Major water ruling issued A bid to pump more than 11 billion gallons of groundwater a year from three rural Nevada valleys to Las Vegas was cut to just over 6 billion gallons and approved Wednesday by the state's water engineer. The ruling by state Engineer Tracy Taylor follows a hearing that ended in February with the Southern Nevada Water Authority saying it's entitled to the water from Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave Valleys and opponents warning that the pumping could have a catastrophic impact. SNWA representatives had contended the water authority met all requirements for the pumping and critics' disaster scenarios are unfounded. The Great Basin Water Network opposed the plan, saying SNWA tried to hide evidence that the pumping may harm existing water users and the environment in rural Nevada because there's not enough water in the valleys for long-term exportation. Taylor said use of the water in the amounts he approved "will not unduly limit future growth and development" in the three valleys, all in central Lincoln County. But before any water is pumped, Taylor wants to see more biological and hydrologic studies. He also said that pumping will be halted or modified if it proves "detrimental to the public interest or is found to not be environmentally sound." While the SNWA application sought more than 11.3 billion gallons of groundwater a year from the valleys and the ruling allows about 6.1 billion gallons, Susan Lynn of the Great Basin Water Network said, "It's way too much considering there are a whole lot of downstream groundwater users who rely on that groundwater flow that is going to be intercepted." Launce Rake, also representing the network, said a legal effort to overturn the ruling or have it revised by Taylor "is certainly a prospect. It's something we will be looking at carefully as we review this decision." Rake added that the valleys already are "really stressed" by drought conditions, adding, "This decision can only exacerbate those issues."....
BLM asks for public comment regarding grazing on Ore. monument The Bureau of Land Management is asking for public comment regarding the future of cattle ranching in the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. Monument Assistant Manager Howard Hunter says a decision will be made next year on whether cattle can stay. Meanwhile, a bill is pending in Congress that would pay ranchers with money raised by conservation groups to turn back their grazing leases. "The cattle have been on that monument, or on that piece of land, for 150 years, and the cattle have been so detrimental to it that Clinton made it a national monument because of all the special plants and the community that has grown up there. And in my opinion, the cattle have probably enhanced that," says Rancher Bruce Buckmaster. "The monument proclamation says retire the allotments. It's been clear for several years that the BLM doesn't intend to do that, it's been clear that the BLM has said, 'Oh we can change a little here, change a little there, and everything will be fine'. Well, that's illegal," says Dave Willis of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council....
Thousands of healthy trees destroyed by windstorm It’s fairly common for forest fires to impact Idaho’s wilderness areas this time of year, but that's not what closed down parts of the Sawtooth National Recreation area. At the main beach along Redfish Lake there are absolutely no signs of the windstorm that wreaked havoc here over the Fourth of July weekend, but go to some of the most popular campsites and the damage is devastating. "When you get into these campgrounds, you'd be amazed no one was majorly hurt or even killed," said Scott Loos, U.S. Forest Service. Trees are broken, bent and ripped right out of the ground. "We're calling it a microburst with thunderstorm winds in excess of 70 miles per hour," said Vernon Preston, National Weather Service....
Recipe for an avalanche Forecasting a snow avalanche takes more than measuring the angle of a mountain slope, researchers report in the July 11 Science. Whether an avalanche happens might also depend on how the snow cracks and collapses, the study suggests. “The new theory could be a breakthrough in understanding what is going on at the very moment when an avalanche begins,” says University of Edinburgh physicist Joachim Heierli, lead author of the study. It “gives hints on what snow properties to look for to anticipate the risk of triggering a slab avalanche.” Slab avalanches are the most common and most dangerous because a slab of snow breaks loose and cascades to the slope’s bottom. By modeling this avalanche type the team found that snow fractures much easier than previously thought. Also, friction between snow layers may be more important in avalanche dynamics than once thought....
House spending bill markups at a standstill The regular order for the appropriations process inched closer to oblivion Wednesday as House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., shot down the possibility of any movement from his panel. "There aren't going to be any markups," he said. The rift stems from the fracas that took place during the House Appropriations Committee markup of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill just prior to the Independence Day break. At the markup, Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., tried to offer the Interior appropriations bill as an amendment to the Labor-HHS bill. The move was an effort to try to force a vote on repealing a restriction on offshore oil drilling. Republicans have been eyeing the Interior appropriations bill as a vehicle to advance their energy agenda, including allowing more domestic drilling and production. In response, Obey angrily adjourned the meeting and said the appropriations process was done for the year....
Suit Filed To Stop Four Timber Sales on Largest National Forest Environmental groups sued the U.S. Forest Service in federal court today arguing that the agency has concealed impacts of old-growth logging to the environment and to subsistence hunting in four Tongass National Forest timber projects. At issue is whether environmental impact statements have thoroughly evaluated the effect of the projects on Sitka black-tailed deer – a species that is key to viability of the "Islands Wolf" (Alexander Archipelago wolf) and is among the most important subsistence foods in the area. he plaintiffs are Greenpeace and Cascadia Wildlands Project, both of which have offices in Alaska. They say the Forest Service has violated bedrock environmental laws by deliberately ignoring their legitimate criticisms of how impacts to deer were assessed in the decision process and not providing a “full and fair discussion” of their concerns. While not a plaintiff in the suit, the Alaska Department of Fish & Game has repeatedly challenged these same flaws. The lawsuit demands that the four logging projects be stopped and that supplemental analysis be ordered to fairly evaluate their impacts. Combined, the projects would take 33 million board feet of timber from 1,700 acres of old-growth forest and construct 9.5 miles of new, permanent logging roads....
Democrats Counter Republicans With a New Alaska-Oil Plan House Democrats moved Thursday to counter a Republican push for more domestic drilling with a proposal that would increase oil production from areas of Alaska already open to drilling. n recent weeks as the public outcry over high gasoline prices has built, Republicans in Washington have positioned themselves as champions of increased domestic energy production. Fearful of appearing obstructionist, Democrats are jostling to get in front of the issue. "Democrats support increasing the domestic production of petroleum and other energy resources," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said Thursday. The Democrats' plan would speed up production in the National Petroleum Reserve, an area in Alaska already approved for drilling but where so far much of the land hasn't been leased. "This administration has been dragging its feet on leasing those areas," Mr. Hoyer said....
USCA: "Keep America FMD-Free" Bill Introduced In Congress The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) today hailed the introduction of legislation in the U.S. Senate that would block meat shipments from Argentina until that country is free of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), an airborne livestock disease that is devastating to livestock production. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) introduced the Foot and Mouth Disease Prevention Act of 2008, which would add common sense to a proposal by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would allow importation of Argentine fresh and pre-packaged beef, lamb and other meat from select regions of Argentina, as well as live animals. "Cattlemen from across the country appreciate Senator Johnson and Senator Enzi along with the other co-sponsors of this important legislation," said Jon Wooster, a California rancher and USCA president. "We’re calling it the ‘Keep America FMD-Free bill’." Wooster explained that an outbreak of FMD within the U.S. cattle industry would bring livestock commerce to a standstill overnight and would likely result in the depopulation of millions of cattle, hogs, lambs, goats and wildlife....
U.S. judge refuses to stop some Canadian beef imports from crossing border A U.S. federal judge has refused to stop some Canadian beef imports but agreed with lawyers for cattle, consumer and health interests that the U.S. government should revisit rules that protect against the threat of mad cow disease. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol granted in part a preliminary injunction sought by several groups that filed a lawsuit in federal court in South Dakota. They want the judge to suspend a U.S. Department of Agriculture rule that went into effect Nov. 19 allowing Canadian cattle more than 30 months old into the United States. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued the change exposes consumers to a fatal disease linked to eating meat contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, increases the risk that U.S. cattle would be infected with the disease, and could harm the U.S. cattle market. But a government lawyer argued in court documents and at a hearing in February that rules and changes in the industry adequately protect American animals, people and markets, and there's no way to get 100 per cent compliance with any rule....
Cattle Producers Seek Solutions To Judge’s Halt of CRP Grazing In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) decided to initiate the Critical Feed Use (CFU) program to help cattle farmers and ranchers by allowing grazing and hay production on CRP land because of drought and other natural disasters and because of the high costs of feed. The plaintiffs in this case assert that USDA should have conducted an environmental impact assessment before launching the Critical Feed Use program. A full hearing on the matter is scheduled for July 17. R-CALF USA Member Steve Parker ranches in the Oklahoma Panhandle and said he has been back and forth 50 miles to town several times to visit with officials at his Farm Service Agency office in the past two days and has spent a lot of time on the phone asking his congressional representatives to step in. “Right now, I understand they’re scrambling trying to decide what to do with our $75 CRP sign-up fee,” he said. “We gave that money in good faith. I spent the better part of three weeks building fence and moving tanks and scrambling trying to figure out how we’re going to water these cattle on these old, worn out wheat fields that have been planted back to blue stem grass, and now some judge in Washington is telling me I can’t run cattle on this, so yes, I’m upset. The Senator’s office told me they’re getting their heads together to fight this thing, and I said, ‘Boys, hurry!’ In another month, we’d just as well forget it. Time is of the essence.”....
Riders mosey through town Col. Rocky Woolman of Oklahoma and his colleagues are on a mission to ride the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) from Mexico to Canada on horseback. Woolman and Larry Hanson of Minnesota are attempting to ride on or along the entire trail. Woolman explained “We're trying to develop the trail for horses.” They are trying to establish an equestrian accessible route along the CDT. He added they are aiming to be “the first ones to pull this off in one season.” They started from Antelope Wells on the Mexican border on June 21 and hope to arrive at the Canadian border by the end of summer. The men are not riding for any charity or organization. However, they would like people to “just remember our troops.” Woolman recently returned from Iraq as a contracted civilian worker. The riders have a support team of two. Kathy Merrill of New York and Paul Hauert of Texas are following with the alternate horses and the trailers. Each man rides one horse and takes a packhorse. The horses all get breaks and trips in the trailer. Woolman and Hanson camp along the trail and only meet up with their support for supplies or when a problem arises....
Singing the history of the Old West "Out on the Bell Ranch in New Mexico/Cattle graze and horses run/We'd lay in the bunkhouse at the end of the day/And dream about havin' some fun." Earl Gleason has been playing guitar since around 1945, but this is the first year he's been able to put out two solo albums in one year. As shown in the lines above, taken from "Saturday Nite," a Gleason original, the Belen resident has long been adept at painting a picture of the old West for listeners. From stories of trying to rope an ornery steer to tragedies or simply looking forward to the next day off from cowboying, Gleason's most recent work allows him to combine his own work with some traditional cowboy songs and a few covers. While none of the songs is likely to be as familiar sounding as they were 100 years ago, Gleason's music continues to serve as part folk history lesson and part timeless, compelling entertainment. "Saturday Nite" and "Wanderers" are the titles of the two albums Gleason has released in 2008, his fourth and fifth solo efforts. Both have combinations of original work and songs Gleason has found important and relevant enough to include....
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
California Asks for Federal Troops to Battle Fires California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said his state is approaching a ``tipping point'' in its battle against more than 300 wildfires and needs federal help to turn the tide. The state requires assistance, including from the military, after lightning sparked the blazes, which have been exacerbated by high temperatures and dry grass and brush, Schwarzenegger wrote in a letter sent to Republican President George W. Bush today. ``With more lightning storms forecast for later this week, we sit at a critical tipping point in California that requires immediate federal help and aggressive pre-positioning of federal resources,'' wrote Schwarzenegger, also a Republican. ``I respectfully request federal active duty forces.'' More than 1,090 square miles, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, has burned in California since June 21, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire. Excessive heat warnings and red flag warnings, which mean conditions are right for ``explosive fire growth,'' cover a 659-mile (1,060-kilometer) stretch from the Oregon border south to Los Angeles. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said federal officials are working with California to help battle the blazes and are reviewing Schwarzenegger's request....
Giant Omnibus Bill, Wetlands and NLCS Coming To Votes
Land Rights Network
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400 - Battle Ground, WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 - Fax: 360-687-2973
E-mail: alra@pacifier.com
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003
Dangerous Time In Congress Next 30 Days Until August 8th Recess
-----Congress Often Rushes Bad Legislation While You Are Busy With Summer and Vacation Activities.
-----Your Congressman and both Senators may be home at times during the next month and later and will likely be home after August 8th for the month long Congressional August Recess.
-----You must make sure you call, fax and e-mail your Congressman and both Senators to get their July to September schedules for when they will be in your area. It is critical that you follow the directions below. Your private property rights are severely threatened.
----------------------------
-----During the month of July up to approximately August 8th both the House and Senate are expected squeeze in a lot of votes including votes on a number of land grab bills that threaten you. They rush to get bills out before the recess that would come approximately August 8th.
-----------------------------
During this time the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee could vote on HR 2421, the Clean Water Restoration Act (Wetlands Corps of Engineers and EPA Land Grab) and it could move swiftly to the full House for a vote.
-----HR 2421 is the Democrat effort to overturn the Rapanos (2006) and Swancc (2001) Supreme Court Wetlands Decisions favorable to private property owners and seize control of all US watersheds.
HR 2421 would give control over Wetlands and other lands back to the Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and make their jurisdiction the same as it was before the Supreme Court limited their jurisdiction.
-----That means national land use controls. It will give the Corps of Engineers and EPA control over your property.
The Senate will likely vote before August on S 3213 (new Omnibus Lands Bill just introduced), the giant new Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2008.
