the government entity to participate. While the combination of these approaches may not prevent a property rights dispute from ending up in litigation, it provides several alternative methods of dispute resolution that have significantly diminished the likelihood of litigation and provided better outcomes for property owners (such as more favorable financial settlements in condemnation cases). And it is important to note that Utah's ombudsman is able to intervene in a wide variety of property rights and "takings" disputes-such as local land use issues involving exactions and regulatory takings-not just situations dealing narrowly with the use of eminent domain. In fact, some local ordinances with significant property rights implications have been modified or shelved altogether after intervention from the ombudsman's office....
Taking on the Army Opponents of the Army's planned expansion of the Pinon Canyon maneuver site opened a new front Wednesday, filing a lawsuit to stop construction of a military base that would be just half the size of Park Meadows Mall. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, keys off a plan for a 16-barrack base on the western edge of the existing training site, including a medical and dental clinic and battalion and brigade headquarters. Construction was to start this spring, in response to Fort Carson's expansion by 8,500 soldiers, according to the Army's environmental impact statement. Ultimately, the Army wants to expand the Pinon Canyon tank training area from its current 368 square miles to 1,000 square miles. The site is run by Fort Carson, located two hours to the north. The suit argues that the construction and bringing additional soldiers to the site are part of the larger expansion plan that includes tripling the land area of the military site. Therefore, the environmental impact statement must look at the entire plan, the filing says. The suit also demands that the new environmental impact statement look at alternative sites for the giant tank and aircraft training site the Army wants. The suit demands a halt to construction of the base until the Army does a full EIS on the expansion....
Everyone gets something in new wilderness bill Representatives of Idaho’s ranching and conservationist communities praised a bill Tuesday that would create a wilderness in southwest Idaho’s Owyhee canyonlands, while opening other lands to motorized recreation and grazing. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, introduced the bill, which comes after nearly a decade of debate over land-use in the rugged Owyhee region. The bill would create an 807-square-mile wilderness while opening up 300 square miles of previously off-limit areas to motorized recreation, livestock grazing and other activities. It also would provide ranchers with cash and federal land in exchange for giving up private land and giving up grazing rights on some public land, and it would offer federal protection to 316 miles of wild and scenic rivers in the Owyhees. Chad Gibson, speaking for the Owyhee Cattle Association, said the measure could end decades of debate over public lands use in the area. ‘‘This legislation clearly will not resolve all conflict but does offer a positive path forward,’’ said Gibson, a retired rangeland scientist and extension agent. Besides the wilderness and land swap, the bill would create a science review and research center to provide independent and peer-reviewed expertise on government decisions, Gibson said. Consensus-based land management agreements such as the Owyhee Initiative will slow development and allow the area to maintain its rugged Western heritage, he said....
Pine beetle outbreaks turn forests into carbon source An outbreak of mountain pine beetles in British Columbia is doing more than destroying millions of trees: By 2020, the beetles will have done so much damage that the forest is expected to release more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, according to new research. The study, led by Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service, estimates that over 21 years trees killed by the beetle outbreak could release 990 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — roughly equivalent to five years of emissions from Canada's transportation sector. The outbreak has affected about 33 million acres, or about 51,562 square miles, of lodgepole pines. Bark beetles also have killed huge swaths of pines in the western United States, including about 2,300 square miles of trees in Colorado. "When trees are killed, they no longer are able to take carbon from the atmosphere. Then when dead trees start to decompose, that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," Kurz said. That could exacerbate global warming that contributed to the outbreaks in the first place. Warmer temperatures have allowed beetles to survive farther north and at higher elevations....
Experts fear nation's waterways need rescuing—from us Federal agencies, states, tribes and concerned citizens are spending millions of dollars and thousands of hours on waterway restoration projects to reverse decades of poor management and combat the mounting threats of population and climate change. Nationally, there are more than 37,000 river restoration projects underway, costing more than $1 billion annually, according to a study released this month by Colorado College. The Bureau of Land Management has spent close to $15 million in the last couple of years on its Restore New Mexico program, which includes oilfield restoration as well as work on the rivers and streams that flow through BLM land. The U.S. Forest Service spent about $500,000 on watershed work in New Mexico and Arizona last year and plans to spend just as much this year, said Penny Luehring, watershed improvement program manager for the agency's southwest region. Just weeks ago, the agency and its partners finished planting willow trees along the Centerfire Creek in western New Mexico as part of a comprehensive plan that included removing cattle and building culverts for a road that crosses the creek....
Proposed oil, gas leases in southern Colorado net protests Proposed oil and gas leases on more than 140,000 acres in a national forest in southern Colorado, including roadless areas, generated several protests Wednesday. About 19,000 acres of the total 175,430 acres set for auction May 8 are on land classified as roadless under a 2001 ban on road-building in parts of national forests. Opposition to opening those lands to development and fears of harm to air and water quality and wildlife were cited in several of the challenges. Conservation groups note that the Rio Grande National Forest is the headwaters of the Rio Grande and fear that one accidental spill could affect an entire watershed. "My biggest concern is that I lived through the Summitville fiasco," said David Colville, whose family has ranched for four generations near Del Norte. "I want some really strict environmental controls if they do come in." The defunct Summitville gold mine, abandoned after its operators declared bankruptcy, was made a federal Superfund site in 1994. Toxic metals from the site killed all life in 17 miles of the Alamosa River system....
Ex-EPA Chief Is Ruled Not Liable for 9/11 Safety Claims Christine Todd Whitman, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, cannot be held liable for assuring residents near the burning detritus of the World Trade Center after the 2001 attacks that the air was safe to breathe, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Because Whitman did not intend to cause harm, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said, her message did not "shock the conscience" to the degree necessary to waive her immunity as a federal official. The residents, students and office workers say Whitman should be forced to pay damages to properly clean homes and schools and create a fund to monitor health. They are considering an appeal, their lawyer said. "These residents, workers and students continue to get sicker and sicker, and that's what makes this decision so tragic," said Joel Kupferman, co-counsel for the plaintiffs....Until the law is changed, you will play hell trying to make a federal "official" responsible for their actions.
Some Wild Donkeys Fitted with Reflective Collars Donkey fans are fitting a herd of wild burros with reflective collars in an attempt to reduce the number of creatures being hit on a busy road. About 50 burros live near Reche Canyon Road, 10 miles south of San Bernardino, Calif. The rural road connects the cities of Colton and Moreno Valley and has seen traffic increase in recent years, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The feral burros (small donkeys thought to have been introduced to the area at least 50 years ago) are part of a larger herd of 400 or so living nearby. Animal control officers said between 2003 and 2006, there were 37 accidents involving burros, with 17 of the animals killed. One woman died when her car hit a burro in 2005. To try to save the animals, a handful of residents including Kim Terry, 55, and Rhonda Leavitt, 50, are making reflective collars for the donkeys. Terry rounds the animals up. Using an old sewing machine, Rhonda makes the collars by stitching reflective tape to old belts. "They don't care what they look like," Leavitt said. "And the belts reflect like you wouldn't believe."....
The Environmentalists' Real Agenda Ideologies: Once in a while the truth accidentally tumbles out on global warming activists' real agenda. That's exactly what happened at the U.N., when Bolivia's leader called for ending capitalism to save the planet. Delivering the keynote address at the United Nations forum on Indigenous People on Monday, Bolivia's President Evo Morales told the adoring crowd that "if we want to save our planet earth, to save life, to save mankind, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system." Morales elaborated on that by calling for an end to "unbridled industrial development, extraction of natural resources, excessive consumption of goods and accumulation of waste." More conveniently, he also demanded that trillions of dollars from the West be diverted to places like Bolivia, "to repair the earth." Seldom has the environmentalist agenda to end the capitalist system been laid out so plainly. But in reality, it's capitalism — combined with the framework that enables it to flourish, like rule of law and property rights — that has lifted billions of people out of poverty and improved the environment. Contrary to Morales' assertions, the most capitalist countries are also the cleanest....
Paper Grocery Bags Require More Energy Than Plastic Bags Whole Foods Market won't offer plastic shopping bags at their stores after Earth Day this year. It is a savvy move for the upscale natural foods retailer, who estimates that by the end of the year the policy will have averted use of 100 million new plastic grocery bags at their 270 stores. It won't save the company any money-since the paper and multi-use bags that will replace plastic bags at their stores cost more to manufacture, stock and handle-but it is a savvy public relations move that will likely help to soothe the guilty environmental consciences of devoted Whole Foods shoppers who, like most Americans, believe paper bags are environmentally superior to plastic bags. Unfortunately, the reality is that paper isn't better than plastic. One hundred million new plastic grocery bags require the total energy equivalent of approximately 8300 barrels of oil for extraction of the raw materials, through manufacturing, transport, use and curbside collection of the bags. Of that, 30 percent is oil and 23 percent is natural gas actually used in the bag-the rest is fuel used along the way. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the same number of paper grocery bags use five times that much total energy. A paper grocery bag isn't just made out of trees. Manufacturing 100 million paper bags with one-third post-consumer recycled content requires petroleum energy inputs equivalent to approximately 15,100 barrels of oil plus additional inputs from other energy sources including hydroelectric power, nuclear energy and wood waste. Making sound environmental choices is hard, especially when the product is "free," like bags at most grocery stores. When the cashier rings up a purchase and bags it in a paper bag, the consumer doesn't see that it took at least a gallon of water to produce that bag (more than 20 times the amount used to make a plastic bag), that it weighed 10 times more on the delivery truck and took up seven times as much space as a plastic bag in transit to the store, and will ultimately result in between tens and hundreds of times more greenhouse gas emissions than a plastic bag....
See Gore, See Spot Napoleon's retreat from Moscow is a legendary military disaster. While historians and military buffs note the toll the Russian winter took on La Grande Armee, few if any appreciate the role solar activity, or the lack of it, played in one of the great military reversals in history. Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut, and who served as mission specialist on the Apollo 14 lunar mission, writes in the Down Under newspaper the Australian that "the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army from Moscow was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots." This is more than a historical footnote. The same pattern of solar activity that doomed Napoleon is occurring as we speak. The sun goes through a series of 11-year cycles in which sunspots fluctuate in both number and intensity, greatly influencing Earth's climate and weather. The end of each cycle is called a solar minimum, where sunspot activity is at a low point. Activity usually picks up after that as each new cycle begins. As Chapman notes, the most recent minimum occurred in March 2007. Sunspot activity should have increased shortly after that but sunspot activity has remained at a virtual standstill. If you log on to www.spaceweather.com, you will see a current picture of the sun from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) with but a single tiny sunspot, dubbed number 992. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this, according to Chapman, was during what was called the Dalton Minimum, a particularly cold period that lasted several decades starting in 1790. "Northern winters became ferocious," he says....
Anthrax kills 2 Minnesota cows, vaccinations urged The Minnesota Board of Animal Health confirmed on Tuesday that two cows on a Becker County farm in west central Minnesota died last week of anthrax, the first anthrax cases there in 2008. The herd was not vaccinated for anthrax this year. The herd will remain under quarantine for 30 days from the day the last death occurred from anthrax. Anthrax is a naturally occurring disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. All warm-blooded animals are susceptible to the disease but cattle, sheep, and goats are the most commonly affected species. In rare cases, humans can contract anthrax after handling or eating infected products. While anthrax cases so early in the year are unusual, the cows were on pasture in an area where cases had been detected in the past, according to the Board of Animal Health statement. Cases typically occur in areas where animals have previously died of anthrax. Anthrax is not spread by animal-to-animal contact....
Final feed rule made public The long-awaited final feed rule was made public this morning and it is scheduled to be published in Friday's edition of the Federal Register. The proposed rule was originally published Oct. 6, 2005. The final rule is now "on display" on the Food and Drug Administration's Web site. The rule will become effective one year from April 27. In an expansion of the 1997 feed rule, the updated version will cover fallen cattle, and it will prohibit the use of the entire carcass of cattle over 30 months of age unless the brain and spinal have been removed. The infective agents for BSE – bovine spongiform encephalopathy – are most prevalent in the brain and spinal cord tissues, scientists say. The new rule includes all cattle over 30 months "not inspected and passed for human consumption unless: 1) the cattle are shown to be less than 30 months of age, or 2) the brains and spinal cords were effectively removed or effectively excluded from animal feed use." Despite comments on the rule proposing it be broadened to include blood, FDA is not prohibiting the use of blood and blood products in animal feed "because we believe such a prohibition would do very little to reduce the risk of BSE transmission," the rule said....
Small Strongyles Developing Resistance to Ivermectin Researchers in Central Kentucky have suggested that small strongyles might be developing resistance to ivermectin (a commonly administered broad spectrum anti-parasitic drug). The scientists found that the number of parasite eggs in study horses' manure returned twice as quickly after treatment with ivermectin compared to when the drug was first marketed in the early 1980s. Previous studies have shown that small strongyles--a common intestinal parasite of horses--have developed a resistance to numerous drugs since the 1950s including phenothiazine, thiabendazole, pyrantel pamoate, and piperazine. Recent studies have also suggested that resistance to ivermectin and moxidectin was also developing. "The purpose of this study was to determine the current status of the efficacy of ivermectin against small strongyles in horses," explained Eugene Lyons, PhD, from the Gluck Equine Research Center in Kentucky. This study evaluated the activity of ivermectin by counting the number of strongyle eggs per gram of feces before and after treatment with ivermectin. All horses included in this study resided on a single farm located in Central Kentucky. "Our results showed that the fecal egg counts of small strongyles returned faster than expected--approximately twice as quickly," said Lyons. "This data suggests that a resistance to ivermectin is developing." This suspected ivermectin resistance has also been reported in other geographic areas, including countries outside of the United States....
Everyone gets something in new wilderness bill Representatives of Idaho’s ranching and conservationist communities praised a bill Tuesday that would create a wilderness in southwest Idaho’s Owyhee canyonlands, while opening other lands to motorized recreation and grazing. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, introduced the bill, which comes after nearly a decade of debate over land-use in the rugged Owyhee region. The bill would create an 807-square-mile wilderness while opening up 300 square miles of previously off-limit areas to motorized recreation, livestock grazing and other activities. It also would provide ranchers with cash and federal land in exchange for giving up private land and giving up grazing rights on some public land, and it would offer federal protection to 316 miles of wild and scenic rivers in the Owyhees. Chad Gibson, speaking for the Owyhee Cattle Association, said the measure could end decades of debate over public lands use in the area. ‘‘This legislation clearly will not resolve all conflict but does offer a positive path forward,’’ said Gibson, a retired rangeland scientist and extension agent. Besides the wilderness and land swap, the bill would create a science review and research center to provide independent and peer-reviewed expertise on government decisions, Gibson said. Consensus-based land management agreements such as the Owyhee Initiative will slow development and allow the area to maintain its rugged Western heritage, he said....
Pine beetle outbreaks turn forests into carbon source An outbreak of mountain pine beetles in British Columbia is doing more than destroying millions of trees: By 2020, the beetles will have done so much damage that the forest is expected to release more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, according to new research. The study, led by Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service, estimates that over 21 years trees killed by the beetle outbreak could release 990 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — roughly equivalent to five years of emissions from Canada's transportation sector. The outbreak has affected about 33 million acres, or about 51,562 square miles, of lodgepole pines. Bark beetles also have killed huge swaths of pines in the western United States, including about 2,300 square miles of trees in Colorado. "When trees are killed, they no longer are able to take carbon from the atmosphere. Then when dead trees start to decompose, that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," Kurz said. That could exacerbate global warming that contributed to the outbreaks in the first place. Warmer temperatures have allowed beetles to survive farther north and at higher elevations....
Experts fear nation's waterways need rescuing—from us Federal agencies, states, tribes and concerned citizens are spending millions of dollars and thousands of hours on waterway restoration projects to reverse decades of poor management and combat the mounting threats of population and climate change. Nationally, there are more than 37,000 river restoration projects underway, costing more than $1 billion annually, according to a study released this month by Colorado College. The Bureau of Land Management has spent close to $15 million in the last couple of years on its Restore New Mexico program, which includes oilfield restoration as well as work on the rivers and streams that flow through BLM land. The U.S. Forest Service spent about $500,000 on watershed work in New Mexico and Arizona last year and plans to spend just as much this year, said Penny Luehring, watershed improvement program manager for the agency's southwest region. Just weeks ago, the agency and its partners finished planting willow trees along the Centerfire Creek in western New Mexico as part of a comprehensive plan that included removing cattle and building culverts for a road that crosses the creek....
Proposed oil, gas leases in southern Colorado net protests Proposed oil and gas leases on more than 140,000 acres in a national forest in southern Colorado, including roadless areas, generated several protests Wednesday. About 19,000 acres of the total 175,430 acres set for auction May 8 are on land classified as roadless under a 2001 ban on road-building in parts of national forests. Opposition to opening those lands to development and fears of harm to air and water quality and wildlife were cited in several of the challenges. Conservation groups note that the Rio Grande National Forest is the headwaters of the Rio Grande and fear that one accidental spill could affect an entire watershed. "My biggest concern is that I lived through the Summitville fiasco," said David Colville, whose family has ranched for four generations near Del Norte. "I want some really strict environmental controls if they do come in." The defunct Summitville gold mine, abandoned after its operators declared bankruptcy, was made a federal Superfund site in 1994. Toxic metals from the site killed all life in 17 miles of the Alamosa River system....
Ex-EPA Chief Is Ruled Not Liable for 9/11 Safety Claims Christine Todd Whitman, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, cannot be held liable for assuring residents near the burning detritus of the World Trade Center after the 2001 attacks that the air was safe to breathe, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Because Whitman did not intend to cause harm, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said, her message did not "shock the conscience" to the degree necessary to waive her immunity as a federal official. The residents, students and office workers say Whitman should be forced to pay damages to properly clean homes and schools and create a fund to monitor health. They are considering an appeal, their lawyer said. "These residents, workers and students continue to get sicker and sicker, and that's what makes this decision so tragic," said Joel Kupferman, co-counsel for the plaintiffs....Until the law is changed, you will play hell trying to make a federal "official" responsible for their actions.
Some Wild Donkeys Fitted with Reflective Collars Donkey fans are fitting a herd of wild burros with reflective collars in an attempt to reduce the number of creatures being hit on a busy road. About 50 burros live near Reche Canyon Road, 10 miles south of San Bernardino, Calif. The rural road connects the cities of Colton and Moreno Valley and has seen traffic increase in recent years, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The feral burros (small donkeys thought to have been introduced to the area at least 50 years ago) are part of a larger herd of 400 or so living nearby. Animal control officers said between 2003 and 2006, there were 37 accidents involving burros, with 17 of the animals killed. One woman died when her car hit a burro in 2005. To try to save the animals, a handful of residents including Kim Terry, 55, and Rhonda Leavitt, 50, are making reflective collars for the donkeys. Terry rounds the animals up. Using an old sewing machine, Rhonda makes the collars by stitching reflective tape to old belts. "They don't care what they look like," Leavitt said. "And the belts reflect like you wouldn't believe."....
The Environmentalists' Real Agenda Ideologies: Once in a while the truth accidentally tumbles out on global warming activists' real agenda. That's exactly what happened at the U.N., when Bolivia's leader called for ending capitalism to save the planet. Delivering the keynote address at the United Nations forum on Indigenous People on Monday, Bolivia's President Evo Morales told the adoring crowd that "if we want to save our planet earth, to save life, to save mankind, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system." Morales elaborated on that by calling for an end to "unbridled industrial development, extraction of natural resources, excessive consumption of goods and accumulation of waste." More conveniently, he also demanded that trillions of dollars from the West be diverted to places like Bolivia, "to repair the earth." Seldom has the environmentalist agenda to end the capitalist system been laid out so plainly. But in reality, it's capitalism — combined with the framework that enables it to flourish, like rule of law and property rights — that has lifted billions of people out of poverty and improved the environment. Contrary to Morales' assertions, the most capitalist countries are also the cleanest....
Paper Grocery Bags Require More Energy Than Plastic Bags Whole Foods Market won't offer plastic shopping bags at their stores after Earth Day this year. It is a savvy move for the upscale natural foods retailer, who estimates that by the end of the year the policy will have averted use of 100 million new plastic grocery bags at their 270 stores. It won't save the company any money-since the paper and multi-use bags that will replace plastic bags at their stores cost more to manufacture, stock and handle-but it is a savvy public relations move that will likely help to soothe the guilty environmental consciences of devoted Whole Foods shoppers who, like most Americans, believe paper bags are environmentally superior to plastic bags. Unfortunately, the reality is that paper isn't better than plastic. One hundred million new plastic grocery bags require the total energy equivalent of approximately 8300 barrels of oil for extraction of the raw materials, through manufacturing, transport, use and curbside collection of the bags. Of that, 30 percent is oil and 23 percent is natural gas actually used in the bag-the rest is fuel used along the way. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the same number of paper grocery bags use five times that much total energy. A paper grocery bag isn't just made out of trees. Manufacturing 100 million paper bags with one-third post-consumer recycled content requires petroleum energy inputs equivalent to approximately 15,100 barrels of oil plus additional inputs from other energy sources including hydroelectric power, nuclear energy and wood waste. Making sound environmental choices is hard, especially when the product is "free," like bags at most grocery stores. When the cashier rings up a purchase and bags it in a paper bag, the consumer doesn't see that it took at least a gallon of water to produce that bag (more than 20 times the amount used to make a plastic bag), that it weighed 10 times more on the delivery truck and took up seven times as much space as a plastic bag in transit to the store, and will ultimately result in between tens and hundreds of times more greenhouse gas emissions than a plastic bag....
See Gore, See Spot Napoleon's retreat from Moscow is a legendary military disaster. While historians and military buffs note the toll the Russian winter took on La Grande Armee, few if any appreciate the role solar activity, or the lack of it, played in one of the great military reversals in history. Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut, and who served as mission specialist on the Apollo 14 lunar mission, writes in the Down Under newspaper the Australian that "the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army from Moscow was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots." This is more than a historical footnote. The same pattern of solar activity that doomed Napoleon is occurring as we speak. The sun goes through a series of 11-year cycles in which sunspots fluctuate in both number and intensity, greatly influencing Earth's climate and weather. The end of each cycle is called a solar minimum, where sunspot activity is at a low point. Activity usually picks up after that as each new cycle begins. As Chapman notes, the most recent minimum occurred in March 2007. Sunspot activity should have increased shortly after that but sunspot activity has remained at a virtual standstill. If you log on to www.spaceweather.com, you will see a current picture of the sun from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) with but a single tiny sunspot, dubbed number 992. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this, according to Chapman, was during what was called the Dalton Minimum, a particularly cold period that lasted several decades starting in 1790. "Northern winters became ferocious," he says....
Anthrax kills 2 Minnesota cows, vaccinations urged The Minnesota Board of Animal Health confirmed on Tuesday that two cows on a Becker County farm in west central Minnesota died last week of anthrax, the first anthrax cases there in 2008. The herd was not vaccinated for anthrax this year. The herd will remain under quarantine for 30 days from the day the last death occurred from anthrax. Anthrax is a naturally occurring disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. All warm-blooded animals are susceptible to the disease but cattle, sheep, and goats are the most commonly affected species. In rare cases, humans can contract anthrax after handling or eating infected products. While anthrax cases so early in the year are unusual, the cows were on pasture in an area where cases had been detected in the past, according to the Board of Animal Health statement. Cases typically occur in areas where animals have previously died of anthrax. Anthrax is not spread by animal-to-animal contact....