S 3213 includes the dreaded BLM National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), numerous new Wilderness areas, Heritage Areas and many other Federal lands and parks bills put together as one giant omnibus bill.
Think of it as the Omnibus Federal lands, BLM NLCS and Wilderness Bill, S 3213 or just Senate Omnibus Lands Bill. This Omnibus bill includes over 90 bills you have not likely seen.
The NLCS was created Administratively in 2000 by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The NLCS has lain low for eight years until they could get Congress to pass it and make it permanent.
The NLCS will lay a preservationist National Park type regulatory overlay over 26,000,000 acres of BLM land including many National Monuments, Wild and Scenic Rivers, Wilderness Study Areas and much more. It threatens access and use by ranchers, miners, forestry advocates, recreationists and many other Federal land users.
These votes will come while you are busy on vacation or distracted by summer activities. There will be so many bills rushed to a vote that many Members of the House and Senate will not have time to even read them.
That means your friends in the House and Senate that you count on to keep an eye open to protect you could easily allow bills to pass that would threaten you and not be aware of it or have a bill of their own in the Omnibus Bill and not want to touch it. So they look the other way as bad bills pass.
You need to insist that your Senators and Representatives read each bill they vote on and protect you.
I cannot stress too strongly how critical your calls, faxes and e-mails are to your Congressman and both Senators during the coming four weeks opposing the Senate Omnibus Lands Bill (S 3213) and HR 2421, the Wetlands Corps of Engineers EPA land grab in the House....
The following bulletin from Federal Parks & Recreation newsletter reports on the giant new Federal Lands Omnibus Bill in the Senate.
From Parks and Recreation Newsletter:
New Omnibus Bill Bigger Than Last One, It Includes NLCS
90-Bill Omnibus Measure Contains NLCS, 10 Heritage Areas and More
Here Are Some Of The Omnibus Bill (S3213) Specifics:
The Senate Energy Committee, having succeeded in pushing a big omnibus bill through Congress in April, is trying again.
The old bill (PL 110-229 of May 8) included only individual measures approved by both the committee and the House, about 50 in total.
This time committee chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has assembled a bill (S 3213) that includes more than 90 individual bills the committee has approved, whether the House has acted or not.
There are controversies. Included in the package is legislation (S 1139) to certify the 26 million-acre National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM.) The Senate Energy Committee approved S 1139 May 23, 2007, but the bill has not moved since. The House approved a counterpart NLCS bill (HR 2016) April 9 by a 278-to-140 vote.
Western Republicans opposed the House NLCS bill. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said the bill not only failed to address existing problems in multiple use management of BLM lands in the system, but also could hamper management. He cited such ongoing problems as lack of access for energy development, grazing and other activities. Bishop said the bill could impose Park Service-like restrictions on BLM.
Besides, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has said she will attempt to expand the system to 32 million acres from 26,000,000 by adding the entire California Desert Conservation Area (CDCA) to the NLCS.
Some four million acres of the CDCA are already in the system but Feinstein would add another six million acres.
Beyond the NLCS, S 3213 includes individual bills that would:
* Designate two new National Park System units: Paterson National Historical Park in New Jersey and Thomas Edison National Historical Park in New Jersey,
* Authorize additions to nine existing National Park System units,
* Designate ten new national heritage areas (NHAs) and authorize studies of two NHAs. The new NHAs would be: Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area, Colorado; Cache La Poudre River National Heritage Area, Colorado; South Park National Heritage Area, Colorado; Northern Plains National Heritage Area, North Dakota; Baltimore National Heritage Area, Maryland; Freedom's Way National Heritage Area, Massachusetts and N.H.; Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area; Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area; Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area, Alabama; and Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area, Arizona,
* Designate four national trails: Arizona National Scenic Trail; New England National Scenic Trail; Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail; and Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail,
* Authorize studies of additions to four National Historic Trails: Oregon National Historic Trail; Pony Express National Historic Trail; California National Historic Trail; And The Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail,
* Add three wild and scenic rivers: Fossil Creek, Arizona; Snake River Headwaters, Wyoming; and Taunton River, Massachusetts, and
* Designate a Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area of about 3.5 miles of cave passages in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
The Senate Energy Committee said June 27 that the bill runs 759 pages long and includes measures sponsored by Democrats, Republicans and both parties.
The committee puts together the omnibus bills because Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) routinely places holds on individual bills, preventing them from being considered on the Senate floor. When assembled in one omnibus bill, the individual measures create a critical mass and sponsors can obtain the 60 votes needed to break Coburn's holds. Coburn has objected to any legislation that would come with a price tag and require additional federal spending.
But these giant Omnibus Bills are killing you.
Consider subscribing to:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Federal Parks & Recreation is published by Resources Publishing Co., P.O. Box 41320, Arlington, VA 22204. EIN 52-1363538. Phone (703) 553-0552. FAX (703) 553-0558. E-mail james@resourcespublishing.com. Website: http://www.plnfpr.com.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Chuck Cushman
American Land Rights Association
(360) 687-3087
ccushman@pacifier.com
Land Rights Network
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400 - Battle Ground, WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 - Fax: 360-687-2973
E-mail: alra@pacifier.com
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003
Dangerous Time In Congress Next 30 Days Until August 8th Recess
-----Congress Often Rushes Bad Legislation While You Are Busy With Summer and Vacation Activities.
-----Your Congressman and both Senators may be home at times during the next month and later and will likely be home after August 8th for the month long Congressional August Recess.
-----You must make sure you call, fax and e-mail your Congressman and both Senators to get their July to September schedules for when they will be in your area. It is critical that you follow the directions below. Your private property rights are severely threatened.
----------------------------
-----During the month of July up to approximately August 8th both the House and Senate are expected squeeze in a lot of votes including votes on a number of land grab bills that threaten you. They rush to get bills out before the recess that would come approximately August 8th.
-----------------------------
During this time the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee could vote on HR 2421, the Clean Water Restoration Act (Wetlands Corps of Engineers and EPA Land Grab) and it could move swiftly to the full House for a vote.
-----HR 2421 is the Democrat effort to overturn the Rapanos (2006) and Swancc (2001) Supreme Court Wetlands Decisions favorable to private property owners and seize control of all US watersheds.
HR 2421 would give control over Wetlands and other lands back to the Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and make their jurisdiction the same as it was before the Supreme Court limited their jurisdiction.
-----That means national land use controls. It will give the Corps of Engineers and EPA control over your property.
The Senate will likely vote before August on S 3213 (new Omnibus Lands Bill just introduced), the giant new Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2008.
S 3213 includes the dreaded BLM National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), numerous new Wilderness areas, Heritage Areas and many other Federal lands and parks bills put together as one giant omnibus bill.
Think of it as the Omnibus Federal lands, BLM NLCS and Wilderness Bill, S 3213 or just Senate Omnibus Lands Bill. This Omnibus bill includes over 90 bills you have not likely seen.
The NLCS was created Administratively in 2000 by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The NLCS has lain low for eight years until they could get Congress to pass it and make it permanent.
The NLCS will lay a preservationist National Park type regulatory overlay over 26,000,000 acres of BLM land including many National Monuments, Wild and Scenic Rivers, Wilderness Study Areas and much more. It threatens access and use by ranchers, miners, forestry advocates, recreationists and many other Federal land users.
These votes will come while you are busy on vacation or distracted by summer activities. There will be so many bills rushed to a vote that many Members of the House and Senate will not have time to even read them.
That means your friends in the House and Senate that you count on to keep an eye open to protect you could easily allow bills to pass that would threaten you and not be aware of it or have a bill of their own in the Omnibus Bill and not want to touch it. So they look the other way as bad bills pass.
You need to insist that your Senators and Representatives read each bill they vote on and protect you.
I cannot stress too strongly how critical your calls, faxes and e-mails are to your Congressman and both Senators during the coming four weeks opposing the Senate Omnibus Lands Bill (S 3213) and HR 2421, the Wetlands Corps of Engineers EPA land grab in the House....
The following bulletin from Federal Parks & Recreation newsletter reports on the giant new Federal Lands Omnibus Bill in the Senate.
From Parks and Recreation Newsletter:
New Omnibus Bill Bigger Than Last One, It Includes NLCS
90-Bill Omnibus Measure Contains NLCS, 10 Heritage Areas and More
Here Are Some Of The Omnibus Bill (S3213) Specifics:
The Senate Energy Committee, having succeeded in pushing a big omnibus bill through Congress in April, is trying again.
The old bill (PL 110-229 of May 8) included only individual measures approved by both the committee and the House, about 50 in total.
This time committee chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has assembled a bill (S 3213) that includes more than 90 individual bills the committee has approved, whether the House has acted or not.
There are controversies. Included in the package is legislation (S 1139) to certify the 26 million-acre National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM.) The Senate Energy Committee approved S 1139 May 23, 2007, but the bill has not moved since. The House approved a counterpart NLCS bill (HR 2016) April 9 by a 278-to-140 vote.
Western Republicans opposed the House NLCS bill. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said the bill not only failed to address existing problems in multiple use management of BLM lands in the system, but also could hamper management. He cited such ongoing problems as lack of access for energy development, grazing and other activities. Bishop said the bill could impose Park Service-like restrictions on BLM.
Besides, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has said she will attempt to expand the system to 32 million acres from 26,000,000 by adding the entire California Desert Conservation Area (CDCA) to the NLCS.
Some four million acres of the CDCA are already in the system but Feinstein would add another six million acres.
Beyond the NLCS, S 3213 includes individual bills that would:
* Designate two new National Park System units: Paterson National Historical Park in New Jersey and Thomas Edison National Historical Park in New Jersey,
* Authorize additions to nine existing National Park System units,
* Designate ten new national heritage areas (NHAs) and authorize studies of two NHAs. The new NHAs would be: Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area, Colorado; Cache La Poudre River National Heritage Area, Colorado; South Park National Heritage Area, Colorado; Northern Plains National Heritage Area, North Dakota; Baltimore National Heritage Area, Maryland; Freedom's Way National Heritage Area, Massachusetts and N.H.; Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area; Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area; Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area, Alabama; and Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area, Arizona,
* Designate four national trails: Arizona National Scenic Trail; New England National Scenic Trail; Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail; and Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail,
* Authorize studies of additions to four National Historic Trails: Oregon National Historic Trail; Pony Express National Historic Trail; California National Historic Trail; And The Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail,
* Add three wild and scenic rivers: Fossil Creek, Arizona; Snake River Headwaters, Wyoming; and Taunton River, Massachusetts, and
* Designate a Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area of about 3.5 miles of cave passages in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
The Senate Energy Committee said June 27 that the bill runs 759 pages long and includes measures sponsored by Democrats, Republicans and both parties.
The committee puts together the omnibus bills because Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) routinely places holds on individual bills, preventing them from being considered on the Senate floor. When assembled in one omnibus bill, the individual measures create a critical mass and sponsors can obtain the 60 votes needed to break Coburn's holds. Coburn has objected to any legislation that would come with a price tag and require additional federal spending.
But these giant Omnibus Bills are killing you.
Consider subscribing to:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Federal Parks & Recreation is published by Resources Publishing Co., P.O. Box 41320, Arlington, VA 22204. EIN 52-1363538. Phone (703) 553-0552. FAX (703) 553-0558. E-mail james@resourcespublishing.com. Website: http://www.plnfpr.com.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Chuck Cushman
American Land Rights Association
(360) 687-3087
ccushman@pacifier.com
BLM finds grazing harmful to protected monument Cattle grazing on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument harms the flora and fauna the monument was created to protect, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has concluded. In a long-awaited assessment expected to be released today, the agency found that cattle grazing on the monument, created by presidential proclamation in 2000 to protect its rich biodiversity, does not meet the proclamation's intent, said Howard Hunter, the monument's assistant manager. "We have determined the grazing practices are not compatible with the proclamation, meaning we are not adequately protecting the tangible and intangible items in the monument," he said. The assessment's release kicks off a 30-day public comment period. The 52,947-acre monument in the BLM's Medford District was established to protect what scientists say is one of the most biologically diverse places in North America. For instance, the monument contains more than 100 species of butterflies. However, the area has been used by local ranchers for more than a century for cattle grazing when the lower elevation pastures dry up each summer. Eleven ranchers currently hold grazing leases for 2,714 animal unit months on nine grazing allotments within the monument....
Bush admin opposes federal pay for wolf kills The Bush administration is objecting to legislation that would ask the federal government to help compensate livestock owners whose animals are killed by wolves. Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming sponsored the bill that would approve federal matching money for state trust funds that pay ranchers for those losses. It would also allow federal grants for states to help lower the risk of wolf kills. Officials testifying at a Senate hearing Wednesday said the payments should not be a federal responsibility. Barrasso said Wyoming paid $1.2 million in such compensation last year. The legislation follows the federal government's decision to remove gray wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act and turn over wolf management to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, where an estimated 1,500 wolves roam. Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s after the population dwindled significantly, and the species' population has grown rapidly. Both Tester and Barrasso reacted angrily to the administration stance. An Interior official testifying at the hearing declined to answer questions about the administration's position and referred all senators' inquiries to Ed Bangs, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who led the wolf recovery effort. Bangs was reluctant to elaborate on the reasons for administration opposition, saying only that it was most appropriate for the state to determine compensation....