Final feed rule made public The long-awaited final feed rule was made public this morning and it is scheduled to be published in Friday's edition of the Federal Register. The proposed rule was originally published Oct. 6, 2005. The final rule is now "on display" on the Food and Drug Administration's Web site. The rule will become effective one year from April 27. In an expansion of the 1997 feed rule, the updated version will cover fallen cattle, and it will prohibit the use of the entire carcass of cattle over 30 months of age unless the brain and spinal have been removed. The infective agents for BSE – bovine spongiform encephalopathy – are most prevalent in the brain and spinal cord tissues, scientists say. The new rule includes all cattle over 30 months "not inspected and passed for human consumption unless: 1) the cattle are shown to be less than 30 months of age, or 2) the brains and spinal cords were effectively removed or effectively excluded from animal feed use." Despite comments on the rule proposing it be broadened to include blood, FDA is not prohibiting the use of blood and blood products in animal feed "because we believe such a prohibition would do very little to reduce the risk of BSE transmission," the rule said....
Small Strongyles Developing Resistance to Ivermectin Researchers in Central Kentucky have suggested that small strongyles might be developing resistance to ivermectin (a commonly administered broad spectrum anti-parasitic drug). The scientists found that the number of parasite eggs in study horses' manure returned twice as quickly after treatment with ivermectin compared to when the drug was first marketed in the early 1980s. Previous studies have shown that small strongyles--a common intestinal parasite of horses--have developed a resistance to numerous drugs since the 1950s including phenothiazine, thiabendazole, pyrantel pamoate, and piperazine. Recent studies have also suggested that resistance to ivermectin and moxidectin was also developing. "The purpose of this study was to determine the current status of the efficacy of ivermectin against small strongyles in horses," explained Eugene Lyons, PhD, from the Gluck Equine Research Center in Kentucky. This study evaluated the activity of ivermectin by counting the number of strongyle eggs per gram of feces before and after treatment with ivermectin. All horses included in this study resided on a single farm located in Central Kentucky. "Our results showed that the fecal egg counts of small strongyles returned faster than expected--approximately twice as quickly," said Lyons. "This data suggests that a resistance to ivermectin is developing." This suspected ivermectin resistance has also been reported in other geographic areas, including countries outside of the United States....
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Food For Thought In the 1830s, Richard Cobden and John Bright started a campaign against the protectionist laws that were keeping food prices high in Britain. After sustaining abuse for many years, they persuaded the government in 1846 to repeal the infamous Corn Laws, a move that helped usher in a long period of prosperity. I have been thinking intensely about these 19th-century heroes lately. The world needs a new Anti-Corn Law League, the movement they founded, if it wants to put a stop to the madness of escalating food prices and save millions of people, from Haiti to Bangladesh and from Cameroon to the Philippines, from starvation. Prices have increased steadily in the last three years, but matters really came to a crunch this year. Since January, the price of rice has gone up by 141 percent, while the price of wheat has almost doubled in one year. In a world in which the poor spend three-quarters of their budget on food, that means potentially a life-or-death situation for the 1 billion human beings who live on the equivalent of $1 dollar a day. When the price of something shoots up, one can infer that the supply is not keeping up with the demand. In the wake of today's food shock, many people have focused on the causes of the rise in the demand for food. All of them--from the growing wealth of China and India to the explosion of grain-derived biofuels in rich nations--sound very plausible. Less attention has been paid to why, in the era of globalization, in which products can move quickly from manufacture to market, and with the advances in biotechnology, the supply of food is not meeting the demand. Many governments, multilateral bodies, nongovernmental organizations and pundits are failing to answer that basic question. Instead, they postulate solutions that would either compound the problem or constitute at best a short-term palliative. The real solution will be the removal of the causes of the shortfall. Those causes have little to do with economics or demographics, and everything to do with the politics of governments and those who use governments to serve their interests--to the detriment of the general public. Few areas of the economy are more strewn with protectionist laws than agriculture--in rich and poor countries alike. A panoply of quotas, subsidies, tariffs and prohibitions designed to win votes and, essentially, bribes has discouraged the much-needed increase in food production. In normal free-market circumstances, the slightest signal that prices were going up would have been enough to ensure that masses of capital were invested in farming for food. In the current mess, it is not surprising that investors are not pouring money into food production: Farmers in Europe are paid to keep their land fallow because of a scheme called the Common Agricultural Policy; farmers in Argentina are being asked to give up 75 percent of their earnings through various taxes; farmers in the United States are more interested in feeding SUVs than in feeding people because the U.S. Congress has mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels; and farmers in Africa are not experimenting with genetically modified crops because they are banned in many of the countries to which they might be able to export them....
Rancher sues in bison slaughter The owner of 32 bison killed by gunmen in March has sued a Texas businessman and his Denver lawyer, claiming they hired the hunters who felled the animals. Bringing the suit in Park County District Court against Austin, Texas, businessman Jeff Hawn and his Denver lawyer, Stephen Csajaghy, is Monte Downare, a longtime Colorado rancher and well-known figure in Park County. The bison were killed over hundreds of acres of land in an area roughly 15 miles southeast of Hartsel. The killings triggered an extensive investigation by five state and local agencies. In a lawsuit filed just days before the bison were shot, Hawn, who identified himself as 50 percent shareholder and manager of Wateredge Properties, claimed that Downare's bison had repeatedly broken through fences erected to keep them off Wateredge property, damaging or destroying fences in 50 places. But in the counterclaim against Hawn and Csajaghy, Downare alleged that Csajaghy, Hawn and Wateredge conspired to "hire hunters to kill the buffalo" owned by the Downare family....
Gov. Bill Ritter signs river-protection bill into law Gov. Bill Ritter signed a law Monday designed to protect water-rights holders who donate water to help save fish. House Bill 1280 assures farmers and ranchers that they won't lose their water rights if they loan or lease water to the state's in-stream flow program. Courts calculate water rights based on historic use, and owners of water rights have worried that if they keep water in the river to protect fish, judges will declare they had abandoned their right. "Just think how backward that is," said Rep. Randy Fischer, D-Fort Collins, the bill's sponsor. The bill is part of a push by the Ritter administration to strengthen the state's 35-year-old in-stream flow program....
NM governor calls for surface water protection More than 5,300 miles of New Mexico's rivers and streams would gain special protection under the federal Clean Water Act as "outstanding waters" as part of a precedent-setting proposal being pushed by Gov. Bill Richardson. The plan marks the first time New Mexico has embarked on a such a broad effort to protect headwaters on national forest land and in roadless areas from degradation under the state's water quality standards and the Clean Water Act, officials said. The governor's office, environment officials and other groups have been talking about seeking such a statewide designation for some time, but Richardson decided to make the announcement Tuesday in honor of Earth Day. Rivers and streams eligible for designation as Outstanding National Resource Waters include those that are part of a national or state park, wildlife refuge or wilderness area, or those that are of high quality and haven't been significantly modified by human activities. It will be up to New Mexico's Surface Water Quality Bureau to draft a proposal seeking the designation. The bureau would hold a series of public meetings to gather comment and then submit a final proposal to the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission for approval. Leavitt said the designation would provide an extra level of review for any activities that could impact the water quality of New Mexico's headwaters, including those that make up the Gila, Pecos and Santa Fe rivers....
Lincoln forest to close May 1 Lincoln National Forest officials plan to close most of the forest to the public May 1 as fire danger increases. "Extremely dry conditions have warranted closure of the entire Lincoln National Forest," said the acting forest supervisor, Jacqueline Buchanan. While campfire and smoking restrictions have been effective in keeping the number of fires down, the Lincoln cannot afford the risk of human-caused fires, she said. "We are not only concerned about the risk to communities and natural resources, we are concerned about potential difficulties evacuating recreationists from remote areas should a wildfire start," Buchanan said. The closures will be lifted when the southern New Mexico forest gets enough rain, officials said. But they also said a significant amount of moisture will be required to reduce the extreme fire danger....
Past six months driest on record in thirsty N.D. The past six months have been the driest on record in North Dakota, with the parched western part of the state suffering the most, the state climatologist says. Through Monday, the statewide average precipitation for the past 180 days was only 1.59 inches, or 38 percent of normal, and the driest since record keeping began 113 years ago, said Adnan Akyuz, the state climatologist. It can’t get much worse on the Leland cattle ranch, near Beach in western North Dakota. “Our grass is barely greening,” said Luella Leland. “There is not enough ground moisture to keep it green.” Leland said she and her family are praying for rain. Fifty-five percent of the state is listed as having extreme drought, and 22 percent is in the severe drought category, Akyuz said....
Gov: Forest deal ‘suspect’ Forest Service officials have allowed energy developers undo influence during the development of an environmental study to determine whether to allow oil and gas drilling on 44,700 acres in the Wyoming Range, according to Gov. Dave Freudenthal. Freudenthal called a memorandum of understanding between Stanley Energy, Inc. and the Bridger-Teton National Forest “extremely suspect” in an April 21 letter to Harv Forsgren, regional forester for the Forest Service Intermountain Region. Freudenthal’s letter comes after Bureau of Land Management officials “expressed concern” about the arrangement to Intermountain Region officials last week, according to Forest Service officials. The controversy comes before an April 28 deadline for the public to send comments on the scoping portion of the draft supplemental environmental impact statement. The agreement in question allows Stanley officials to respond to public comments, keeps correspondence between the national forest and Stanley private, forces the forest to consider alternatives proposed by Stanley, and in return the company will pay for an independent contractor to complete the supplemental environmental impact statement that will decide if the leases can be developed....
A new Latino conservation group We have seen plenty of conflicts between the green and the brown here in New Mexico. Enviro groups have been at odds with local Indo-Hispano communities over spotted owls and forestry policies, public land grazing, instream flow proposals, land grants, wilderness and immigration policy. It’s a problem in a state with a 44% “Hispanic or Latino” population, much of which can trace its roots back 400 years or more. It’s not that we’re anti-environment – recent surveys show that New Mexico Hispanos are more concerned about the environment and more willing to spend public money on environmental problems than their white neighbors – but hard-ball, confrontational environmental tactics, with no heart for culture and history and justice, have made locals very anti-environmentalist. A group of Latinos want to make environmentalism more relevant and more accessible to that constituency through a new organization called the Latino Sustainability Institute. The group’s mission includes promoting conservation policies and social equity, building relationships between conservation groups and Latino organizations, supporting Latino land and water based organizations and preserving sustainable lifeways and cultural landscapes across New Mexico....
Billboard praises 12 'greenest' musicians In celebration of Earth Day yesterday, Billboard counted down the greenest musicians of the last 12 months. The artists who made the cut have been taking action to support environmental causes - from carbon offsets to donations - and urging their fans to do the same...2. Willie Nelson: Willie Nelson's BioWillie biodiesel fuel will add a key location when Willie's Place at Carl's Corner, Texas, opens this summer. Billed as the biggest green truck stop in the United States, the facility will include 13 islands and 26 pumps. Fuel sold there will have some percentage of biofuel, ranging from 5 percent to 85 percent....Can you imagine The Redheaded Stranger being a greenie? "Don't boss him, don't cross him" or he'll beat you to death with an organic tomato vine.