New records for smokejumpers, air tankers The unprecedented number of fires in Northern California during the past two weeks has elicited a record-breaking pace from smokejumpers and air tanker crews. In just the past two weeks, the Redding Smokejumper Base has supported 363 jumps - already more than their 10-year average of about 320 jumps a season. "At this point we are well on pace to beat our record of 523 jumps in a single season, which we set in 1999," said Don Sand, Redding Smokejumper Base manager for the U.S. Forest Service. Normally 40 jumpers are based in Redding as a national resource that may be dispatched anywhere in the United States. An additional 100 smokejumpers were brought into Redding from other bases during the past two weeks to help with the large number of fires. Air tankers operating out of the Redding Air Tanker Base have dropped 750,000 gallons of fire retardant this year supporting firefighting operations in Northern California. Their 10-year average is 762,000 gallons per season. "The most retardant delivered from this base in a season is 1.8 million gallons," said John Richardson, air operations branch chief for Cal Fire. "At this pace, the Redding base will exceed its annual record."....
House Passes FLAME Act - HR 5541 Congressman Raul M. Grijalva, Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, praised the passage of the “Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act” (FLAME Act) (HR. 5541). Rep. Grijalva is an original sponsor with Representative Rahall, Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, of the bill, which creates funds for federal agencies at the start of forest fire season. “As our communities see longer and more intense fire seasons, this bill allows us to be proactive,” stated Grijalva. “Public land managers can have the resources for prevention and protection without destroying their day to day operational budget.” The FLAME Act aims to prevent future catastrophic, wildland fires from crippling federal land management agency budgets by creating an emergency federal fund dedicated solely to fighting these devastating fires, separate from appropriated agency fire fighting funding. Over the last decade, the rapid increase in destructive forest fires across the United States has caused federal fire suppression costs to skyrocket– dramatically shifting spending priorities at the expense of other important Interior Department and Forest Service programs, especially programs that would reduce the intensity of fires and protect communities....
Obama Chimes In on Plum Creek, Forest Service Agreement Barack Obama, who is ramping up his efforts to woo Montanans, weighed in this week on the “closed-door" deal between the Plum Creek Timber Company and the Forest Service that could pave the way for development of Plum Creek timberlands in the state. When the issue hit the pages of the Washington Post the Obama campaign was moved to chime in, Obama staffer Nayyera Haq said. In a written statement released Tuesday, Obama wrote: At a time when Montana’s sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off. We should be working to conserve these lands permanently so that future generations of Americans can enjoy them to hunt, fish, hike and camp....
Four Arrested in Ketchikan in U.S. Marshal's Operation The U.S. Marshals, in coordination with 25 other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies conducted a six day enforcement operation in Alaska from June 23 to June 28. Operation FALCON, standing for Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally, targeted violent felons, gang members, and sex offenders. FALCON 2008 captured 69 fugitives and cleared 83 warrants in Alaska for crimes including failures to register as a sex offender, distribution of child pornography, drug offenses, assault, burglary, robbery and theft. These arrests also included probation violations stemming from sexual abuse of minors, weapon offenses, and failures to appear for various original charges. In Ketchikan, members of the Ketchikan Police Department, Alaska State Troopers, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Federal Marshall participated in this operation....Another one to remember when the Forest Service claims they don't have the money or personnel to police federal lands. They are too busy arresting sex offenders and gang members.
Land grant claims won’t go away Some of my neighbors in northern New Mexico call this region “occupied Mexico.” They’re only half joking. Heirs of community land grants made by the Spanish and Mexican governments are still arguing – 160 years later – that the U.S. did not honor its obligations under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty promised to protect all pre-existing land grants and other property rights of the former Mexican citizens when the U.S. took this territory from Mexico. But it didn’t. As a result, over 80 percent of community land grants were lost to Indo-Hispano villagers, in most cases after a century, or two or three, of living and working on those lands. All the Indian Pueblos retained their land grants, which became reservations under the U.S. system, but most of the rest ended up as Forest Service or BLM land. Of course this is not the first or last time the U.S. violated a treaty for land, but this fight is still going strong. In the latest issue of La Jicarita News, scholar David Correia reviews the well-documented history of fraud and various chicanery within the office of the Surveyor General and the Court of Private Land Grant Claims, which were supposed to adjudicate land claims during the late 1800s. And he lays out a convincing legal argument about how the U.S. government did not fulfill its fiduciary duty under the treaty....
Rise of the unelected America's future prosperity may hinge on who wins an internal fight within the Bush administration. On the one side are the bureaucrats of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the name of combating global warming, they are gearing up to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. It's not just the carbon dioxide from auto tailpipes. It's emissions from all sources: factories, schools, restaurant kitchens, heating and cooling systems, power plants, farm equipment and businesses of all types. In a nutshell: everything. Because almost everything that uses energy produces CO2. But media reports reveal EPA is in conflict with the White House Office of Management and Budget, which answers more directly to the president. Their job is to ride herd on other bureaucrats so our economy isn't stifled by excessive red tape. The immediate fight is over an unreleased (but leaked to the press) 250-page proposal from the EPA, announcing its intent to adopt rules that expand the 1970 Clean Air Act by designating carbon dioxide as a pollutant that endangers us. Who gave EPA such power despite no clear language in U.S. law? Congress never agreed. As noted by Ben Lieberman of The Heritage Foundation, "Legislatively, Congress has rejected every attempt to control carbon dioxide emissions." But another unelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, in last year's 5-4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, embraced the United Nations' philosophy that global warming is an imminent danger. The justices decreed that EPA must therefore possess power to address it by regulating CO2....
Top Democrat may back new offshore drilling A top U.S. Democratic senator said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday that he would consider supporting opening up new areas for offshore oil and gas drilling. "I'm open to drilling and responsible production," Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin told The Wall Street Journal, adding that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could also support the move. However, Durbin said his support for opening new areas to drilling was contingent on setting requirements that oil and gas companies begin production within a specified time frame on acreage they have leased from the government. The spike in oil prices to record highs above $145 per barrel has prompted calls for the U.S. government to allow energy producers to explore for oil and gas off the East and West Coasts and in the eastern region of the Gulf of Mexico. Those areas are currently off limits to exploration....
New book reveals the extraordinary story behind "Orange Blossom Special" One of the most bizarre stories in all of popular music is the story behind Orange Blossom Special, arguably the century's best-known fiddle tune as well as one of the most-performed songs of the 20th century and a signature hit for the late Johnny Cash. In a newly released book, Florida-based author Randy Noles investigates the lives of the two men credited with authoring the song, which salutes a legendary streamlined passenger train. The book, Fiddler's Curse: The Untold Story of Ervin T. Rouse, Chubby Wise, Johnny Cash and the Orange Blossom Special (Centerstream Publishing, $14.95), reveals the luckless Rouse to be the sole author. Rouse, who endured tragedy, alcoholism and mental illness, spent his final years fiddling for tips in isolated taverns at the edge of the Everglades. Wise, who achieved fame as the seminal fiddler of the bluegrass era and the acclaimed author of the song, also struggled to overcome personal demons and heal the scars of childhood abuse and abandonment. Cash, the tortured superstar who made the Special a mainstream hit, quietly championed Rouse and earned the enmity of Wise following a perceived onstage slight. "The book settles a longstanding authorship controversy over the song," said Noles. "More importantly though, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the private lives of these brilliant but deeply flawed men and paints a vivid portrait of life as an itinerate musician in the 1930s and 1940s."....
Bush admin opposes federal pay for wolf kills The Bush administration is objecting to legislation that would ask the federal government to help compensate livestock owners whose animals are killed by wolves. Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming sponsored the bill that would approve federal matching money for state trust funds that pay ranchers for those losses. It would also allow federal grants for states to help lower the risk of wolf kills. Officials testifying at a Senate hearing Wednesday said the payments should not be a federal responsibility. Barrasso said Wyoming paid $1.2 million in such compensation last year. The legislation follows the federal government's decision to remove gray wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act and turn over wolf management to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, where an estimated 1,500 wolves roam. Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s after the population dwindled significantly, and the species' population has grown rapidly. Both Tester and Barrasso reacted angrily to the administration stance. An Interior official testifying at the hearing declined to answer questions about the administration's position and referred all senators' inquiries to Ed Bangs, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who led the wolf recovery effort. Bangs was reluctant to elaborate on the reasons for administration opposition, saying only that it was most appropriate for the state to determine compensation....
New records for smokejumpers, air tankers The unprecedented number of fires in Northern California during the past two weeks has elicited a record-breaking pace from smokejumpers and air tanker crews. In just the past two weeks, the Redding Smokejumper Base has supported 363 jumps - already more than their 10-year average of about 320 jumps a season. "At this point we are well on pace to beat our record of 523 jumps in a single season, which we set in 1999," said Don Sand, Redding Smokejumper Base manager for the U.S. Forest Service. Normally 40 jumpers are based in Redding as a national resource that may be dispatched anywhere in the United States. An additional 100 smokejumpers were brought into Redding from other bases during the past two weeks to help with the large number of fires. Air tankers operating out of the Redding Air Tanker Base have dropped 750,000 gallons of fire retardant this year supporting firefighting operations in Northern California. Their 10-year average is 762,000 gallons per season. "The most retardant delivered from this base in a season is 1.8 million gallons," said John Richardson, air operations branch chief for Cal Fire. "At this pace, the Redding base will exceed its annual record."....
House Passes FLAME Act - HR 5541 Congressman Raul M. Grijalva, Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, praised the passage of the “Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act” (FLAME Act) (HR. 5541). Rep. Grijalva is an original sponsor with Representative Rahall, Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, of the bill, which creates funds for federal agencies at the start of forest fire season. “As our communities see longer and more intense fire seasons, this bill allows us to be proactive,” stated Grijalva. “Public land managers can have the resources for prevention and protection without destroying their day to day operational budget.” The FLAME Act aims to prevent future catastrophic, wildland fires from crippling federal land management agency budgets by creating an emergency federal fund dedicated solely to fighting these devastating fires, separate from appropriated agency fire fighting funding. Over the last decade, the rapid increase in destructive forest fires across the United States has caused federal fire suppression costs to skyrocket– dramatically shifting spending priorities at the expense of other important Interior Department and Forest Service programs, especially programs that would reduce the intensity of fires and protect communities....
Obama Chimes In on Plum Creek, Forest Service Agreement Barack Obama, who is ramping up his efforts to woo Montanans, weighed in this week on the “closed-door" deal between the Plum Creek Timber Company and the Forest Service that could pave the way for development of Plum Creek timberlands in the state. When the issue hit the pages of the Washington Post the Obama campaign was moved to chime in, Obama staffer Nayyera Haq said. In a written statement released Tuesday, Obama wrote: At a time when Montana’s sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off. We should be working to conserve these lands permanently so that future generations of Americans can enjoy them to hunt, fish, hike and camp....
Four Arrested in Ketchikan in U.S. Marshal's Operation The U.S. Marshals, in coordination with 25 other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies conducted a six day enforcement operation in Alaska from June 23 to June 28. Operation FALCON, standing for Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally, targeted violent felons, gang members, and sex offenders. FALCON 2008 captured 69 fugitives and cleared 83 warrants in Alaska for crimes including failures to register as a sex offender, distribution of child pornography, drug offenses, assault, burglary, robbery and theft. These arrests also included probation violations stemming from sexual abuse of minors, weapon offenses, and failures to appear for various original charges. In Ketchikan, members of the Ketchikan Police Department, Alaska State Troopers, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Federal Marshall participated in this operation....Another one to remember when the Forest Service claims they don't have the money or personnel to police federal lands. They are too busy arresting sex offenders and gang members.
Land grant claims won’t go away Some of my neighbors in northern New Mexico call this region “occupied Mexico.” They’re only half joking. Heirs of community land grants made by the Spanish and Mexican governments are still arguing – 160 years later – that the U.S. did not honor its obligations under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty promised to protect all pre-existing land grants and other property rights of the former Mexican citizens when the U.S. took this territory from Mexico. But it didn’t. As a result, over 80 percent of community land grants were lost to Indo-Hispano villagers, in most cases after a century, or two or three, of living and working on those lands. All the Indian Pueblos retained their land grants, which became reservations under the U.S. system, but most of the rest ended up as Forest Service or BLM land. Of course this is not the first or last time the U.S. violated a treaty for land, but this fight is still going strong. In the latest issue of La Jicarita News, scholar David Correia reviews the well-documented history of fraud and various chicanery within the office of the Surveyor General and the Court of Private Land Grant Claims, which were supposed to adjudicate land claims during the late 1800s. And he lays out a convincing legal argument about how the U.S. government did not fulfill its fiduciary duty under the treaty....
Rise of the unelected America's future prosperity may hinge on who wins an internal fight within the Bush administration. On the one side are the bureaucrats of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the name of combating global warming, they are gearing up to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. It's not just the carbon dioxide from auto tailpipes. It's emissions from all sources: factories, schools, restaurant kitchens, heating and cooling systems, power plants, farm equipment and businesses of all types. In a nutshell: everything. Because almost everything that uses energy produces CO2. But media reports reveal EPA is in conflict with the White House Office of Management and Budget, which answers more directly to the president. Their job is to ride herd on other bureaucrats so our economy isn't stifled by excessive red tape. The immediate fight is over an unreleased (but leaked to the press) 250-page proposal from the EPA, announcing its intent to adopt rules that expand the 1970 Clean Air Act by designating carbon dioxide as a pollutant that endangers us. Who gave EPA such power despite no clear language in U.S. law? Congress never agreed. As noted by Ben Lieberman of The Heritage Foundation, "Legislatively, Congress has rejected every attempt to control carbon dioxide emissions." But another unelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, in last year's 5-4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, embraced the United Nations' philosophy that global warming is an imminent danger. The justices decreed that EPA must therefore possess power to address it by regulating CO2....