Will Liberty Go Extinct? Today marks the 38th anniversary of Earth Day, and left-leaning environmentalist activists have reason to celebrate. Over the course of nearly four decades, environmental regulation has grown by leaps and bounds. Research conducted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute shows that environmental lawmaking has proven to be the leading area of government lawmaking activity for decades. For those who value liberty and free enterprise, these trends should be disturbing. Surely, we all want a healthy environment, but environmental regulation has become synonymous with “command-and-control” regulation. While truly free market solutions exist that could work better than command-and-control, these approaches have never seriously been on the table in Washington, D.C. Market-like policies, such as cap-and-trade regulatory systems, earn the support of some greens. These may represent a more flexible to way to regulate, but they are also used to expand government control over economic activity. In the global-warming area, cap-and-trade could become part of a massive new regulation and wealth redistribution scheme covering economic activity worldwide. An analysis of all the public laws passed between 1970 and 2005 shows environmental policymaking to be the leading area of lawmaking (excluding symbolic legislation). Further analysis shows that the overwhelming majority of these laws had significant impacts (and many quite major) and an overwhelming majority advance government controls on the economy, land use, and individuals....
Ethanol's Failed Promise The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. These "food-to-fuel" mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis. Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons. The hope of using American-grown crops to fuel our cars seemed like a win-win-win scenario: Our farmers would enjoy the benefit of crop-price stability. Our national security would be enhanced by having a new domestic energy source. Our environment would be protected by a cleaner fuel. But the likelihood of these outcomes was never seriously tested, and new evidence has shown that the justifications for these mandates were inaccurate. It is now abundantly clear that food-to-fuel mandates are leading to increased environmental damage. First, producing ethanol requires huge amounts of energy -- most of which comes from coal. Second, the production process creates a number of hazardous byproducts, and some production facilities are reportedly dumping these in local water sources. Third, food-to-fuel mandates are helping drive up the price of agricultural staples, leading to significant changes in land use with major environmental harm....
Conservationists sue for lynx protection in New Mexico A coalition of conservation and animal protection groups on Monday sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to force it to extend federal protection to Canada lynx in New Mexico. The federal government lists the elusive, furry cats as threatened in 14 states — but not in New Mexico. "We've thought the Fish and Wildlife Service's position on lynx in New Mexico is very odd," said Nicole Rosmarino of WildEarth Guardians, one of the groups that sued. "Once lynx cross from Colorado into New Mexico — which they have been doing — they're suddenly not protected anymore. We don't think that makes any sense." The Colorado Division of Wildlife, which has released more than 200 lynx in Colorado since 1999, tracked about 60 of the animals into New Mexico's Taos, Rio Arriba and San Juan counties between 1999 and 2006, the lawsuit said. Fish and Wildlife officials have not seen the lawsuit and cannot comment on ongoing litigation, said Diane Katzenberger, a spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife in Denver. Last August, conservation groups petitioned for protection for the cats, asking the agency to make a decision on the species' status in New Mexico. The lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., complains that Fish and Wildlife failed to make a finding on the petition within 90 days as required by the Endangered Species Act. The law gives the agency 90 days to determine whether the petition provides sufficient information for the agency to then determine whether a listing may be warranted....
Woman finds 8-foot alligator in her Florida kitchen And some people get jittery about mice in the kitchen. Authorities say 69-year-old central Florida woman found an 8-foot long alligator prowling in her kitchen late Monday night. Sandra Frosti says the gator must have pushed through the back porch screen door and then went inside through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa. It then apparently strolled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen. A trapper with Animal Capture of Florida removed the alligator, which was cut by a plate that was knocked to the ground during the chaos. But no one inside the house was injured.
New Ranger statue is first of many, philanthropist says Outside the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, a larger-than-life lawman reins in his spooked horse and glares off to his right, ready to confront some threat, perhaps a rattlesnake or an armed desperado. The imagined scene is cast in bronze for the ages in a Don Hunt statue that was dedicated Tuesday. A gift by local philanthropists Betsy and Clifton Robinson, “The Texas Ranger” is just the first in a series of sculptures that will grace the Brazos River corridor within a few years. At Tuesday’s unveiling ceremony, Clifton Robinson announced that the vision for the $2 million-plus public art project, called “Branding the Brazos,” is expanding. The next set of sculptures will depict a Chisholm Trail cattle drive near the Waco Suspension Bridge, with a trail boss and at least one longhorn. Set to be unveiled this fall, they are being fashioned by Glen Rose artist Robert Summers. A vaquero and a black cowboy will be added in the next year or two along with more longhorns. The envisioned longhorn herd has grown from nine to 25, Robinson said. Doreen Ravenscroft, a Waco Arts Festival organizer involved in the project, said the Chisholm Trail sculptures will be a reminder of Waco’s history....
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Disney launches new nature film label Bambi will soon have lots of new friends at the Walt Disney Co. The entertainment giant on Monday announced the launch of a new film label, Disneynature, dedicated to producing wildlife and environmental documentaries for the big screen, starting with a 2009 U.S. release titled "Earth." The new venture marks one of the most conspicuous moves by a major Hollywood studio to capitalize on growing public fondness for all things green since the 2006 success of Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." "Our goal is to bring event films, as only nature can tell, to audiences around the world and for generations to come," Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, said in unveiling the production banner on the Disney lot in Burbank, California. Cook said he expected Disneynature to produce roughly one film for commercial release each year....
Why I Left Greenpeace In 1971 an environmental and antiwar ethic was taking root in Canada, and I chose to participate. As I completed a Ph.D. in ecology, I combined my science background with the strong media skills of my colleagues. In keeping with our pacifist views, we started Greenpeace. But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind. At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986. The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health. My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years. Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride....
Too many wells on the Anticline? Depending upon which agency you ask, there might be 850, 940 or possibly even more wells producing natural gas in the Pinedale Anticline field. And the number of producing wells either is, or isn't, in breach of the rules governing the field's development -- depending, this time, on your interpretation of some fuzzy federal language. At issue is whether the Bureau of Land Management's 2000 "record of decision" for gas-field development in the Pinedale Anticline limits the number of wells that can be drilled, or simply limits the number of well pads that can be constructed. BLM officials say the document only restricts well pads, and the intention of the rule was not to limit the number of allowable wells, but to curb the amount of surface disturbance caused by the gas drilling. Opponents say the original plan plainly limits the number of producing wells to 700, and the BLM has willfully disregarded this limitation by authorizing too many wells before completing a required, updated environmental analysis....
Pinedale people fume on ozone This little mountain town has had some big-city-like air pollution in recent winters, and some folks here are fuming. About 170 people showed up Monday for a meeting hosted here by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality at the Rendezvous Pointe Senior Center. And in the end there were more questions and comments from the audience, than there was time for DEQ officials to answer. Audience members, one after another, expressed varying levels of exasperation, frustration and grave concern about the increased levels of air and water pollution that have been monitored here by the DEQ in recent years, most of which can be attributed to the natural gas boom playing out in the nearby Pinedale Anticline and Jonah fields. The DEQ has monitored elevated ozone levels during the wintertime in Sublette County since 2005, and this winter the agency has issued five ozone warnings for the region. Ozone is a potentially poisonous air pollutant created when emissions from combustion engines interact with sunlight....
Petitions opposing prairie dog ban circulate Sprinkled around town, inside businesses that have chosen to participate, petitions opposing another petition can be found. The Colorado Trapper’s Association is collecting signatures to oppose the recent proposal to ban shooting prairie dogs. That effort — a “grassroots, from the ground up” project, said Chris Jurney, a Moffat County outfitter who helped pass out the opposing petitions locally — is alive in Craig. At least eight Craig businesses carry the petition, he said, starting about eight weeks ago. “The main reason is to show the Wildlife Commission they have the support of hunters throughout Colorado,” Jurney said. “We, as sportsmen, support the (Wildlife) Commission and the Division” of Wildlife. At the same time, Jurney worries about the future of hunting in Colorado. The prairie dog ban is another step toward across-the-board shooting bans, he said. Environmental groups “always want to shut down hunting,” Jurney said. “Sportsmen today are tired of having their rights taken away.”....
Environmentalist Bashes Lack of Charges in Wolf Kill Case A conservation group wants Idaho to create a panel to review wolf killings after an eastern Idaho prosecutor decided not to file charges against an Ashton man who earlier this month killed two wolves, one after tracking it for more than a mile on a snowmobile. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition said the decision not to file charges demonstrates how local prosecutors could be hesitant to prosecute wolf killings when it could cost them votes in future elections. "If they won't even prosecute a case this blatantly illegal, there is a problem," Marv Hoyt, a spokesman for the coalition, told the Post Register. On April 1, Bruen Cordingly shot two wolves he said were threatening his horses. He reported the killings and officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game investigated. They determined the first wolf was shot within view of Cordingly's home, and the second was killed more than a mile away on property belonging to someone else. The report said Cordingly pursued the second wolf on a snowmobile. Steve Schmidt, a regional supervisor with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game based in Idaho Falls, said the agency recommended that Cordingly be charged for killing the second wolf....
Coyote removal to aid pronghorns The Arizona Game and Fish Department will continue a successful program to help the state's struggling antelope population. The department will conduct lethal removal of coyotes in a small area of Wildlife Management Unit 10, near Seligman, in order to increase fawn survival rates and to secure population gains made following past efforts. Arizona's antelope populations are subject to a number of limiting factors, including extended drought, poor habitat conditions and coyote predation. The department is trying to help antelope in areas where herd declines have been severe. “Research has clearly and repeatedly shown that coyote-caused fawn predation is a significant limiting factor affecting survival and recruitment rates,” said Erin Riddering, a department biologist. “Fawns are most susceptible to predation during the first few weeks of life. Data shows that limited coyote control measures, in concert with the strong winter rains we had in the area, work well in promoting fawn survival.” Pronghorn populations in several areas of Arizona received a boost following coyote removal efforts in 2003 to 2005....
The Truths Shall Set You Free About a year ago, I became convinced that the global warming debate was going the way of other environmental issues during the past 40 years. Dissenting voices were being silenced as America hurtled toward more laws, regulations, and bureaucratic control -- which, "informed" opinion makers insist, are the only solutions allowed to any problems global warming might bring. Sadly, this pattern has repeated time and again on a wide array of environmental issues since the 1960s, when the lawyers of the nascent Environmental Defense Fund began lobbying for local, then national, and then international bans on the pesticide DDT. The results in virtually every case have been disastrous: significant losses of both liberty and prosperity and, in some cases, environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. That's why I wrote my book, The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About -- Because They Helped Cause Them. I wanted to show how the preferred response of command-and-control is precisely the wrong way to address environmental problems. In a very literal sense, the truths can set you free. I wanted to warn people about the disastrous effects of biofuel policies around the world, and now events have justified my concern far more than I ever imagined. For years, biofuels were a bit player in the farm subsidies game, a losing proposition that politicians kept going to curry favor with the farm lobby. Then, as concern over global warming began to heat up, biofuels came to be seen as an easy solution to loud calls on the political left to decarbonize the nation's energy supply....
No heaven on Earth Day So much for global warming. Earth Day festivities went ahead despite the blast of frigid weather yesterday. Vendors and presenters from various eco-friendly groups, including Bullfrog Power, CO2 Reduction Edmonton and the local solar energy society, crammed into a lone tent in Hawrelak Park after a blizzard forced them to abandon their original locations. Organizers crammed over 40 groups in a space that would normally be occupied by half that number. Presenters' booths were initially planned to have been spread out between at least five tents, with far larger displays. "We're normally here with a lineup of cyclists for our free bike repair service. No bikers came today. Big surprise," said Chris Field of Mountain Equipment Co-Op....
Vegetarian Accused Of Serial-Type Deer Killings Oregon State Police arrested a man Friday for serial-type killing of wildlife, officers said. Ronald A. Livermore, 60, of Prineville, was caught with a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle with a homemade silencer "spotlighting" in the area where more than a dozen deer have been found dead over the last several years. Investigators said they believe Livermore would drive around in the dark shining his spotlight until he saw the glimpse of eyes. At that point, Livermore -- who told police he is primarily a vegetarian -- would shoot at the deer and continue on, leaving the deer that had been killed to waste beside forest service roads, police said. Many of the deer killed were pregnant or had recently given birth, officers said. Police said they found a special compartment in the trunk of Livermore's car used to conceal his custom-modified weapon....I'm sure all those vegetables drove him crazy. I'll be right back, gonna go eat some animal fat and get right with the world.