Top Democrat may back new offshore drilling A top U.S. Democratic senator said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday that he would consider supporting opening up new areas for offshore oil and gas drilling. "I'm open to drilling and responsible production," Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin told The Wall Street Journal, adding that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could also support the move. However, Durbin said his support for opening new areas to drilling was contingent on setting requirements that oil and gas companies begin production within a specified time frame on acreage they have leased from the government. The spike in oil prices to record highs above $145 per barrel has prompted calls for the U.S. government to allow energy producers to explore for oil and gas off the East and West Coasts and in the eastern region of the Gulf of Mexico. Those areas are currently off limits to exploration....
New book reveals the extraordinary story behind "Orange Blossom Special" One of the most bizarre stories in all of popular music is the story behind Orange Blossom Special, arguably the century's best-known fiddle tune as well as one of the most-performed songs of the 20th century and a signature hit for the late Johnny Cash. In a newly released book, Florida-based author Randy Noles investigates the lives of the two men credited with authoring the song, which salutes a legendary streamlined passenger train. The book, Fiddler's Curse: The Untold Story of Ervin T. Rouse, Chubby Wise, Johnny Cash and the Orange Blossom Special (Centerstream Publishing, $14.95), reveals the luckless Rouse to be the sole author. Rouse, who endured tragedy, alcoholism and mental illness, spent his final years fiddling for tips in isolated taverns at the edge of the Everglades. Wise, who achieved fame as the seminal fiddler of the bluegrass era and the acclaimed author of the song, also struggled to overcome personal demons and heal the scars of childhood abuse and abandonment. Cash, the tortured superstar who made the Special a mainstream hit, quietly championed Rouse and earned the enmity of Wise following a perceived onstage slight. "The book settles a longstanding authorship controversy over the song," said Noles. "More importantly though, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the private lives of these brilliant but deeply flawed men and paints a vivid portrait of life as an itinerate musician in the 1930s and 1940s."....
FLE
Senate Approves Bill to Broaden Wiretap Powers The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government’s surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues. The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. The vote came two and a half years after public disclosure of the wiretapping program set off a fierce national debate over the balance between protecting the country from another terrorist strike and ensuring civil liberties. The final outcome in Congress, which opponents of the surveillance measure had conceded for weeks, seemed almost anticlimactic in contrast. Mr. Bush, appearing in the Rose Garden just after his return from Japan, called the vote “long overdue.” He promised to sign the measure into law quickly, saying it was critical to national security and showed that “even in an election year, we can come together and get important pieces of legislation passed.”....
Barack Obama Breaks Promise, Flip Flops, and supports Telco's Today, Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama voted for H.R.6304, which amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (F.I.S.A). In doing so he voted to give telecommunication providers immunity against civil damages that they might incur in the course of enabling the government to execute wiretaps and other types of electronic surveillance. He did so, after an amendment to the bill that would have stripped out the immunity provision, S.Amdt. 5064, was defeated 32-66. In voting for the bill, Obama acted in direct contradiction to his earlier statements. In 2007 Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman, said "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." The original F.I.S.A statute was passed in 1978 in order to protect civil liberties against overly expansive government surveillance, and had clear penalties of $100 per person, per day, plus punitive damages, for telecommunications companies that conducted electronic surveillance without judicial oversight. Given that each day tens of millions of people have their data go across the networks of some of the larger telcos, the risk that these companies faced by working with the government on extra-judicial wiretaps was extreme. In giving companies that work with the government immunity from these penalties, H.R. 6304, and Barack Obama who voted for it, just took away the only reason stopping AT&T, Verizon, and others from helping the government use extra-judicial wiretaps. In voting for the bill, Obama not only helped the telco?s, but also broke his promise to protect the American people from expansive government surveillance....
New York Moves To Defend Gun Law In a sign that federal courts here in New York will defend New York City's restrictive gun regulations, a judge is allowing the city to strip a disabled Vietnam War veteran of his gun license. The decision, handed down this week, is likely the first court ruling to deal with New York's gun-permitting scheme since the Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment gives citizens an individual right to keep a gun at home for self-defense. The veteran who lost his gun license, Dominick DiNapoli, said the Supreme Court's decision ought to require that he gets back his gun permit. "Who needs a gun more than someone like me, who is disabled and can't physically defend his home?" Mr. DiNapoli said in an interview. The court decision, by Judge William Pauley III of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, does not mention the Second Amendment and defers entirely to the New York City Police Department's permitting process. New York's gun-licensing system is expected to come under challenge soon on allegations that it restricts law-abiding citizens from keeping guns at home for self-defense....
This is the U.S. on drugs The United States' so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America. The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind. The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They are making billions of dollars every year -- tax free. The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal drugs. Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been proved not to work....
The political establishment and telecom immunity -- why it matters Nancy Soderberg was deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. Today, she has an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times defending the FISA bill and telecom amnesty. The entire Op-Ed is just a regurgitation of the same trite, vague talking points which the political elite are using to justify this bill, accompanied by the standard invocations of "National Security" which our Foreign Policy elite condescendingly toss around to justify whatever policy they're claiming is necessary to protect us. But it's the language that she uses -- and the brazenness of the lying (and that's what it is) to justify this bill -- that's notable here...I would really like to know where people like Soderberg get the idea that the U.S. President has the power to "order" private citizens to do anything, let alone to break the law, as even she admits happened here. I'm asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse -- that the President can give "orders" to private citizens that must be complied with? Soderberg views the President as a monarch -- someone who can issue "orders" that must be obeyed, even when, as she acknowledges, the "orders" are illegal. That just isn't how our country works and it never was. We don't have a King who can order people to break the law....
Senate Approves Bill to Broaden Wiretap Powers The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government’s surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues. The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. The vote came two and a half years after public disclosure of the wiretapping program set off a fierce national debate over the balance between protecting the country from another terrorist strike and ensuring civil liberties. The final outcome in Congress, which opponents of the surveillance measure had conceded for weeks, seemed almost anticlimactic in contrast. Mr. Bush, appearing in the Rose Garden just after his return from Japan, called the vote “long overdue.” He promised to sign the measure into law quickly, saying it was critical to national security and showed that “even in an election year, we can come together and get important pieces of legislation passed.”....
Barack Obama Breaks Promise, Flip Flops, and supports Telco's Today, Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama voted for H.R.6304, which amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (F.I.S.A). In doing so he voted to give telecommunication providers immunity against civil damages that they might incur in the course of enabling the government to execute wiretaps and other types of electronic surveillance. He did so, after an amendment to the bill that would have stripped out the immunity provision, S.Amdt. 5064, was defeated 32-66. In voting for the bill, Obama acted in direct contradiction to his earlier statements. In 2007 Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman, said "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." The original F.I.S.A statute was passed in 1978 in order to protect civil liberties against overly expansive government surveillance, and had clear penalties of $100 per person, per day, plus punitive damages, for telecommunications companies that conducted electronic surveillance without judicial oversight. Given that each day tens of millions of people have their data go across the networks of some of the larger telcos, the risk that these companies faced by working with the government on extra-judicial wiretaps was extreme. In giving companies that work with the government immunity from these penalties, H.R. 6304, and Barack Obama who voted for it, just took away the only reason stopping AT&T, Verizon, and others from helping the government use extra-judicial wiretaps. In voting for the bill, Obama not only helped the telco?s, but also broke his promise to protect the American people from expansive government surveillance....
New York Moves To Defend Gun Law In a sign that federal courts here in New York will defend New York City's restrictive gun regulations, a judge is allowing the city to strip a disabled Vietnam War veteran of his gun license. The decision, handed down this week, is likely the first court ruling to deal with New York's gun-permitting scheme since the Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment gives citizens an individual right to keep a gun at home for self-defense. The veteran who lost his gun license, Dominick DiNapoli, said the Supreme Court's decision ought to require that he gets back his gun permit. "Who needs a gun more than someone like me, who is disabled and can't physically defend his home?" Mr. DiNapoli said in an interview. The court decision, by Judge William Pauley III of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, does not mention the Second Amendment and defers entirely to the New York City Police Department's permitting process. New York's gun-licensing system is expected to come under challenge soon on allegations that it restricts law-abiding citizens from keeping guns at home for self-defense....
This is the U.S. on drugs The United States' so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America. The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind. The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They are making billions of dollars every year -- tax free. The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal drugs. Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been proved not to work....
The political establishment and telecom immunity -- why it matters Nancy Soderberg was deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. Today, she has an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times defending the FISA bill and telecom amnesty. The entire Op-Ed is just a regurgitation of the same trite, vague talking points which the political elite are using to justify this bill, accompanied by the standard invocations of "National Security" which our Foreign Policy elite condescendingly toss around to justify whatever policy they're claiming is necessary to protect us. But it's the language that she uses -- and the brazenness of the lying (and that's what it is) to justify this bill -- that's notable here...I would really like to know where people like Soderberg get the idea that the U.S. President has the power to "order" private citizens to do anything, let alone to break the law, as even she admits happened here. I'm asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse -- that the President can give "orders" to private citizens that must be complied with? Soderberg views the President as a monarch -- someone who can issue "orders" that must be obeyed, even when, as she acknowledges, the "orders" are illegal. That just isn't how our country works and it never was. We don't have a King who can order people to break the law....
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
G-8 Approves Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions The United States joined its allies Tuesday in committing for the first time to try to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, as the Group of Eight major industrialized nations approved a plan aimed at spurring a new worldwide treaty to limit global warming. In a statement, President Bush and the other G-8 leaders said they would work with other countries to "consider and adopt" the 50-percent reductions as part of a new United Nations treaty to be negotiated in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. The leaders made it clear in their statement that they expect such developing countries as China and India, whose economies are also major polluters, to play a role in reducing emissions. Meeting on the scenic Japanese island of Hokkaido, the leaders also promised to make more immediate cuts in emissions over the next two decades, though they did not offer a numerical target. They indicated that they intend to write into the new treaty language that would bind them to "implement ambitious economy-wide mid-term goals in order to achieve absolute emissions reductions." But it was the global warming language that appeared to attract the most attention here as a sign of how far Bush would go on the issue before he leaves office in seven months. The statement represents Bush's most serious commitment to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions found to be contributing to a dangerous warming of the Earth. Bush also pressed the G-8 to say developing countries must participate in the effort to make cuts -- although perhaps not to the same degree as fully developed countries. Still, the language drew deep disapproval from environmental groups, who said the targets were too weak or ambiguous and accused the G-8 leaders of papering over fundamental differences so as to render the summit language meaningless. Critics said real progress must await a new U.S. administration that they expect will be open to larger cuts in emissions than Bush will consider....
G-8, CO2 And The Garden Of Eden Even as the G-8 Summit announced plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, researchers at the Johann Heinrich von Theunen Institute in Germany find the rise in carbon dioxide levels may in fact be a boon to plant life on Earth. The Theunen Institute, which has been monitoring the phenomenon since 1999, trained CO2 jets on plants, raising CO2 concentrations in the air around them to 550 parts per million (ppm), significantly higher than today's levels. The researchers announced on Tuesday that such increased exposure to carbon dioxide appears to boost crop yields. "Output increased by about 10% for barley, beets and wheat" when the plants were exposed to the higher levels, according to the Institute's Hans-Joachim Weigel. That the Earth is getting greener due to higher CO2 levels was confirmed recently by satellite data analyzed by scientists Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the earth's vegetation increased by a whopping 6.2%. "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates," explained Lawrence Solomon in a June 7 article on the Running/Nemani findings in Canada's Financial Post. "Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."....
Ex-EPA aide tells of White House censorship Democrats have long alleged that Vice President Dick Cheney played a key backstage role in thwarting U.S. efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but they have had little evidence. Until now. Jason Burnett, a senior official with the Environmental Protection Agency who resigned June 9, charges that Cheney's office urged him to delete or water down testimony to Congress by top administration officials on the impacts of global warming. Burnett also said the White House blocked an effort by the EPA to issue an endangerment finding, a conclusion that climate change is a threat to the public. Under a Supreme Court ruling last year, the finding would have forced the administration to cut emissions. California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who held a news conference with Burnett on Tuesday, said the revelations show that the White House conspired to muzzle its own scientists' findings on climate change to delay action on regulations....
Endangered Species Protections Sought for U.S. Wolverines The United States must protect endangered wildlife from global warming and other threats within its own borders and not rely on other countries, such as Canada, to do the job, according to a coalition of 10 conservation organizations that announced today its intention to file a legal challenge against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Service violated the Endangered Species Act, say the groups, when it refused to protect wolverines in the United States on the grounds that a healthy population persists in Canada. The Service’s decision is its latest justification for denying long-overdue protections to this imperiled animal — protections that were first petitioned for nearly a decade ago. Earlier this year, the agency conceded that if nothing is done, “the [lower 48 wolverine] population will be at risk of extinction." Yet it decided not to take steps to protect the species. According to the coalition, the fewer than 500 wolverines left in the lower 48 represent a distinct population that is only tenuously linked to the Canadian population of wolverines and in desperate need of habitat and other protections....
Agency wants to shut out Salt Lake, Utah counties Las Vegas water officials are trying to keep Salt Lake and Utah counties out of the loop during an upcoming hearing on the proposal to take 50,000 acre-feet of water annually from Snake Valley - despite the counties' concerns that the drawdown could provoke dust-bowl conditions on the Wasatch Front. The Southern Nevada Water Authority has filed an objection with Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor to requests for "interested party" status for the counties, three tribal bands, the Central Nevada Water Authority, conservation groups, businesses and residents. The move appears to be a new, aggressive tactic to push aside Utah concerns about what could happen to Snake Valley vegetation should the water table drop too low, and move quickly on a $3.5 billion, 285-mile pipeline project that would siphon water from an aquifer that lies under the two states for use in Las Vegas. "All this has happened rather rapidly," said Steve Erickson, a Utah spokesman for the Great Basin Water Network, one of the groups SNWA seeks to exclude. "They want to keep the public out of this process as much as possible."....
Ranchers get edict on Tomales Bay water quality West Marin ranchers in the Tomales Bay watershed must develop "ranch plans" by November 2009 informing state regulators how they intend to keep manure from washing into the bay. The California Regional Water Quality Control Board voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the directive, which has caused concern among West Marin ranchers. There is pressure on ranchers because, during heavy rains, waste from cattle washes down creeks that feed Tomales Bay, impairing water quality, according to the state. A primary focus of the directive is for ranch owners to keep cattle and their waste away from creeks by building fences and other barriers. The order is believed to be the first in the state designed to regulate ranches to protect water quality, water officials said. The directive affects ranches that are 50 acres or larger, which represent about 90 percent of the grazing in the Tomales Bay watershed. Officials estimate 150 ranches will have to develop ranch plans, and that the plans will cost each ranch about $46,000 to implement, according to the University of California Agricultural Extension in West Marin....
Proposed Texas regulations for wild hogs draw opposition New regulations proposed for handling feral hogs are drawing opposition from West Kerr ranchers and trappers. The new rules have good intentions — the control of disease — but some are misguided, local opponents say. West Kerr Rancher Teri Hawkins said feral hogs reproduce rapidly and damage property, livestock and wildlife. She has a petition signed by almost 100 ranchers to date opposing new regulations that impose added costs on trappers. “If they impose these rules to where it’s not feasible for these trappers to trap them, they’re going to quit and then it’s just going to get really out of hand,” Hawkins said. The hogs are a boon for hunters, she said, but something needs to be done to reduce their numbers. The proposed regulations deal with holding, transporting and the disposition of live wild hogs that have been captured, to reduce the chances of spreading disease to domestic swine herds to cattle and other livestock....
It's All Trew: Vigilantes were the law in frontier towns The military post of Fort Griffin was established by the U.S. Army in July 1867 along the banks of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River. Named for General Charles Griffin, the site was deemed necessary to protect settlers from Indians and several outlaw bands operating in the area. Later, it also served as a supply depot for the southern expeditions sent to the Great Plains during the Red River wars. With the huge southern herd of buffalo ranging in the area, the new garrison gave protection to large numbers of hunters migrating down from Kansas where the Republican herd had been decimated. Proceeds from sales of hide and meat hunting, the garrison payroll of Fort Griffin and additional money spent by trail herds moving north to Kansas brought gamblers, criminals, shady ladies and bunko artists by the droves into the new town. This so-called civilization settled in a nearby ramshackle town called "The Flats" made up almost entirely of saloons and bordellos. Many occupants lived in tents and dugouts and every form of lawlessness known existed within its city limits. The military had no jurisdiction over civilians and there was simply no law available because the town was not organized enough to collect taxes for salaries for lawmen. Crime ran rampant, and citizens finally saw something had to be done....
G-8, CO2 And The Garden Of Eden Even as the G-8 Summit announced plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, researchers at the Johann Heinrich von Theunen Institute in Germany find the rise in carbon dioxide levels may in fact be a boon to plant life on Earth. The Theunen Institute, which has been monitoring the phenomenon since 1999, trained CO2 jets on plants, raising CO2 concentrations in the air around them to 550 parts per million (ppm), significantly higher than today's levels. The researchers announced on Tuesday that such increased exposure to carbon dioxide appears to boost crop yields. "Output increased by about 10% for barley, beets and wheat" when the plants were exposed to the higher levels, according to the Institute's Hans-Joachim Weigel. That the Earth is getting greener due to higher CO2 levels was confirmed recently by satellite data analyzed by scientists Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the earth's vegetation increased by a whopping 6.2%. "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates," explained Lawrence Solomon in a June 7 article on the Running/Nemani findings in Canada's Financial Post. "Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."....
Ex-EPA aide tells of White House censorship Democrats have long alleged that Vice President Dick Cheney played a key backstage role in thwarting U.S. efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but they have had little evidence. Until now. Jason Burnett, a senior official with the Environmental Protection Agency who resigned June 9, charges that Cheney's office urged him to delete or water down testimony to Congress by top administration officials on the impacts of global warming. Burnett also said the White House blocked an effort by the EPA to issue an endangerment finding, a conclusion that climate change is a threat to the public. Under a Supreme Court ruling last year, the finding would have forced the administration to cut emissions. California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who held a news conference with Burnett on Tuesday, said the revelations show that the White House conspired to muzzle its own scientists' findings on climate change to delay action on regulations....
Endangered Species Protections Sought for U.S. Wolverines The United States must protect endangered wildlife from global warming and other threats within its own borders and not rely on other countries, such as Canada, to do the job, according to a coalition of 10 conservation organizations that announced today its intention to file a legal challenge against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Service violated the Endangered Species Act, say the groups, when it refused to protect wolverines in the United States on the grounds that a healthy population persists in Canada. The Service’s decision is its latest justification for denying long-overdue protections to this imperiled animal — protections that were first petitioned for nearly a decade ago. Earlier this year, the agency conceded that if nothing is done, “the [lower 48 wolverine] population will be at risk of extinction." Yet it decided not to take steps to protect the species. According to the coalition, the fewer than 500 wolverines left in the lower 48 represent a distinct population that is only tenuously linked to the Canadian population of wolverines and in desperate need of habitat and other protections....
Agency wants to shut out Salt Lake, Utah counties Las Vegas water officials are trying to keep Salt Lake and Utah counties out of the loop during an upcoming hearing on the proposal to take 50,000 acre-feet of water annually from Snake Valley - despite the counties' concerns that the drawdown could provoke dust-bowl conditions on the Wasatch Front. The Southern Nevada Water Authority has filed an objection with Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor to requests for "interested party" status for the counties, three tribal bands, the Central Nevada Water Authority, conservation groups, businesses and residents. The move appears to be a new, aggressive tactic to push aside Utah concerns about what could happen to Snake Valley vegetation should the water table drop too low, and move quickly on a $3.5 billion, 285-mile pipeline project that would siphon water from an aquifer that lies under the two states for use in Las Vegas. "All this has happened rather rapidly," said Steve Erickson, a Utah spokesman for the Great Basin Water Network, one of the groups SNWA seeks to exclude. "They want to keep the public out of this process as much as possible."....
Ranchers get edict on Tomales Bay water quality West Marin ranchers in the Tomales Bay watershed must develop "ranch plans" by November 2009 informing state regulators how they intend to keep manure from washing into the bay. The California Regional Water Quality Control Board voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the directive, which has caused concern among West Marin ranchers. There is pressure on ranchers because, during heavy rains, waste from cattle washes down creeks that feed Tomales Bay, impairing water quality, according to the state. A primary focus of the directive is for ranch owners to keep cattle and their waste away from creeks by building fences and other barriers. The order is believed to be the first in the state designed to regulate ranches to protect water quality, water officials said. The directive affects ranches that are 50 acres or larger, which represent about 90 percent of the grazing in the Tomales Bay watershed. Officials estimate 150 ranches will have to develop ranch plans, and that the plans will cost each ranch about $46,000 to implement, according to the University of California Agricultural Extension in West Marin....
Proposed Texas regulations for wild hogs draw opposition New regulations proposed for handling feral hogs are drawing opposition from West Kerr ranchers and trappers. The new rules have good intentions — the control of disease — but some are misguided, local opponents say. West Kerr Rancher Teri Hawkins said feral hogs reproduce rapidly and damage property, livestock and wildlife. She has a petition signed by almost 100 ranchers to date opposing new regulations that impose added costs on trappers. “If they impose these rules to where it’s not feasible for these trappers to trap them, they’re going to quit and then it’s just going to get really out of hand,” Hawkins said. The hogs are a boon for hunters, she said, but something needs to be done to reduce their numbers. The proposed regulations deal with holding, transporting and the disposition of live wild hogs that have been captured, to reduce the chances of spreading disease to domestic swine herds to cattle and other livestock....
It's All Trew: Vigilantes were the law in frontier towns The military post of Fort Griffin was established by the U.S. Army in July 1867 along the banks of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River. Named for General Charles Griffin, the site was deemed necessary to protect settlers from Indians and several outlaw bands operating in the area. Later, it also served as a supply depot for the southern expeditions sent to the Great Plains during the Red River wars. With the huge southern herd of buffalo ranging in the area, the new garrison gave protection to large numbers of hunters migrating down from Kansas where the Republican herd had been decimated. Proceeds from sales of hide and meat hunting, the garrison payroll of Fort Griffin and additional money spent by trail herds moving north to Kansas brought gamblers, criminals, shady ladies and bunko artists by the droves into the new town. This so-called civilization settled in a nearby ramshackle town called "The Flats" made up almost entirely of saloons and bordellos. Many occupants lived in tents and dugouts and every form of lawlessness known existed within its city limits. The military had no jurisdiction over civilians and there was simply no law available because the town was not organized enough to collect taxes for salaries for lawmen. Crime ran rampant, and citizens finally saw something had to be done....
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
ProRodeo Hall of Famer Clem McSpadden dies at 82
Clem McSpadden, a member of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and an immensely popular political figure in his native Oklahoma, died at 10:51 p.m. July 7 at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after a lengthy struggle with cancer.
McSpadden, of Chelsea, Okla., was general manager of the National Finals Rodeo for 18 years in Oklahoma City (1967-84), a past president of the Rodeo Cowboys Association and one of the sport's legendary announcers for more than half a century. He was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1990.
"The entire Western world has lost a friend with the passing of Clem McSpadden," said Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Chairman of the Board Keith Martin. "I’ve known Clem all my life, and no one knew rodeo better or loved it more than he did. This is a sad day for our sport, but the legacy of Clem McSpadden will live on forever."
As an announcer, McSpadden worked the National Finals Steer Roping (NFSR) a record 27 times from 1963 to 2000. He announced rodeos in 41 states, Mexico and Canada, where he became the first American to serve as the voice of the Calagary Stampede and the Canadian Finals Rodeo.
McSpadden conducted the opening for the "Command Performance" Rodeo for President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and was the American announcer chosen for the U.S. versus Canada Rodeo during the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary.
In 1986, McSpadden was named PRCA Announcer of the Year and Cowboy Hall of Fame Man of the Year.
"Clem was the godfather of all of ’em," said fellow ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee Roy Cooper. "He was the voice of rodeo. He loved roping, and he saw them all -- from Toots Mansfield, Jim Bob Altizer and Dean Oliver to Joe Beaver, Fred Whitfield and Cody Ohl. Clem McSpadden has done more for our sport than any other individual. He always worked hard, and he always made a difference in everything he did. Clem was a man who got things done. He was a good friend to all cowboys, and was a real blessing in my life. Now Clem’s up there where the great ones roam, with Sonny Davis, Freckles Brown and Jim Shoulders."
A tribute to McSpadden was already being discussed for the 50th annual Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, Dec. 4-13 in Las Vegas, and WNFR general manager Shawn Davis is going ahead with plans for honoring a man Davis describes as "an icon in our sport."
"This is definitely a loss," Davis said. "There are very few people who you can say really made rodeo, and he is one of them. The NFR is the most stable thing in rodeo, and he played a very instrumental role in getting the NFR up to that next plateau, carrying the sport with it."
A graduate of Oklahoma State University, McSpadden served in the U.S. Navy (1944-46) before launching himself into the dual careers of politician and rodeo announcer. He was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 1954 and served until 1972, twice being elected president pro tempore; he was the first to serve consecutive terms.
In 1972, McSpadden was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and became the first freshman to serve on the prestigious Rules Committee before launching an unsuccessful campaign for the governorship of Oklahoma, losing to David Boren.
The Chelsea post office was named in McSpadden's honor in January.
"Clem McSpadden was a cherished mentor and adviser to me and so many other elected leaders across Oklahoma," U.S. Representative Dan Boren (D-Okla.) told the Tulsa World. "He was a state legislator, U.S. congressman, businessman, rancher, long-time rodeo announcer and always remained a devoted public servant to his community, state and country."
A moment of silence for McSpadden will be observed tonight (July 8) on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Funeral arrangements are being handled by Chelsea Funeral Home and Crematory (www.mmsfuneralhomes.com/mms_funeral_homes.asp).
McSpadden is survived by his wife, Donna, his daughter, Kay and his sons, Bart and Paul.
Clem McSpadden, a member of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and an immensely popular political figure in his native Oklahoma, died at 10:51 p.m. July 7 at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after a lengthy struggle with cancer.