Man shoots self in alleged road-rage confrontation Police say a man accidentally shot himself in the stomach after waving his gun in anger at a fellow motorist in Tempe, Ariz. Tempe police spokesman Brandon Banks says David Lopez is expected to survive and could face charges including disorderly conduct, reckless display of a firearm and felony flight from police. Banks says Monday that after Lopez shot himself he tried to evade police by driving away but crashed his car and was arrested as he fled on foot....This has gotta be another vegetarian. We are suffering from the three v's - a variety of vegetarian violence.
Wildfire along Arizona-Mexico border 40% contained A wildfire burning in remote and rugged terrain along the Arizona-Mexico border has been 40 percent contained. The Alamo fire had consumed 4,470 acres by Monday morning. Two hundred of those acres were in Mexico. No homes or buildings were in danger, but officials evacuated Pena Blanca Lake, which is about a mile from the fire's northern end. Coronado National Forest officials say the wildfire is in the remote mountains of the Pajarita Wilderness area, making it difficult to attack. Firefighters from the U.S. and Mexico have been burning away fuels, such as light grass and brush, to create a barrier and stop the fire's spread....
On the wolverine's trail It was a Sunday morning in March when Bill Zielinski got the e-mailed photo of what could be seen as California's equivalent of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. After running Oregon State University graduate student Katie Moriarty's picture by other experts, it was clear: They were looking at a wolverine that had wandered into a remote photo station set up in the Tahoe National Forest in the Sierra Nevada. A wolverine hasn't been officially documented in California in nearly 80 years. ”It is with a mixture of joy, and some trepidation, that I share the attached photograph and solicit your help in managing the circumstances it may precipitate,” Zielinski, a U.S. Forest Service Redwood Sciences Lab researcher, wrote to other colleagues the next day. Circumstances didn't just precipitate, they poured down. The sighting of the mammal generated intense public interest, scientific scrutiny, and some serious suspicion. If this was an animal descended from the stock of wolverines long believed to have gone the way of the California grizzly, it was a biological rediscovery of enormous proportion. Or, if it had ventured from even the nearest population outside the state, it was a monumental journey. There is a third, more sinister possibility. The wolverine might have been planted, or even have been a hoax, designed to rock recent science and policy. Interestingly, DNA evidence from the skins of a handful of wolverines trapped between 1880 and 1920 show the California population of wolverines to be more closely related to its relatives in Russia and the far east than to populations in Washington, Idaho, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains, Zielinski said....
For ranchers, SW drought means cuts in herd sizes From the rolling hills lying along the Sonoita highway, rancher Mac Donaldson says drought and climate change have slashed his cattle herd. Across Arizona, the drought has touched dozens of public-lands ranchers such as Donaldson in the past decade. On federal Bureau of Land Management land, the number of cattle has dropped nearly 38 percent statewide since 1998, to about 242,000 animals run monthly. On Forest Service land, the number of cows for which ranchers paid grazing permit fees dropped nearly 32 percent statewide from 2000 to 2007, to about 287,000 head run monthly. The drought was a prime factor knocking down cattle numbers, the agencies' officials say. Another is turnover in the ranching business, in which a rancher sells his private land to a developer or speculator, and the rancher's accompanying public land grazing permit stays vacant for a time. "People are holding these ranches in some cases as investments rather than businesses," says Rick Gerhart, a Coronado National Forest range planner. For Donaldson, land that used to produce 800 pounds of forage per acre now produces 400 pounds per acre. He now breaks even on his ranching where he used to earn money, he says. Additional environmental rules have also forced down cattle herds, says Donaldson, who operates the Empire and Cienega allotments. He runs 1,000 head these days on 72,000 acres of federal land. His permit allows 1,500....
Buckwheat or big bucks The Las Vegas buckwheat seems like a small, unassuming plant. But if conservationists get their way, this little flowering shrub could halt development of some of the last remaining open space in the Las Vegas Valley. Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said the plant deserves government protection, the buckwheat is at the end of a long line of other species that officials say are more deserving. Because the threats to the buckwheat, which grows only in parts of Clark and Lincoln counties, aren’t imminent, the feds have said its designation can wait. Rob Mrowka, the local conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, a national group that recently opened an office in Las Vegas, disagrees. His group plans to announce today that it will petition the federal government to speed up the process. If the feds list the buckwheat as an endangered species, it will stop homes or parks from being built in several areas in the valley where it now grows, including on federal land set to be sold under the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act. It would become the latest species to become caught up in the fight over what little open space is left in the valley. While homebuilders and city officials think land should be available for development, conservationists are asking whether it might be time to stop expanding and start protecting natural resources such as the buckwheat....
Roan in the deep freeze Like it or not, the clock may run out before energy companies gain access to the massive natural gas supplies beneath federal lands on the Roan Plateau. Unfortunately, the proposal introduced Thursday by Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar and Reps. John Salazar and Mark Udall would place new development on the Roan on hold. It would jeopardize a financial bonanza for the state that could reach $1 billion. At this point, delaying new development may be the same as denying it. Whether the next president is Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama, domestic fossil-fuel production is likely to have a lower priority than it has under President Bush. And in the case of Clinton and Obama, probably much lower. Regulators could impose procedural delays that make drilling financially unattractive to energy companies. Investors who have no guarantee where, whether or how soon they can drill on the Roan are likely to sink their capital in locations that are more welcoming to energy production....
Bill addresses Roan Plateau issue Sportsmen and conservation groups have rallied behind a bill introduced in Congress on Thursday that would do more to protect important fish and wildlife habitat on the Roan Plateau in northwest Colorado. The bill was proposed in the U.S. House by John Salazar and in the U.S. Senate by his brother, Ken Salazar. The bill was hailed by the Colorado Wildlife Federation and Colorado Trout Unlimited, both having expressed earlier displeasure at a Bureau of Land Management declaration to lease critical fish and wildlife habitat atop the plateau as early as August. The Bush administration directive would have denied protection of critical habitat for genetically pure populations of Colorado cutthroat trout, a species of concern, as well as key areas of importance for deer herds. The Salazar bill would allow the energy industry to access the Roan's subsurface natural gas reserves, but access would be granted in phases and would require comprehensive reclamation of disturbed land. Concern has mounted with the failure by four drilling companies to contain massive sediment runoff, along with the spill of drilling mud and chemical-laden water at a nearby drilling site....
Bush spotted owl plan faulted for habitat risks The Bush administration's plan to recover the northern spotted owl underestimates the risk that wildfires and logging of large trees will damage the owl's habitat, according to scientific review of the plan released today. The critique also said part of the plan involving owl habitat was "deeply flawed" and said certain parts "do not use scientific information appropriately." The criticism follows earlier claims by a conservationist who helped write the plan that high-level administration officials manipulated the plan to make it friendlier to federal logging in Oregon's Coast Range. Wildlife officials listed the owl as a threatened species in 1990 as its older forest habitat fell to logging. The cutting has slowed dramatically since then, but the owl faces a new threat from aggressive barred owls invading its territory. The recovery plan will influence levels of logging and other development, especially on federal land in the region. The new plan, drafted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had already been battered by earlier critical reviews. The harsh criticism led the agency to try to rebuild credibility by contracting with Sustainable Ecosystems Institute, based in Portland, for a broader review by top wildlife and forest scientists from around the country....
Wild-horse range preserves pure herd Matt Dillon, who runs the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center in Lovell, is driving his Jeep Cherokee up a twisted rocky road in the Burnt Timber area. He talks as he steers his rig, theorizing that Crow Indians likely were responsible for the Spanish horses' Pryor Mountain appearance 200 years ago. Many mixed-pedigree wild horses roam the West, descended from missing 19th-Century U.S. Army cavalry mounts or Great Depression-era horses turned out by their masters.
"This is the first public wild-horse area in the United States," Dillon said. With about 150 adults, the Pryor equines are the largest genetically pure herd, with bloodlines dating back hundreds of years. These Spanish mustangs have made their home in the Pryor Mountains of southern Montana and northern Wyoming for 200 years. Their ancestors arrived with the Spanish conquistadors sailing into Mexico in the 16th century. The animals' physical characteristics have been studied by experts, and that is their conclusion. And, given the mountains' natural boundaries, the Pryor herd has, for the most part, remained genetically pure, Dillon said....
Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks. At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy. “Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.” The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99. The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap. “Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said....
Japan's hunger becomes a dire warning for other nations MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare. "I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn't believe it — this is the first time in my life I've wanted to try baking cakes and I can't get any butter," said the frustrated cook. Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis. A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand. While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food....
The Schizophrenia Of U.S. Farm Policy The price of the new farm bill, final details of which are being hammered out by congressional negotiators, has risen to $280 billion over five years, according to news reports. "The proposal includes provisions encouraging investment in biofuels and wind energy, help for retired and disabled farmers, and a faster tax write-off for owners of racehorses, among other things," writes Greg Hitt in the Wall Street Journal. In short, there is something for almost everyone involved in agriculture. But what about consumers? They often pay twice: first, in higher grocery prices, and second, through an array of tax-financed subsidies. Politicians claim to be friends of the small "family farmer," but most government payments go to large farms, with the largest 9% of all U.S. farms (with revenue above $250,000) getting 56% of all payments under the current bill, enacted in 2002. More than half of U.S. farms receive no payments at all, because they don't produce corn, wheat, cotton or other major crops that qualify for commodity payments. As the value of government payments is capitalized into higher farmland prices, entry into farming becomes more costly, hurting young people trying to get into farming....
It's All Trew - Origins of land ownership Surveying and measurement of land boundaries dates back at least 5,000 years to riverside communities in the Middle East and Egypt involving lands irrigated during the annual flooding of the great rivers. Such boundaries did not mean ownership of the land but established plots for which certain persons were responsible. Though individuals or generations might occupy and exploit a parcel of land, it could not be owned nor treated as personal assets for speculation like goods or domestic animals. Actual land ownership was reserved for kings and rulers. Prior to the discovery and settlement of North America, personal ownership of land was inconceivable. The idea that land could be treated as personal property and speculated on like any other commodity required a monumental change in thinking. As this thinking evolved and colonists and others realized that raw wilderness could be transformed into personal assets, America became the destination of the landless of the world. Though land in America was plentiful, the colonists were restricted by the grants allotted by their respective king. Early measurement efforts only established the metes and bounds of those grants. Home sites were parceled out by the colony leaders by a head-right system....
Why I Left Greenpeace In 1971 an environmental and antiwar ethic was taking root in Canada, and I chose to participate. As I completed a Ph.D. in ecology, I combined my science background with the strong media skills of my colleagues. In keeping with our pacifist views, we started Greenpeace. But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind. At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986. The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health. My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years. Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride....
Too many wells on the Anticline? Depending upon which agency you ask, there might be 850, 940 or possibly even more wells producing natural gas in the Pinedale Anticline field. And the number of producing wells either is, or isn't, in breach of the rules governing the field's development -- depending, this time, on your interpretation of some fuzzy federal language. At issue is whether the Bureau of Land Management's 2000 "record of decision" for gas-field development in the Pinedale Anticline limits the number of wells that can be drilled, or simply limits the number of well pads that can be constructed. BLM officials say the document only restricts well pads, and the intention of the rule was not to limit the number of allowable wells, but to curb the amount of surface disturbance caused by the gas drilling. Opponents say the original plan plainly limits the number of producing wells to 700, and the BLM has willfully disregarded this limitation by authorizing too many wells before completing a required, updated environmental analysis....