McSpadden, of Chelsea, Okla., was general manager of the National Finals Rodeo for 18 years in Oklahoma City (1967-84), a past president of the Rodeo Cowboys Association and one of the sport's legendary announcers for more than half a century. He was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1990.
"The entire Western world has lost a friend with the passing of Clem McSpadden," said Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Chairman of the Board Keith Martin. "I’ve known Clem all my life, and no one knew rodeo better or loved it more than he did. This is a sad day for our sport, but the legacy of Clem McSpadden will live on forever."
As an announcer, McSpadden worked the National Finals Steer Roping (NFSR) a record 27 times from 1963 to 2000. He announced rodeos in 41 states, Mexico and Canada, where he became the first American to serve as the voice of the Calagary Stampede and the Canadian Finals Rodeo.
McSpadden conducted the opening for the "Command Performance" Rodeo for President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and was the American announcer chosen for the U.S. versus Canada Rodeo during the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary.
In 1986, McSpadden was named PRCA Announcer of the Year and Cowboy Hall of Fame Man of the Year.
"Clem was the godfather of all of ’em," said fellow ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee Roy Cooper. "He was the voice of rodeo. He loved roping, and he saw them all -- from Toots Mansfield, Jim Bob Altizer and Dean Oliver to Joe Beaver, Fred Whitfield and Cody Ohl. Clem McSpadden has done more for our sport than any other individual. He always worked hard, and he always made a difference in everything he did. Clem was a man who got things done. He was a good friend to all cowboys, and was a real blessing in my life. Now Clem’s up there where the great ones roam, with Sonny Davis, Freckles Brown and Jim Shoulders."
A tribute to McSpadden was already being discussed for the 50th annual Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, Dec. 4-13 in Las Vegas, and WNFR general manager Shawn Davis is going ahead with plans for honoring a man Davis describes as "an icon in our sport."
"This is definitely a loss," Davis said. "There are very few people who you can say really made rodeo, and he is one of them. The NFR is the most stable thing in rodeo, and he played a very instrumental role in getting the NFR up to that next plateau, carrying the sport with it."
A graduate of Oklahoma State University, McSpadden served in the U.S. Navy (1944-46) before launching himself into the dual careers of politician and rodeo announcer. He was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 1954 and served until 1972, twice being elected president pro tempore; he was the first to serve consecutive terms.
In 1972, McSpadden was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and became the first freshman to serve on the prestigious Rules Committee before launching an unsuccessful campaign for the governorship of Oklahoma, losing to David Boren.
The Chelsea post office was named in McSpadden's honor in January.
"Clem McSpadden was a cherished mentor and adviser to me and so many other elected leaders across Oklahoma," U.S. Representative Dan Boren (D-Okla.) told the Tulsa World. "He was a state legislator, U.S. congressman, businessman, rancher, long-time rodeo announcer and always remained a devoted public servant to his community, state and country."
A moment of silence for McSpadden will be observed tonight (July 8) on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Funeral arrangements are being handled by Chelsea Funeral Home and Crematory (www.mmsfuneralhomes.com/mms_funeral_homes.asp).
McSpadden is survived by his wife, Donna, his daughter, Kay and his sons, Bart and Paul.
Life After Kelo: Looking Back and Forward It’s one of the most hated Supreme Court decisions in decades, and it happened just three years ago. I’m talking about Kelo vs. New London, where a bare majority of the justices decided that it was OK for local governments looking to increase tax revenue to take land from their citizens and give it to a developer. Now, the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution permits the use of eminent domain for “public use.” But over the decades, the courts had expanded the meaning of “public use” from takings for roads, schools and hospitals—things anyone can use or benefit from—to takings for “public benefit.” That meant urban renewal efforts and other plans for economic development, the argument being that eventually the public would benefit from the increased tax revenue. Kelo took that a step further and said that governments can take land from a private citizen if the government thinks the land would be more beneficial to the public in the hands of another private entity. The decision outraged even Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote in her stinging dissent: “To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings ‘for public use’ is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property—and thereby effectively to erase the words ‘for public use’ from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” Appropriately, the aftermath of Kelo in New London itself shows the importance of the Constitutional limit on eminent domain and the absurdity of trying to determine “public benefit” based on predictions of future revenue. Three years after winning the right to take the property of Susette Kelo and her neighbors, there hasn’t been any public benefit in any form from the land that city officials took. In fact, the city doesn’t even know what to do with the land now that officials’ handpicked developer couldn’t muster the financing necessary to build anything....
Ways and Means Over four decades, Russell Means has led an insurrection, posed for Andy Warhol, aspired to be an assassin and been arguably the most influential public figure in fighting racism against the American Indian. Now, in his quest to start his own country, the road to success might run down Embassy Row. Means's life has been something like a Johnny Cash song. He has done prison time for inciting a riot, and has been stabbed, accused of murder, hit by two bullets and divorced four times. Long ago, he was a fancy dance champion and a rodeo star. Even now, at age 68, he remains a forceful presence -- a warrior. On this visit to the nation's capital, Means was, per usual, fighting the United States of America. Along with three other Lakota Indians, he had recently severed his ties with the United States and declared himself a founding member of a new, autonomous nation -- the Republic of Lakotah. Unsanctioned by their tribal government, and speaking only for themselves, the dissidents claimed dominion over more than 93,000 square miles of traditional Lakota territory -- a continuous chunk of sparsely populated dry land that includes parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming....
Agricultural Policy: The Seen and the Unseen The full long-run effects of any government program are never known in advance. To illustrate, consider U.S. farm policies. A host of “emergency” agricultural programs were enacted by President Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Although the particulars of these programs have undergone numerous changes since then, the fundamental functions and impacts of many of them remain intact even though economic conditions bear little resemblance to those of the 1930s. The New Deal programs have proven to be not only persistent, but also profligate and regressive. In recent years, more than half of all direct government farm payments have gone to the 10 percent of farms with incomes of $250,000 or more. This is not likely to change in the new farm bill. Farmers, if married, will be eligible for subsidies if their annual incomes are as high as $1.5 million. Perennial government aid to farmers with such income levels was not foreseen when farm programs were initiated! The unforeseen consequences of U.S. farm policy may be even more important in programs for specific crops. For example, the price support program for sugar restricts imports and (in some recent years) domestic production. The program increases the domestic sugar price, often to levels more than double the world price. When the sugar program began, who could have foreseen that a major corporation, Archer-Daniels-Midland Corporation (ADM), would become a major beneficiary? Although ADM does not produce sugar, it has reaped huge benefits from artificially high U.S. sugar prices, which increase demand for (and thus increase the price of) sugar substitutes. ADM is a major producer of high-fructose corn syrup, a widely used sugar substitute whose production became economical largely because of the price umbrella offered by the sugar program....
Animal-Rights Farm Should apes be treated like people? Under a resolution headed for passage in the Spanish parliament, respecting the personal rights of "our non-human brothers" won't just be a good idea. It'll be the law. The resolution, approved last week by a parliamentary committee with broad support, urges the government to implement the agenda of the Great Ape Project, an organization whose founding declaration says apes "may not be killed" or "arbitrarily deprived of their liberty." No more routine confinement. According to Reuters, the proposal would commit the government to ending involuntary use of apes in circuses, TV ads, and dangerous experiments. Proponents hail the resolution as the first crack in the "species barrier." Peter Singer, the philosopher who co-founded GAP, puts it this way: "There is no sound moral reason why possession of basic rights should be limited to members of a particular species." If aliens or monkeys are shown to have moral or intellectual abilities similar to ours, we should treat them like people....
Republican buoyed by calls for energy exploration A top U.S. Republican cited on Monday a surge in support among liberals for increased energy exploration as a reason why the Democratic-led Congress may act soon to allow expanded drilling in the United States. President George W. Bush and many Republicans in Congress support opening up drilling as a way of taming high gasoline prices, which have hit a record $4.11 a gallon. Democrats in Congress, however, have been looking at controlling oil speculation as well advocating greater conservation. "There's clearly a dramatic shift across the ideological divide in America in favor of producing more energy here at home," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. "I can't imagine that the majority (Democrats in Congress) is going to ignore that indefinitely," McConnell added....
New Cars in California Must Display Global Warming Score California is making it mandatory for cars to be labeled with global warming scores, figures that take into account emissions from vehicle use and fuel production.The law requiring the labels goes into effect at the start of next year for all 2009 model cars, though its expected the labels will be popping up on cars in the coming months.The labeling law forces cars for sale to display a global warming score, on a scale of one to 10, which is based on how vehicles in the same model year compare to one another. The higher the score, the cleaner a car is. The score takes into account emissions related to production of fuel for each vehicle as well as the direct emissions from vehicles.The score will be displayed next to the already-required smog score, which also rates cars one to 10 for how many smog-forming emissions they emit. For both scores, an average vehicle will have a score of five.California is the first state of pass such as law, and a similar law will take effect in New York for 2010 model year vehicles....
Official: Feds should consider Rainbow Family ban The U.S. Forest Service should consider banning the Rainbow Family from Forest Service land after a confrontation last week led to the arrest of at least eight people, a top agency official said Monday. John Twiss, director of Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations in Washington, D.C., said he was among the officers who responded when Rainbow Family members threw sticks and rocks at federal officers. The confrontation started when officers tried to arrest a member of the Rainbow group for an alleged drug offense. Twiss characterized the Rainbow participants as "non-compromising," "arrogant" and "anti-authority." He said this year's episode and other disturbances at recent gatherings should prompt a review of whether Rainbow Family events are allowed. "I think we have to have that discussion within the agency," Twiss said. "We spend an awful lot of time and effort on these people. And frankly, the taxpayers deserve better."....
Montana greens to loggers: Come back! For decades now, the green extreme has argued the industries that develop the nation's natural resources for commercial use ought to be forced off the West's "public" lands. And they didn't much care which tactic did the job. If sawmills could be shut down and whole towns thrown out of work to supposedly "protect" the spotted owl or some other creature -- or even some small local populace of a species found in abundance elsewhere -- that effort was "good to go." In Missoula, Mont., the environmental extremists appear to have pretty much won that battle. The Plum Creek Timber Company still owns 8 million acres of mostly forested land nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana. But they don't cut trees on a lot of that land now. Instead, the former logging company has turned into "a real estate investment trust," The Washington Post reports. And what do real estate investment trusts do with forested land if it's no longer judged politically or economically rewarding to cut the trees for lumber? Are the environmentalists happy that they've finally convinced the loggers to do something else with those lands? What do you think?....
Public prompts changes in roadless plan Nearly 140,000 people have weighed in since January on a proposed rule for managing the more than 9.3 million acres of roadless backcountry in Idaho and the U.S. Forest Service says the comments have prompted it to make changes in the proposal. The Forest Service released a summary Thursday of public comments collected during a four-month period that ended in April. It's all part of the lengthy process of deciding how Idaho's roadless areas and other untouched lands will be managed, preserved or opened to logging and other uses. Changes to the proposed rule, stemming from public concerns, include better definitions of where road construction and tree removal is allowed in the case of threatening fire activity, said Brad Gilbert, the Forest Service's team leader on the proposed Idaho roadless plan. Other changes included strengthening protections on lands in the Boulder and White Clouds mountains of central Idaho, Gilbert said, as well as loosening restrictions in forests where road-building and tree removal has been allowed in the past. "We're making quite a few modifications to the rule based on those comments," Gilbert said....
Preparedness under fire: Federal firefighting system understaffed, report shows The federal firefighting system is "imploding" in California, due to poor spending decisions and high job vacancy rates, as the region struggles to keep pace with what looks to be a historic fire season, a firefighters' advocacy group charges. As a result, the firefighters say, small fires have exploded into extended, multimillion-dollar conflagrations because the U.S. Forest Service has been unable to contain them during the early "initial attack" stage. "The federal fire system is imploding in California. They are crossing their fingers and just hoping they get through the season without a disaster," said Casey Judd, who represents government firefighters from five agencies through the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association. As the "sheer number" of California wildfires pushed the nation to its worst measurable level of wildland-fire preparedness last week — Level 5 — a national multiagency coordinating group announced in a memo Monday that firefighter staffing levels in Northern California "cannot be maintained." Of all the agencies battling California wildland fires — including the region's two largest, the Indians and Basin fires in Monterey County's Los Padres National Forest — it is U.S. Forest Service crews that suffer the highest vacancy rates, entering this year's season with an estimated shortage of 500 firefighters, Judd said....
Rodent plague threatens ferrets The area of plague-infected black-tailed prairie dogs has more than doubled in western South Dakota since mid-May, and the disease could begin to seriously hurt the state's population of endangered black-footed ferrets. Plague is almost always fatal to infected prairie dogs and has killed a large number of the rodents, wildlife experts said. Black-footed ferrets hunt and dine almost exclusively on prairie dogs. "When ferrets eat an infected prairie dog, they'll get a massive dose" of plague, said Kevin Atchley, Wall District ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. "It's likely that some ferrets have perished." The infected area has bloomed from 4,000 acres to 9,100 acres as of last week, Atchley said. Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease, also known as bubonic plague, spread through the West after it appeared in San Francisco in 1902....
Enviros seek options to fight Roan drilling As the clock counts down for the planned lease of the top of the Roan Plateau for natural gas drilling, environmentalists are pinning their hopes on the courts, Congress and administrative actions to delay or block it. Gov. Bill Ritter, who has criticized the Bureau of Land Management plan and offered his own alternative, said his office does not plan to protest the Aug. 14 leases formally. Ritter said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., is working on including his plan in the defense authorization bill pending in the Senate. Salazar, who also attended the event, confirmed that he is trying to submit legislation to make Ritter’s plan law before the lease sale. Environmentalists say none of those plans goes far enough to preserve the surface of the Roan Plateau, which has become a key battleground in the fight between energy development and environmental protection on public lands in the West. They are preparing to file a lawsuit arguing that the BLM failed to address the environmental and fiscal impacts of its plan adequately, and will ask a U.S. district court in Denver to block the leases until the lawsuit is resolved. Environmentalists are also planning to file a written protest of all the leases on top of the Roan, a move likely to delay any drilling, if not the actual issuing of the leases. According to BLM rules, no leasing can take place until the protests are resolved....
Suit attacks relocation effort Two environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit against the Army and the Bureau of Land Management alleging that proper environmental studies were not conducted before nearly 800 desert tortoises were relocated for Fort Irwin's expansion. The Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors, which filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, allege the federally endangered tortoises were moved to inferior habitat that included numerous roads and pockets of diseased tortoises. They also allege that illegal off-roading and dumping occurs at the site east of the Calico Mountains and south of Coyote Lake. "It's time to overhaul Fort Irwin's disastrous tortoise relocation program," said Ileene Anderson, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, in a news release. "Though we can't stop the fort's expansion, we can ensure that the relocation of these rare animals is done right." The National Training Center and Fort Irwin initiated the tortoise relocation efforts in order to expand its borders to train soldiers being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress authorized the expansion in 2001, and the Army has spent more than $8.5 million on research and relocation of the tortoises....
Noisy national parks A lot of us seek out national parks to absorb that careful balance of natural sounds and breathtaking quiet. And even though the parks get more popular every year, we can usually find our silent spot — at least until a jet comes roaring overhead or an engine hums in the distance. But we might have to get used to it: America's flagship national parks are getting louder and louder, according to the Park Service's "natural sounds" office. Yes, the National Park Service actually has a "natural sounds" office, based in Ft. Collins, CO, dedicated to preserving the natural noises of a park — like howling wolves, roaring waterfalls, and even music from sanctioned events. They've discovered intrusive noises are among the things that annoy national park visitors most, and noise becomes a central concern for issues like helicopter tours over the Grand Canyon or snowmobiles in Yellowstone. Extraneous noise also interferes with wildlife, making it harder for animals to hear predators and generally raising their stress levels. The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees maintains a list of particularly threatened parks....
National Park Service impresses online with WebRangers site The National Park Service is reaching out to kids with an innovative Web site that gets them excited about visiting our nation's parklands before they've even left home. WebRangers, a program managed by the NPS Division of Interpretation and Education at http://www.nps.gov/webrangers/ is the recently added online companion to the Park Service's successful "Junior Ranger" program. Every year, over 450,000 children take part in Junior Ranger activities at one of the 290 national parks, where they can explore nature, learn about U.S. history, and take part in each park's special activities designed to really get their hands dirty. WebRangers enables children across the country and around the globe to explore the parks from the comfort of their couch---with the hope that they will be inspired to slip on a pair of hiking boots and go visit one....
Yellowstone fires 20 years later: National attention brought sensational coverage Twenty years ago, Bob Ekey couldn't believe what he was seeing on television. Just outside his room at the Three Bears Lodge in West Yellowstone, a CNN reporter was broadcasting live that ash from fires burning in Yellowstone National Park was falling as he spoke. It was snow. “I wanted to go out and tackle the guy,” said Ekey, a Billings Gazette reporter covering the 1988 fires. “He sensationalized an already sensational story.” Most of the fires started outside the park in May and June. Media interest in the fires was local. “This was a regional story with small national interest until it kicked into August,” said Al Nash, the Yellowstone National Park spokesman, who in 1988 was news director at a Billings television station. “The networks and big newspapers weren't here until August.” By that time, some of the park's treasured places, such as Old Faithful Inn, were threatened, and national news crews poured in. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis even made an appearance in West Yellowstone, declaring that the event was the only game in town. But according to accounts, some members of the national media were clueless about the restorative role of fire....
Yellowstone fires 20 years later: Back after the burn In a spot severely burned by the 1988 North Fork fire, a National Park Service interpretive sign notes that the area surrounding the boardwalk may be a meadow for decades. Instead, spring-green lodgepole pine trees up to 15 feet high have taken root across the hillside. The sign points out the misconceptions held by many after the 1988 fires burned almost one-third of Yellowstone National Park - that the landscape would take a long time to rejuvenate, that meadows might replace forests in some places and that some soils were so badly burned they were sterilized and no plants could take root. “There's just a lot of myth around the fires that's taken for truth,” said Don Despain, 67, a retired fire ecologist who worked in the park in 1988. “All of (the theories) have been proved wrong. By 1988, I knew that those were not true. The '81, '79 and '76 fires were just as hot as 1988.” During the summer of 1988, when 794,000 acres of Yellowstone burned, Despain was criticized for advocating fire as a natural part of the northern Rocky Mountains' ecology. He helped write Yellowstone's first fire management plan in 1972, which allowed naturally ignited fires to burn in two areas. By 1975, the policy was updated to allow natural fires in all but developed areas. “Fire in a forest that's dependent on fire, it's not destructive, it's recycling itself,” said Bob Barbee, Yellowstone superintendent in 1988. “It's a fact of life, like rain and sunshine.” Barbee wrote Yosemite National Park's first natural resource management plan, which included the use of prescribed fires, or fires set intentionally to burn fuels and reduce the risk of larger, more destructive blazes. Unfortunately for the Park Service, the summer of 1988 proved to be unusual. A dry spring was followed by a drier-than-usual July accompanied by lightning storms and high winds. Initially, lightning-caused fires were allowed to burn in remote areas, but by July 21, as seven fires burned in Yellowstone, federal officials ordered full suppression of all fires....
Yellowstone fires 20 years later: Foliage regrowth defied forecast Within days of the fires, new grasses and plants like fireweed had sprouted. Lodgepole pines - which produce conventional pine cones and also serotinous cones that release seeds only when exposed to great heat - dispersed from 15,000 to 2 million seeds per acre. An average of 2,000 to 12,000 later germinated in each acre. About 24 percent of the park's whitebark pine forest burned, but by 1995, whitebark pine seedlings had been found in every one of 275 study plots established to chart regrowth after the fire. “We were very concerned about the spread of non-native vegetation in the burned areas,” Renkin said. But besides Canada thistle - a temporary post-fire success thanks to its small, wind-borne seeds and deep roots - few invasive species took hold in significant numbers. That first winter was a stark, black-and-white portrait of burned trees and snow, Renkin said, but the following summer brought “the greatest wildflower show ever.” “Boom! The purple lupine came out. Then the daisies would come on,” he said. After widespread news reports on the fires, throngs of curious people showed up the next summer, and 1989 was the busiest year of the decade. Some predicted a grim future for the park, especially along a 660-acre site known as Blowdown, accessible from the road between Norris Junction and Canyon Village....
Ways and Means Over four decades, Russell Means has led an insurrection, posed for Andy Warhol, aspired to be an assassin and been arguably the most influential public figure in fighting racism against the American Indian. Now, in his quest to start his own country, the road to success might run down Embassy Row. Means's life has been something like a Johnny Cash song. He has done prison time for inciting a riot, and has been stabbed, accused of murder, hit by two bullets and divorced four times. Long ago, he was a fancy dance champion and a rodeo star. Even now, at age 68, he remains a forceful presence -- a warrior. On this visit to the nation's capital, Means was, per usual, fighting the United States of America. Along with three other Lakota Indians, he had recently severed his ties with the United States and declared himself a founding member of a new, autonomous nation -- the Republic of Lakotah. Unsanctioned by their tribal government, and speaking only for themselves, the dissidents claimed dominion over more than 93,000 square miles of traditional Lakota territory -- a continuous chunk of sparsely populated dry land that includes parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming....
Agricultural Policy: The Seen and the Unseen The full long-run effects of any government program are never known in advance. To illustrate, consider U.S. farm policies. A host of “emergency” agricultural programs were enacted by President Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Although the particulars of these programs have undergone numerous changes since then, the fundamental functions and impacts of many of them remain intact even though economic conditions bear little resemblance to those of the 1930s. The New Deal programs have proven to be not only persistent, but also profligate and regressive. In recent years, more than half of all direct government farm payments have gone to the 10 percent of farms with incomes of $250,000 or more. This is not likely to change in the new farm bill. Farmers, if married, will be eligible for subsidies if their annual incomes are as high as $1.5 million. Perennial government aid to farmers with such income levels was not foreseen when farm programs were initiated! The unforeseen consequences of U.S. farm policy may be even more important in programs for specific crops. For example, the price support program for sugar restricts imports and (in some recent years) domestic production. The program increases the domestic sugar price, often to levels more than double the world price. When the sugar program began, who could have foreseen that a major corporation, Archer-Daniels-Midland Corporation (ADM), would become a major beneficiary? Although ADM does not produce sugar, it has reaped huge benefits from artificially high U.S. sugar prices, which increase demand for (and thus increase the price of) sugar substitutes. ADM is a major producer of high-fructose corn syrup, a widely used sugar substitute whose production became economical largely because of the price umbrella offered by the sugar program....
Animal-Rights Farm Should apes be treated like people? Under a resolution headed for passage in the Spanish parliament, respecting the personal rights of "our non-human brothers" won't just be a good idea. It'll be the law. The resolution, approved last week by a parliamentary committee with broad support, urges the government to implement the agenda of the Great Ape Project, an organization whose founding declaration says apes "may not be killed" or "arbitrarily deprived of their liberty." No more routine confinement. According to Reuters, the proposal would commit the government to ending involuntary use of apes in circuses, TV ads, and dangerous experiments. Proponents hail the resolution as the first crack in the "species barrier." Peter Singer, the philosopher who co-founded GAP, puts it this way: "There is no sound moral reason why possession of basic rights should be limited to members of a particular species." If aliens or monkeys are shown to have moral or intellectual abilities similar to ours, we should treat them like people....
Republican buoyed by calls for energy exploration A top U.S. Republican cited on Monday a surge in support among liberals for increased energy exploration as a reason why the Democratic-led Congress may act soon to allow expanded drilling in the United States. President George W. Bush and many Republicans in Congress support opening up drilling as a way of taming high gasoline prices, which have hit a record $4.11 a gallon. Democrats in Congress, however, have been looking at controlling oil speculation as well advocating greater conservation. "There's clearly a dramatic shift across the ideological divide in America in favor of producing more energy here at home," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. "I can't imagine that the majority (Democrats in Congress) is going to ignore that indefinitely," McConnell added....
New Cars in California Must Display Global Warming Score California is making it mandatory for cars to be labeled with global warming scores, figures that take into account emissions from vehicle use and fuel production.The law requiring the labels goes into effect at the start of next year for all 2009 model cars, though its expected the labels will be popping up on cars in the coming months.The labeling law forces cars for sale to display a global warming score, on a scale of one to 10, which is based on how vehicles in the same model year compare to one another. The higher the score, the cleaner a car is. The score takes into account emissions related to production of fuel for each vehicle as well as the direct emissions from vehicles.The score will be displayed next to the already-required smog score, which also rates cars one to 10 for how many smog-forming emissions they emit. For both scores, an average vehicle will have a score of five.California is the first state of pass such as law, and a similar law will take effect in New York for 2010 model year vehicles....
Official: Feds should consider Rainbow Family ban The U.S. Forest Service should consider banning the Rainbow Family from Forest Service land after a confrontation last week led to the arrest of at least eight people, a top agency official said Monday. John Twiss, director of Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations in Washington, D.C., said he was among the officers who responded when Rainbow Family members threw sticks and rocks at federal officers. The confrontation started when officers tried to arrest a member of the Rainbow group for an alleged drug offense. Twiss characterized the Rainbow participants as "non-compromising," "arrogant" and "anti-authority." He said this year's episode and other disturbances at recent gatherings should prompt a review of whether Rainbow Family events are allowed. "I think we have to have that discussion within the agency," Twiss said. "We spend an awful lot of time and effort on these people. And frankly, the taxpayers deserve better."....
Montana greens to loggers: Come back! For decades now, the green extreme has argued the industries that develop the nation's natural resources for commercial use ought to be forced off the West's "public" lands. And they didn't much care which tactic did the job. If sawmills could be shut down and whole towns thrown out of work to supposedly "protect" the spotted owl or some other creature -- or even some small local populace of a species found in abundance elsewhere -- that effort was "good to go." In Missoula, Mont., the environmental extremists appear to have pretty much won that battle. The Plum Creek Timber Company still owns 8 million acres of mostly forested land nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana. But they don't cut trees on a lot of that land now. Instead, the former logging company has turned into "a real estate investment trust," The Washington Post reports. And what do real estate investment trusts do with forested land if it's no longer judged politically or economically rewarding to cut the trees for lumber? Are the environmentalists happy that they've finally convinced the loggers to do something else with those lands? What do you think?....