Pinedale people fume on ozone This little mountain town has had some big-city-like air pollution in recent winters, and some folks here are fuming. About 170 people showed up Monday for a meeting hosted here by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality at the Rendezvous Pointe Senior Center. And in the end there were more questions and comments from the audience, than there was time for DEQ officials to answer. Audience members, one after another, expressed varying levels of exasperation, frustration and grave concern about the increased levels of air and water pollution that have been monitored here by the DEQ in recent years, most of which can be attributed to the natural gas boom playing out in the nearby Pinedale Anticline and Jonah fields. The DEQ has monitored elevated ozone levels during the wintertime in Sublette County since 2005, and this winter the agency has issued five ozone warnings for the region. Ozone is a potentially poisonous air pollutant created when emissions from combustion engines interact with sunlight....
Petitions opposing prairie dog ban circulate Sprinkled around town, inside businesses that have chosen to participate, petitions opposing another petition can be found. The Colorado Trapper’s Association is collecting signatures to oppose the recent proposal to ban shooting prairie dogs. That effort — a “grassroots, from the ground up” project, said Chris Jurney, a Moffat County outfitter who helped pass out the opposing petitions locally — is alive in Craig. At least eight Craig businesses carry the petition, he said, starting about eight weeks ago. “The main reason is to show the Wildlife Commission they have the support of hunters throughout Colorado,” Jurney said. “We, as sportsmen, support the (Wildlife) Commission and the Division” of Wildlife. At the same time, Jurney worries about the future of hunting in Colorado. The prairie dog ban is another step toward across-the-board shooting bans, he said. Environmental groups “always want to shut down hunting,” Jurney said. “Sportsmen today are tired of having their rights taken away.”....
Environmentalist Bashes Lack of Charges in Wolf Kill Case A conservation group wants Idaho to create a panel to review wolf killings after an eastern Idaho prosecutor decided not to file charges against an Ashton man who earlier this month killed two wolves, one after tracking it for more than a mile on a snowmobile. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition said the decision not to file charges demonstrates how local prosecutors could be hesitant to prosecute wolf killings when it could cost them votes in future elections. "If they won't even prosecute a case this blatantly illegal, there is a problem," Marv Hoyt, a spokesman for the coalition, told the Post Register. On April 1, Bruen Cordingly shot two wolves he said were threatening his horses. He reported the killings and officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game investigated. They determined the first wolf was shot within view of Cordingly's home, and the second was killed more than a mile away on property belonging to someone else. The report said Cordingly pursued the second wolf on a snowmobile. Steve Schmidt, a regional supervisor with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game based in Idaho Falls, said the agency recommended that Cordingly be charged for killing the second wolf....
Coyote removal to aid pronghorns The Arizona Game and Fish Department will continue a successful program to help the state's struggling antelope population. The department will conduct lethal removal of coyotes in a small area of Wildlife Management Unit 10, near Seligman, in order to increase fawn survival rates and to secure population gains made following past efforts. Arizona's antelope populations are subject to a number of limiting factors, including extended drought, poor habitat conditions and coyote predation. The department is trying to help antelope in areas where herd declines have been severe. “Research has clearly and repeatedly shown that coyote-caused fawn predation is a significant limiting factor affecting survival and recruitment rates,” said Erin Riddering, a department biologist. “Fawns are most susceptible to predation during the first few weeks of life. Data shows that limited coyote control measures, in concert with the strong winter rains we had in the area, work well in promoting fawn survival.” Pronghorn populations in several areas of Arizona received a boost following coyote removal efforts in 2003 to 2005....
The Truths Shall Set You Free About a year ago, I became convinced that the global warming debate was going the way of other environmental issues during the past 40 years. Dissenting voices were being silenced as America hurtled toward more laws, regulations, and bureaucratic control -- which, "informed" opinion makers insist, are the only solutions allowed to any problems global warming might bring. Sadly, this pattern has repeated time and again on a wide array of environmental issues since the 1960s, when the lawyers of the nascent Environmental Defense Fund began lobbying for local, then national, and then international bans on the pesticide DDT. The results in virtually every case have been disastrous: significant losses of both liberty and prosperity and, in some cases, environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. That's why I wrote my book, The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About -- Because They Helped Cause Them. I wanted to show how the preferred response of command-and-control is precisely the wrong way to address environmental problems. In a very literal sense, the truths can set you free. I wanted to warn people about the disastrous effects of biofuel policies around the world, and now events have justified my concern far more than I ever imagined. For years, biofuels were a bit player in the farm subsidies game, a losing proposition that politicians kept going to curry favor with the farm lobby. Then, as concern over global warming began to heat up, biofuels came to be seen as an easy solution to loud calls on the political left to decarbonize the nation's energy supply....
No heaven on Earth Day So much for global warming. Earth Day festivities went ahead despite the blast of frigid weather yesterday. Vendors and presenters from various eco-friendly groups, including Bullfrog Power, CO2 Reduction Edmonton and the local solar energy society, crammed into a lone tent in Hawrelak Park after a blizzard forced them to abandon their original locations. Organizers crammed over 40 groups in a space that would normally be occupied by half that number. Presenters' booths were initially planned to have been spread out between at least five tents, with far larger displays. "We're normally here with a lineup of cyclists for our free bike repair service. No bikers came today. Big surprise," said Chris Field of Mountain Equipment Co-Op....
Vegetarian Accused Of Serial-Type Deer Killings Oregon State Police arrested a man Friday for serial-type killing of wildlife, officers said. Ronald A. Livermore, 60, of Prineville, was caught with a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle with a homemade silencer "spotlighting" in the area where more than a dozen deer have been found dead over the last several years. Investigators said they believe Livermore would drive around in the dark shining his spotlight until he saw the glimpse of eyes. At that point, Livermore -- who told police he is primarily a vegetarian -- would shoot at the deer and continue on, leaving the deer that had been killed to waste beside forest service roads, police said. Many of the deer killed were pregnant or had recently given birth, officers said. Police said they found a special compartment in the trunk of Livermore's car used to conceal his custom-modified weapon....I'm sure all those vegetables drove him crazy. I'll be right back, gonna go eat some animal fat and get right with the world.
Man shoots self in alleged road-rage confrontation Police say a man accidentally shot himself in the stomach after waving his gun in anger at a fellow motorist in Tempe, Ariz. Tempe police spokesman Brandon Banks says David Lopez is expected to survive and could face charges including disorderly conduct, reckless display of a firearm and felony flight from police. Banks says Monday that after Lopez shot himself he tried to evade police by driving away but crashed his car and was arrested as he fled on foot....This has gotta be another vegetarian. We are suffering from the three v's - a variety of vegetarian violence.
Wildfire along Arizona-Mexico border 40% contained A wildfire burning in remote and rugged terrain along the Arizona-Mexico border has been 40 percent contained. The Alamo fire had consumed 4,470 acres by Monday morning. Two hundred of those acres were in Mexico. No homes or buildings were in danger, but officials evacuated Pena Blanca Lake, which is about a mile from the fire's northern end. Coronado National Forest officials say the wildfire is in the remote mountains of the Pajarita Wilderness area, making it difficult to attack. Firefighters from the U.S. and Mexico have been burning away fuels, such as light grass and brush, to create a barrier and stop the fire's spread....
On the wolverine's trail It was a Sunday morning in March when Bill Zielinski got the e-mailed photo of what could be seen as California's equivalent of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. After running Oregon State University graduate student Katie Moriarty's picture by other experts, it was clear: They were looking at a wolverine that had wandered into a remote photo station set up in the Tahoe National Forest in the Sierra Nevada. A wolverine hasn't been officially documented in California in nearly 80 years. ”It is with a mixture of joy, and some trepidation, that I share the attached photograph and solicit your help in managing the circumstances it may precipitate,” Zielinski, a U.S. Forest Service Redwood Sciences Lab researcher, wrote to other colleagues the next day. Circumstances didn't just precipitate, they poured down. The sighting of the mammal generated intense public interest, scientific scrutiny, and some serious suspicion. If this was an animal descended from the stock of wolverines long believed to have gone the way of the California grizzly, it was a biological rediscovery of enormous proportion. Or, if it had ventured from even the nearest population outside the state, it was a monumental journey. There is a third, more sinister possibility. The wolverine might have been planted, or even have been a hoax, designed to rock recent science and policy. Interestingly, DNA evidence from the skins of a handful of wolverines trapped between 1880 and 1920 show the California population of wolverines to be more closely related to its relatives in Russia and the far east than to populations in Washington, Idaho, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains, Zielinski said....
For ranchers, SW drought means cuts in herd sizes From the rolling hills lying along the Sonoita highway, rancher Mac Donaldson says drought and climate change have slashed his cattle herd. Across Arizona, the drought has touched dozens of public-lands ranchers such as Donaldson in the past decade. On federal Bureau of Land Management land, the number of cattle has dropped nearly 38 percent statewide since 1998, to about 242,000 animals run monthly. On Forest Service land, the number of cows for which ranchers paid grazing permit fees dropped nearly 32 percent statewide from 2000 to 2007, to about 287,000 head run monthly. The drought was a prime factor knocking down cattle numbers, the agencies' officials say. Another is turnover in the ranching business, in which a rancher sells his private land to a developer or speculator, and the rancher's accompanying public land grazing permit stays vacant for a time. "People are holding these ranches in some cases as investments rather than businesses," says Rick Gerhart, a Coronado National Forest range planner. For Donaldson, land that used to produce 800 pounds of forage per acre now produces 400 pounds per acre. He now breaks even on his ranching where he used to earn money, he says. Additional environmental rules have also forced down cattle herds, says Donaldson, who operates the Empire and Cienega allotments. He runs 1,000 head these days on 72,000 acres of federal land. His permit allows 1,500....
Buckwheat or big bucks The Las Vegas buckwheat seems like a small, unassuming plant. But if conservationists get their way, this little flowering shrub could halt development of some of the last remaining open space in the Las Vegas Valley. Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said the plant deserves government protection, the buckwheat is at the end of a long line of other species that officials say are more deserving. Because the threats to the buckwheat, which grows only in parts of Clark and Lincoln counties, aren’t imminent, the feds have said its designation can wait. Rob Mrowka, the local conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, a national group that recently opened an office in Las Vegas, disagrees. His group plans to announce today that it will petition the federal government to speed up the process. If the feds list the buckwheat as an endangered species, it will stop homes or parks from being built in several areas in the valley where it now grows, including on federal land set to be sold under the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act. It would become the latest species to become caught up in the fight over what little open space is left in the valley. While homebuilders and city officials think land should be available for development, conservationists are asking whether it might be time to stop expanding and start protecting natural resources such as the buckwheat....
Roan in the deep freeze Like it or not, the clock may run out before energy companies gain access to the massive natural gas supplies beneath federal lands on the Roan Plateau. Unfortunately, the proposal introduced Thursday by Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar and Reps. John Salazar and Mark Udall would place new development on the Roan on hold. It would jeopardize a financial bonanza for the state that could reach $1 billion. At this point, delaying new development may be the same as denying it. Whether the next president is Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama, domestic fossil-fuel production is likely to have a lower priority than it has under President Bush. And in the case of Clinton and Obama, probably much lower. Regulators could impose procedural delays that make drilling financially unattractive to energy companies. Investors who have no guarantee where, whether or how soon they can drill on the Roan are likely to sink their capital in locations that are more welcoming to energy production....
Bill addresses Roan Plateau issue Sportsmen and conservation groups have rallied behind a bill introduced in Congress on Thursday that would do more to protect important fish and wildlife habitat on the Roan Plateau in northwest Colorado. The bill was proposed in the U.S. House by John Salazar and in the U.S. Senate by his brother, Ken Salazar. The bill was hailed by the Colorado Wildlife Federation and Colorado Trout Unlimited, both having expressed earlier displeasure at a Bureau of Land Management declaration to lease critical fish and wildlife habitat atop the plateau as early as August. The Bush administration directive would have denied protection of critical habitat for genetically pure populations of Colorado cutthroat trout, a species of concern, as well as key areas of importance for deer herds. The Salazar bill would allow the energy industry to access the Roan's subsurface natural gas reserves, but access would be granted in phases and would require comprehensive reclamation of disturbed land. Concern has mounted with the failure by four drilling companies to contain massive sediment runoff, along with the spill of drilling mud and chemical-laden water at a nearby drilling site....
Bush spotted owl plan faulted for habitat risks The Bush administration's plan to recover the northern spotted owl underestimates the risk that wildfires and logging of large trees will damage the owl's habitat, according to scientific review of the plan released today. The critique also said part of the plan involving owl habitat was "deeply flawed" and said certain parts "do not use scientific information appropriately." The criticism follows earlier claims by a conservationist who helped write the plan that high-level administration officials manipulated the plan to make it friendlier to federal logging in Oregon's Coast Range. Wildlife officials listed the owl as a threatened species in 1990 as its older forest habitat fell to logging. The cutting has slowed dramatically since then, but the owl faces a new threat from aggressive barred owls invading its territory. The recovery plan will influence levels of logging and other development, especially on federal land in the region. The new plan, drafted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had already been battered by earlier critical reviews. The harsh criticism led the agency to try to rebuild credibility by contracting with Sustainable Ecosystems Institute, based in Portland, for a broader review by top wildlife and forest scientists from around the country....
Wild-horse range preserves pure herd Matt Dillon, who runs the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center in Lovell, is driving his Jeep Cherokee up a twisted rocky road in the Burnt Timber area. He talks as he steers his rig, theorizing that Crow Indians likely were responsible for the Spanish horses' Pryor Mountain appearance 200 years ago. Many mixed-pedigree wild horses roam the West, descended from missing 19th-Century U.S. Army cavalry mounts or Great Depression-era horses turned out by their masters.
"This is the first public wild-horse area in the United States," Dillon said. With about 150 adults, the Pryor equines are the largest genetically pure herd, with bloodlines dating back hundreds of years. These Spanish mustangs have made their home in the Pryor Mountains of southern Montana and northern Wyoming for 200 years. Their ancestors arrived with the Spanish conquistadors sailing into Mexico in the 16th century. The animals' physical characteristics have been studied by experts, and that is their conclusion. And, given the mountains' natural boundaries, the Pryor herd has, for the most part, remained genetically pure, Dillon said....
Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks. At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy. “Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.” The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99. The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap. “Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said....
Japan's hunger becomes a dire warning for other nations MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare. "I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn't believe it — this is the first time in my life I've wanted to try baking cakes and I can't get any butter," said the frustrated cook. Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis. A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand. While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food....
The Schizophrenia Of U.S. Farm Policy The price of the new farm bill, final details of which are being hammered out by congressional negotiators, has risen to $280 billion over five years, according to news reports. "The proposal includes provisions encouraging investment in biofuels and wind energy, help for retired and disabled farmers, and a faster tax write-off for owners of racehorses, among other things," writes Greg Hitt in the Wall Street Journal. In short, there is something for almost everyone involved in agriculture. But what about consumers? They often pay twice: first, in higher grocery prices, and second, through an array of tax-financed subsidies. Politicians claim to be friends of the small "family farmer," but most government payments go to large farms, with the largest 9% of all U.S. farms (with revenue above $250,000) getting 56% of all payments under the current bill, enacted in 2002. More than half of U.S. farms receive no payments at all, because they don't produce corn, wheat, cotton or other major crops that qualify for commodity payments. As the value of government payments is capitalized into higher farmland prices, entry into farming becomes more costly, hurting young people trying to get into farming....
It's All Trew - Origins of land ownership Surveying and measurement of land boundaries dates back at least 5,000 years to riverside communities in the Middle East and Egypt involving lands irrigated during the annual flooding of the great rivers. Such boundaries did not mean ownership of the land but established plots for which certain persons were responsible. Though individuals or generations might occupy and exploit a parcel of land, it could not be owned nor treated as personal assets for speculation like goods or domestic animals. Actual land ownership was reserved for kings and rulers. Prior to the discovery and settlement of North America, personal ownership of land was inconceivable. The idea that land could be treated as personal property and speculated on like any other commodity required a monumental change in thinking. As this thinking evolved and colonists and others realized that raw wilderness could be transformed into personal assets, America became the destination of the landless of the world. Though land in America was plentiful, the colonists were restricted by the grants allotted by their respective king. Early measurement efforts only established the metes and bounds of those grants. Home sites were parceled out by the colony leaders by a head-right system....
Monday, April 21, 2008
The First Man to Legally Shoot a Wolf Tells His Story Tonight for the first time, the rancher who legally shot the first wolf in Idaho is talking about what exactly happened. At the beginning of the month, an Ashton man shot and killed two wolves just west of town after they threatened his horse just yards from his home. This week fish and game officers ruled Bruen Cordingly was justified in killing the animals. Cordingly says he didn't even think about it, when he saw wolves near his home and his livestock he went after them. And although Fish and Game's investigation into the incident shows Cordingly was justified in the shooting, he believes officers tried to make an example out of him. "This is my livelihood these horses and stuff and my kids. I don't want to have to be worried about my kids going outside. I don't want to have to be worried about my horses getting killed in the middle of the night," Cordingly said. When he walks around his land, he can't help but point out where the wolves came in. The night of April first, he says wolves came up to his cabin got into the dog dish, pulled out blankets and then circled the property. The melting snow didn't hold the evidence very long, but he believes a pack was circling his property all night....
Researchers Fear Southern Fence Will Endanger Species Further The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the project's costs, feasibility and how well it will curb illegal immigration. But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the animals and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home. Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence's construction. The scientists cite examples such as the 70 remaining Sonoran pronghorns in Arizona's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, deerlike animals that are the fastest land mammals in North America. They are the only remaining population on U.S. soil, and the five surveillance towers that the administration plans to build in the area will be in the middle of the pronghorns' range, producing noise and human activity that would disturb the sensitive species. On April 4, Benjamin Tuggle, a regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told customs and border protection officials that an interagency team of scientists concluded last month that the construction would inhibit breeding and, "over time, may ultimately lead to the eventual extinction of the species." The Sonoran pronghorns are not alone: Rare species such as jaguars, ocelots and long-nose bats are also likely to face problems with the new barriers, scientists said....
It's up to the voters State trust-land reform's wobbly legs have a few more steps to travel. With hopes of a legislative compromise fading faster than wildflowers in May, the advocates of preserving Arizona's most pristine landscapes have concluded an initiative is the only way to achieve their goal. They're preparing to collect 300,000 signatures to put the issue before voters in November. They're looking at something less ambitious than Proposition 106, which narrowly failed two years ago, but more generous than the compromise bogged down in the Legislature. Let's hope they learned from past mistakes. The first look is promising. This initiative is more narrowly tailored than the past attempt. About 570,000 acres, including 5,000 acres in Scottsdale, would be set aside for immediate conservation. That's 120,000 fewer acres than in the 2006 initiative, but the land is spread into more places, including rapidly developing Pinal County, which should widen the initiative's appeal. The proposal responds to critics in significant ways. Land set aside for conservation would remain in the state's hands rather than being given to cities or counties. Existing grazing leases would be honored, a provision that acknowledges the role ranchers played in defeating the previous effort. As in the legislative compromise, communities would be able to buy land beyond the 570,000 acres at appraised value, without having to compete at auction against developers. The State Land Department would be able to keep a portion of auction proceeds to improve its planning and management of land....
Tricky pick: Our 'greenest' president was . . . Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the true green giant of American presidents: Richard Nixon. For the many Nixon haters out there, this is a most inconvenient truth. His accomplishments include the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. He started the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon rewrote the federal government's role in protecting natural resources. He created the regulatory framework now in place, the one that subsequent Republican presidents have tried so hard to dismantle. His administration organized the first worldwide effort to crack down on international trade in endangered species. That effort now includes 172 nations and protects 30,000 species, ranging from orchids to whales. Under Nixon, DDT was banned and eagles flourished. Under Nixon, the wholesale poisoning of coyotes and other predators by Western ranchers was stopped. Nixon brought some of the nation's top environmentalists into his administration. There was Nat Reed, the South Florida Everglades activist, named as assistant secretary of the Department of Interior. There was Russell Train, Nixon's second EPA secretary, who went on to head the World Wildlife Fund. There was Lee Talbot, the Council of Environmental Quality's chief scientist, who wrote much of the original Endangered Species Act. In a 1998 interview, Talbot said, "No president since or before, except maybe Teddy Roosevelt, has been willing to put as much political muscle into the environment."....
Bolivia seeks charges against US rancher Bolivia's government is seeking to charge an American rancher and his son — a former Mr. Bolivia pageant winner — for their alleged role in violent protests against President Evo Morales' land redistribution plan. Ronald Larsen, who has extensive land holdings in Bolivia, and his son Duston are named in a criminal complaint for "sedition, robbery, and other crimes." The complaint was announced on Friday by Deputy Minister of Land Alejandro Almaraz. Ronald Larsen, of Montana, is accused of firing on Almaraz's vehicle and holding the minister hostage as he tried to carry out a government inspection of Larsen's ranch in southern Bolivia on February 29. The Larsens are also accused of leading a protest last week in the nearby town of Cuevo that left some 40 people injured. Prosecutors will now decide whether to file charges against the pair. Neither could be immediately be reached for comment, and it was unclear if they had hired a lawyer. But Larsen told his side of the story to the La Paz daily La Razon last week. "He was drunk and he showed up at three in the morning at my ranch. I didn't know who he was," Larsen said of Almaraz, according to the newspaper. "I didn't want this guy making any trouble, so I shut him up with a shot at one of his tires. That's the story."....
Union head claims USDA tried to intimidate employees The head of the union that represents 6,000 federal food inspectors told a congressional committee Thursday that the Agriculture Department tried to intimidate him and other employees who reported violations of regulations, an allegation denied by the agency. Union chief Stan Painter said that following a mad cow disease scare in 2003, he told superiors that new food safety regulations for slaughtered cattle were not being uniformly enforced. Painter said he was told to drop the matter, and when he didn't, was grilled by department officials and then placed on disciplinary investigative status. Painter said he was eventually exonerated, but the incident "has caused a chilling effect on others within my bargaining unit to come forward and stand up when agency management is wrong." He said that supervisors tell workers to "let the system work" rather than cite slaughterhouses for violations. Painter made the allegations at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform domestic policy subcommittee, which was looking into slaughterhouse practices following humane violations at Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. in Chino, Calif., which led to the largest beef recall in U.S. history....
'Tick Riders' guard US from deadly pest, one cow at a time Fred Garza has been patrolling a piece of the Rio Grande for 16 years, usually riding solo on horseback, sometimes venturing to areas where his radio and cell phone have limited range. But Garza's not looking for drug smugglers, human traffickers or illegal immigrants. He's looking for stray livestock that might be carrying a tick, a tiny pest with a deadly disease, into the United States. "If it doesn't have hooves, it's not our concern," Garza said. Garza is a veteran of the 61-person U.S. Department of Agriculture "Tick Rider" force, a group that keeps watch over a 700-mile buffer zone along the Rio Grande from Brownsville to Del Rio. They inspect both foreign strays and native ranch animals for the fever tick, a parasite eradicated from the U.S. 65 years ago that can transmit disease to cattle and could spread to the entire southeastern U.S. if not controlled. Lately, the tick has managed to migrate beyond the 862-square mile permanent quarantine zone, an area from which cattle can't be removed unless they are free of ticks. The spread has forced the formation of three temporary quarantine zones totaling more than 1,100-square miles. Bob Hillman, state veterinarian and executive director of the Texas Animal Health Commission, said officials are concerned that the fever ticks may spread to other parts of the country....
City dogs discovering sheep, cattle, hidden talent Selkie, a border collie recovering from a tennis ball addiction, gets her cue. She cuts a wide curve around the field, hunches low and creeps in. Bleats of protest are useless. The sheep stiffen and get moving. It's a good day to be a dog. Selkie isn't really a stock dog but she plays one at Drummond Ranch, which isn't really a livestock ranch, but a 40-acre haven an hour outside Los Angeles. There, city dogs escape their leash-and-lounge existence and learn to get in touch with their inner herder. The ranch is part of a trend that mixes training techniques, a back-to-basics ethos and a hint of dog (and human) therapy. "It really, really seems to center the dog and give the dog a sense of confidence and fulfillment, a good assertiveness, a good energy," said ranch owner Janna Duncan, who has taught dozens of canines and their owners the art of moving livestock. "It's almost as if the dog needs a job. And when they discover, 'This is what my job is supposed to be,' then everything falls into place." The American Kennel Club says new herding clubs are popping up across the country, although it does not track exact numbers. Nearly 200 clubs held herding trials last year. More than 10,000 dogs competed, a roughly 10 percent increase over 2006....
Home on the Range: Laurie Wagner Buyer’s “Spring’s Edge” Spring’s Edge: A Ranch Wife’s Chronicles University of New Mexico Press Here’s a job description for you. In Laurie Wagner Buyer‘s new memoir, Spring’s Edge, she describes her occupation in this way: “There are no days off, not even weekends. No sick leave. No benefits. No vacations. No retirement plan. No perks. No health insurance. No camaraderie of fellow workers…If you’re lucky, you manage to hang on to the home place and pass it on to your children.” Any takers? If so, head to the nearest mountain ranch and sign on for calving season. In 1997, Laurie Wagner Buyer was married to the rancher Mick Buyer and living and working on a six-hundred-acre cattle ranch near Fairplay, Colorado. Buyer was already a successful regional poet (she’s since gone on to win the 2007 Spur Award for Best Poetry), and in February of that year, she began to keep a journal of her mundane daily activities. Except that the activities didn’t turn out to be so mundane: the Buyers were beset by a winter that wouldn’t quit, financial troubles, family health difficulties, developers buying up the nearby land, and the fraying of their own strained relationship. As Spring’s Edge begins, Mick has just sold his main cattle herd to a neighbor to pay for his expenses, such as ever climbing feed bills and property taxes. All their hopes for keeping the ranch rest in the remaining pregnant heifers, which they must shepherd through labor and the rest of a hard winter to have a viable herd that will allow them to continue to make a living. This urgency infuses Buyer’s account with tension, and her detailed descriptions of her midwifery on the cows bring the reader right into the quickly disappearing world of independent Western ranchers....
Researchers Fear Southern Fence Will Endanger Species Further The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the project's costs, feasibility and how well it will curb illegal immigration. But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the animals and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home. Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence's construction. The scientists cite examples such as the 70 remaining Sonoran pronghorns in Arizona's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, deerlike animals that are the fastest land mammals in North America. They are the only remaining population on U.S. soil, and the five surveillance towers that the administration plans to build in the area will be in the middle of the pronghorns' range, producing noise and human activity that would disturb the sensitive species. On April 4, Benjamin Tuggle, a regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told customs and border protection officials that an interagency team of scientists concluded last month that the construction would inhibit breeding and, "over time, may ultimately lead to the eventual extinction of the species." The Sonoran pronghorns are not alone: Rare species such as jaguars, ocelots and long-nose bats are also likely to face problems with the new barriers, scientists said....
It's up to the voters State trust-land reform's wobbly legs have a few more steps to travel. With hopes of a legislative compromise fading faster than wildflowers in May, the advocates of preserving Arizona's most pristine landscapes have concluded an initiative is the only way to achieve their goal. They're preparing to collect 300,000 signatures to put the issue before voters in November. They're looking at something less ambitious than Proposition 106, which narrowly failed two years ago, but more generous than the compromise bogged down in the Legislature. Let's hope they learned from past mistakes. The first look is promising. This initiative is more narrowly tailored than the past attempt. About 570,000 acres, including 5,000 acres in Scottsdale, would be set aside for immediate conservation. That's 120,000 fewer acres than in the 2006 initiative, but the land is spread into more places, including rapidly developing Pinal County, which should widen the initiative's appeal. The proposal responds to critics in significant ways. Land set aside for conservation would remain in the state's hands rather than being given to cities or counties. Existing grazing leases would be honored, a provision that acknowledges the role ranchers played in defeating the previous effort. As in the legislative compromise, communities would be able to buy land beyond the 570,000 acres at appraised value, without having to compete at auction against developers. The State Land Department would be able to keep a portion of auction proceeds to improve its planning and management of land....
Tricky pick: Our 'greenest' president was . . . Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the true green giant of American presidents: Richard Nixon. For the many Nixon haters out there, this is a most inconvenient truth. His accomplishments include the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. He started the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon rewrote the federal government's role in protecting natural resources. He created the regulatory framework now in place, the one that subsequent Republican presidents have tried so hard to dismantle. His administration organized the first worldwide effort to crack down on international trade in endangered species. That effort now includes 172 nations and protects 30,000 species, ranging from orchids to whales. Under Nixon, DDT was banned and eagles flourished. Under Nixon, the wholesale poisoning of coyotes and other predators by Western ranchers was stopped. Nixon brought some of the nation's top environmentalists into his administration. There was Nat Reed, the South Florida Everglades activist, named as assistant secretary of the Department of Interior. There was Russell Train, Nixon's second EPA secretary, who went on to head the World Wildlife Fund. There was Lee Talbot, the Council of Environmental Quality's chief scientist, who wrote much of the original Endangered Species Act. In a 1998 interview, Talbot said, "No president since or before, except maybe Teddy Roosevelt, has been willing to put as much political muscle into the environment."....
Bolivia seeks charges against US rancher Bolivia's government is seeking to charge an American rancher and his son — a former Mr. Bolivia pageant winner — for their alleged role in violent protests against President Evo Morales' land redistribution plan. Ronald Larsen, who has extensive land holdings in Bolivia, and his son Duston are named in a criminal complaint for "sedition, robbery, and other crimes." The complaint was announced on Friday by Deputy Minister of Land Alejandro Almaraz. Ronald Larsen, of Montana, is accused of firing on Almaraz's vehicle and holding the minister hostage as he tried to carry out a government inspection of Larsen's ranch in southern Bolivia on February 29. The Larsens are also accused of leading a protest last week in the nearby town of Cuevo that left some 40 people injured. Prosecutors will now decide whether to file charges against the pair. Neither could be immediately be reached for comment, and it was unclear if they had hired a lawyer. But Larsen told his side of the story to the La Paz daily La Razon last week. "He was drunk and he showed up at three in the morning at my ranch. I didn't know who he was," Larsen said of Almaraz, according to the newspaper. "I didn't want this guy making any trouble, so I shut him up with a shot at one of his tires. That's the story."....
Union head claims USDA tried to intimidate employees The head of the union that represents 6,000 federal food inspectors told a congressional committee Thursday that the Agriculture Department tried to intimidate him and other employees who reported violations of regulations, an allegation denied by the agency. Union chief Stan Painter said that following a mad cow disease scare in 2003, he told superiors that new food safety regulations for slaughtered cattle were not being uniformly enforced. Painter said he was told to drop the matter, and when he didn't, was grilled by department officials and then placed on disciplinary investigative status. Painter said he was eventually exonerated, but the incident "has caused a chilling effect on others within my bargaining unit to come forward and stand up when agency management is wrong." He said that supervisors tell workers to "let the system work" rather than cite slaughterhouses for violations. Painter made the allegations at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform domestic policy subcommittee, which was looking into slaughterhouse practices following humane violations at Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. in Chino, Calif., which led to the largest beef recall in U.S. history....
'Tick Riders' guard US from deadly pest, one cow at a time Fred Garza has been patrolling a piece of the Rio Grande for 16 years, usually riding solo on horseback, sometimes venturing to areas where his radio and cell phone have limited range. But Garza's not looking for drug smugglers, human traffickers or illegal immigrants. He's looking for stray livestock that might be carrying a tick, a tiny pest with a deadly disease, into the United States. "If it doesn't have hooves, it's not our concern," Garza said. Garza is a veteran of the 61-person U.S. Department of Agriculture "Tick Rider" force, a group that keeps watch over a 700-mile buffer zone along the Rio Grande from Brownsville to Del Rio. They inspect both foreign strays and native ranch animals for the fever tick, a parasite eradicated from the U.S. 65 years ago that can transmit disease to cattle and could spread to the entire southeastern U.S. if not controlled. Lately, the tick has managed to migrate beyond the 862-square mile permanent quarantine zone, an area from which cattle can't be removed unless they are free of ticks. The spread has forced the formation of three temporary quarantine zones totaling more than 1,100-square miles. Bob Hillman, state veterinarian and executive director of the Texas Animal Health Commission, said officials are concerned that the fever ticks may spread to other parts of the country....
City dogs discovering sheep, cattle, hidden talent Selkie, a border collie recovering from a tennis ball addiction, gets her cue. She cuts a wide curve around the field, hunches low and creeps in. Bleats of protest are useless. The sheep stiffen and get moving. It's a good day to be a dog. Selkie isn't really a stock dog but she plays one at Drummond Ranch, which isn't really a livestock ranch, but a 40-acre haven an hour outside Los Angeles. There, city dogs escape their leash-and-lounge existence and learn to get in touch with their inner herder. The ranch is part of a trend that mixes training techniques, a back-to-basics ethos and a hint of dog (and human) therapy. "It really, really seems to center the dog and give the dog a sense of confidence and fulfillment, a good assertiveness, a good energy," said ranch owner Janna Duncan, who has taught dozens of canines and their owners the art of moving livestock. "It's almost as if the dog needs a job. And when they discover, 'This is what my job is supposed to be,' then everything falls into place." The American Kennel Club says new herding clubs are popping up across the country, although it does not track exact numbers. Nearly 200 clubs held herding trials last year. More than 10,000 dogs competed, a roughly 10 percent increase over 2006....
Home on the Range: Laurie Wagner Buyer’s “Spring’s Edge” Spring’s Edge: A Ranch Wife’s Chronicles University of New Mexico Press Here’s a job description for you. In Laurie Wagner Buyer‘s new memoir, Spring’s Edge, she describes her occupation in this way: “There are no days off, not even weekends. No sick leave. No benefits. No vacations. No retirement plan. No perks. No health insurance. No camaraderie of fellow workers…If you’re lucky, you manage to hang on to the home place and pass it on to your children.” Any takers? If so, head to the nearest mountain ranch and sign on for calving season. In 1997, Laurie Wagner Buyer was married to the rancher Mick Buyer and living and working on a six-hundred-acre cattle ranch near Fairplay, Colorado. Buyer was already a successful regional poet (she’s since gone on to win the 2007 Spur Award for Best Poetry), and in February of that year, she began to keep a journal of her mundane daily activities. Except that the activities didn’t turn out to be so mundane: the Buyers were beset by a winter that wouldn’t quit, financial troubles, family health difficulties, developers buying up the nearby land, and the fraying of their own strained relationship. As Spring’s Edge begins, Mick has just sold his main cattle herd to a neighbor to pay for his expenses, such as ever climbing feed bills and property taxes. All their hopes for keeping the ranch rest in the remaining pregnant heifers, which they must shepherd through labor and the rest of a hard winter to have a viable herd that will allow them to continue to make a living. This urgency infuses Buyer’s account with tension, and her detailed descriptions of her midwifery on the cows bring the reader right into the quickly disappearing world of independent Western ranchers....
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