Public prompts changes in roadless plan Nearly 140,000 people have weighed in since January on a proposed rule for managing the more than 9.3 million acres of roadless backcountry in Idaho and the U.S. Forest Service says the comments have prompted it to make changes in the proposal. The Forest Service released a summary Thursday of public comments collected during a four-month period that ended in April. It's all part of the lengthy process of deciding how Idaho's roadless areas and other untouched lands will be managed, preserved or opened to logging and other uses. Changes to the proposed rule, stemming from public concerns, include better definitions of where road construction and tree removal is allowed in the case of threatening fire activity, said Brad Gilbert, the Forest Service's team leader on the proposed Idaho roadless plan. Other changes included strengthening protections on lands in the Boulder and White Clouds mountains of central Idaho, Gilbert said, as well as loosening restrictions in forests where road-building and tree removal has been allowed in the past. "We're making quite a few modifications to the rule based on those comments," Gilbert said....
Preparedness under fire: Federal firefighting system understaffed, report shows The federal firefighting system is "imploding" in California, due to poor spending decisions and high job vacancy rates, as the region struggles to keep pace with what looks to be a historic fire season, a firefighters' advocacy group charges. As a result, the firefighters say, small fires have exploded into extended, multimillion-dollar conflagrations because the U.S. Forest Service has been unable to contain them during the early "initial attack" stage. "The federal fire system is imploding in California. They are crossing their fingers and just hoping they get through the season without a disaster," said Casey Judd, who represents government firefighters from five agencies through the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association. As the "sheer number" of California wildfires pushed the nation to its worst measurable level of wildland-fire preparedness last week — Level 5 — a national multiagency coordinating group announced in a memo Monday that firefighter staffing levels in Northern California "cannot be maintained." Of all the agencies battling California wildland fires — including the region's two largest, the Indians and Basin fires in Monterey County's Los Padres National Forest — it is U.S. Forest Service crews that suffer the highest vacancy rates, entering this year's season with an estimated shortage of 500 firefighters, Judd said....
Rodent plague threatens ferrets The area of plague-infected black-tailed prairie dogs has more than doubled in western South Dakota since mid-May, and the disease could begin to seriously hurt the state's population of endangered black-footed ferrets. Plague is almost always fatal to infected prairie dogs and has killed a large number of the rodents, wildlife experts said. Black-footed ferrets hunt and dine almost exclusively on prairie dogs. "When ferrets eat an infected prairie dog, they'll get a massive dose" of plague, said Kevin Atchley, Wall District ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. "It's likely that some ferrets have perished." The infected area has bloomed from 4,000 acres to 9,100 acres as of last week, Atchley said. Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease, also known as bubonic plague, spread through the West after it appeared in San Francisco in 1902....
Enviros seek options to fight Roan drilling As the clock counts down for the planned lease of the top of the Roan Plateau for natural gas drilling, environmentalists are pinning their hopes on the courts, Congress and administrative actions to delay or block it. Gov. Bill Ritter, who has criticized the Bureau of Land Management plan and offered his own alternative, said his office does not plan to protest the Aug. 14 leases formally. Ritter said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., is working on including his plan in the defense authorization bill pending in the Senate. Salazar, who also attended the event, confirmed that he is trying to submit legislation to make Ritter’s plan law before the lease sale. Environmentalists say none of those plans goes far enough to preserve the surface of the Roan Plateau, which has become a key battleground in the fight between energy development and environmental protection on public lands in the West. They are preparing to file a lawsuit arguing that the BLM failed to address the environmental and fiscal impacts of its plan adequately, and will ask a U.S. district court in Denver to block the leases until the lawsuit is resolved. Environmentalists are also planning to file a written protest of all the leases on top of the Roan, a move likely to delay any drilling, if not the actual issuing of the leases. According to BLM rules, no leasing can take place until the protests are resolved....
Suit attacks relocation effort Two environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit against the Army and the Bureau of Land Management alleging that proper environmental studies were not conducted before nearly 800 desert tortoises were relocated for Fort Irwin's expansion. The Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors, which filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, allege the federally endangered tortoises were moved to inferior habitat that included numerous roads and pockets of diseased tortoises. They also allege that illegal off-roading and dumping occurs at the site east of the Calico Mountains and south of Coyote Lake. "It's time to overhaul Fort Irwin's disastrous tortoise relocation program," said Ileene Anderson, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, in a news release. "Though we can't stop the fort's expansion, we can ensure that the relocation of these rare animals is done right." The National Training Center and Fort Irwin initiated the tortoise relocation efforts in order to expand its borders to train soldiers being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress authorized the expansion in 2001, and the Army has spent more than $8.5 million on research and relocation of the tortoises....
Noisy national parks A lot of us seek out national parks to absorb that careful balance of natural sounds and breathtaking quiet. And even though the parks get more popular every year, we can usually find our silent spot — at least until a jet comes roaring overhead or an engine hums in the distance. But we might have to get used to it: America's flagship national parks are getting louder and louder, according to the Park Service's "natural sounds" office. Yes, the National Park Service actually has a "natural sounds" office, based in Ft. Collins, CO, dedicated to preserving the natural noises of a park — like howling wolves, roaring waterfalls, and even music from sanctioned events. They've discovered intrusive noises are among the things that annoy national park visitors most, and noise becomes a central concern for issues like helicopter tours over the Grand Canyon or snowmobiles in Yellowstone. Extraneous noise also interferes with wildlife, making it harder for animals to hear predators and generally raising their stress levels. The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees maintains a list of particularly threatened parks....
National Park Service impresses online with WebRangers site The National Park Service is reaching out to kids with an innovative Web site that gets them excited about visiting our nation's parklands before they've even left home. WebRangers, a program managed by the NPS Division of Interpretation and Education at http://www.nps.gov/webrangers/ is the recently added online companion to the Park Service's successful "Junior Ranger" program. Every year, over 450,000 children take part in Junior Ranger activities at one of the 290 national parks, where they can explore nature, learn about U.S. history, and take part in each park's special activities designed to really get their hands dirty. WebRangers enables children across the country and around the globe to explore the parks from the comfort of their couch---with the hope that they will be inspired to slip on a pair of hiking boots and go visit one....
Yellowstone fires 20 years later: National attention brought sensational coverage Twenty years ago, Bob Ekey couldn't believe what he was seeing on television. Just outside his room at the Three Bears Lodge in West Yellowstone, a CNN reporter was broadcasting live that ash from fires burning in Yellowstone National Park was falling as he spoke. It was snow. “I wanted to go out and tackle the guy,” said Ekey, a Billings Gazette reporter covering the 1988 fires. “He sensationalized an already sensational story.” Most of the fires started outside the park in May and June. Media interest in the fires was local. “This was a regional story with small national interest until it kicked into August,” said Al Nash, the Yellowstone National Park spokesman, who in 1988 was news director at a Billings television station. “The networks and big newspapers weren't here until August.” By that time, some of the park's treasured places, such as Old Faithful Inn, were threatened, and national news crews poured in. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis even made an appearance in West Yellowstone, declaring that the event was the only game in town. But according to accounts, some members of the national media were clueless about the restorative role of fire....
Yellowstone fires 20 years later: Back after the burn In a spot severely burned by the 1988 North Fork fire, a National Park Service interpretive sign notes that the area surrounding the boardwalk may be a meadow for decades. Instead, spring-green lodgepole pine trees up to 15 feet high have taken root across the hillside. The sign points out the misconceptions held by many after the 1988 fires burned almost one-third of Yellowstone National Park - that the landscape would take a long time to rejuvenate, that meadows might replace forests in some places and that some soils were so badly burned they were sterilized and no plants could take root. “There's just a lot of myth around the fires that's taken for truth,” said Don Despain, 67, a retired fire ecologist who worked in the park in 1988. “All of (the theories) have been proved wrong. By 1988, I knew that those were not true. The '81, '79 and '76 fires were just as hot as 1988.” During the summer of 1988, when 794,000 acres of Yellowstone burned, Despain was criticized for advocating fire as a natural part of the northern Rocky Mountains' ecology. He helped write Yellowstone's first fire management plan in 1972, which allowed naturally ignited fires to burn in two areas. By 1975, the policy was updated to allow natural fires in all but developed areas. “Fire in a forest that's dependent on fire, it's not destructive, it's recycling itself,” said Bob Barbee, Yellowstone superintendent in 1988. “It's a fact of life, like rain and sunshine.” Barbee wrote Yosemite National Park's first natural resource management plan, which included the use of prescribed fires, or fires set intentionally to burn fuels and reduce the risk of larger, more destructive blazes. Unfortunately for the Park Service, the summer of 1988 proved to be unusual. A dry spring was followed by a drier-than-usual July accompanied by lightning storms and high winds. Initially, lightning-caused fires were allowed to burn in remote areas, but by July 21, as seven fires burned in Yellowstone, federal officials ordered full suppression of all fires....
Yellowstone fires 20 years later: Foliage regrowth defied forecast Within days of the fires, new grasses and plants like fireweed had sprouted. Lodgepole pines - which produce conventional pine cones and also serotinous cones that release seeds only when exposed to great heat - dispersed from 15,000 to 2 million seeds per acre. An average of 2,000 to 12,000 later germinated in each acre. About 24 percent of the park's whitebark pine forest burned, but by 1995, whitebark pine seedlings had been found in every one of 275 study plots established to chart regrowth after the fire. “We were very concerned about the spread of non-native vegetation in the burned areas,” Renkin said. But besides Canada thistle - a temporary post-fire success thanks to its small, wind-borne seeds and deep roots - few invasive species took hold in significant numbers. That first winter was a stark, black-and-white portrait of burned trees and snow, Renkin said, but the following summer brought “the greatest wildflower show ever.” “Boom! The purple lupine came out. Then the daisies would come on,” he said. After widespread news reports on the fires, throngs of curious people showed up the next summer, and 1989 was the busiest year of the decade. Some predicted a grim future for the park, especially along a 660-acre site known as Blowdown, accessible from the road between Norris Junction and Canyon Village....
Monday, July 07, 2008
Biofuels behind food price hikes: leaked World Bank report Biofuels have caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent, according to the findings of an unpublished World Bank report published in The Guardian newspaper on Friday. The daily said the report was finished in April but was not published to avoid embarrassing the US government, which has claimed plant-derived fuels have pushed up prices by only three percent. Biofuels, which supporters claim are a "greener" alternative to using fossil fuel and cut greenhouse gas emissions, and rising food prices will be on the agenda when G8 leaders meet in Japan next week for their annual summit. The report's author, a senior World Bank economist, assessed that contrary to claims by US President George W. Bush, increased demand from India and China has not been the cause of rising food prices. "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases," the report said. Droughts in Australia have also not had a significant impact, it added. Instead, European and US drives for greater use of biofuels has had the biggest effect....
9th Circuit: Judges shouldn't act as scientists An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled it's improper for federal judges to act as scientists when weighing in on disputed U.S. Forest Service timber projects. Timber industry lobbyists and Forest Service officials called the unanimous ruling overturning a challenge to a northern Idaho logging sale significant, partly because it emerged from a court often seen as favorable to environmental groups. In the ruling released Wednesday, the judges dumped a July 2007 decision by a three-judge 9th Circuit panel that halted the Mission Brush timber sale in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. Environmental groups The Lands Council, based in Spokane, Wash., and the Wild West Institute, in Missoula, Mont., contended the Forest Service's logging plan exceeded what was needed to restore the forest's historic character and claimed logging would harm the region's ecosystem for species including small, migratory owls. The ruling also overturns a 2005 9th Circuit decision in which judges concluded the Forest Service's approval of logging in burned areas of western Montana's Lolo National Forest was based on an arbitrary and capricious environmental analysis. U.S. Agriculture Department Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, called this "the most important decision involving a Forest Service environmental case in the last two decades," saying it restores the ability of federal agencies, not meddling judges, to exercise discretion over timber sales. "The judges established a much more limited framework for judicial review of Forest Service decisions - a framework that's much more consistent with the standard use by other circuits," Rey told The Associated Press on Thursday. "The court says its role is not to act as a panel of scientists. They wanted to move back to a more appropriate role." Timber industry representatives said this will help stop judges from asserting their opinions over the decisions of Forest Service managers....
High gas prices threaten to shut down rural towns The price of gas isn't an annoyance here. It's a calamity. Peggy Hanley uses a generator that burns a gallon of diesel fuel every hour — at about $5 a gallon— to power Forks General Store, the only place to buy groceries for miles around. There's no electric service, so Hanley, the owner, uses the generator to run eight refrigerators, nine freezers, lights and two ice machines for the store, which has been in a trailer since a fire destroyed the original building in 1994. There are no utilities and no public transportation in this unincorporated town of a couple hundred people along a narrow road that winds through the mountains 314 miles north of Sacramento. Many people here buy gas for their vehicles and gas or diesel for generators that power their homes. "I'm scared to death" of rising fuel prices, Hanley says. At the store, the hub for visiting whitewater rafters and residents of other isolated towns, gas cost $5.30 a gallon on a recent day when the national average was $4.07. This community may be an extreme example of how rising gas prices are hitting rural Americans particularly hard, but people in small towns from Maine to Alaska are in a similar bind as those here. Soaring gasoline prices are a double whammy for many rural residents: They often pay more than people who live in cities and suburbs because of the expense of hauling fuel to their communities, and they must drive greater distances for life's necessities: work, groceries, medical care and, of course, gas....
Utah-Nevada water standoff quiet, fierce On moonless nights here in the Utah-Nevada borderlands of Snake Valley, the naked eye can see five planets, countless stars and the great swath of the Milky Way. Climb the hill to Great Basin National Park and one can see the nighttime glow of Las Vegas, whose leaders say their sprawling city must have the water under Snake Valley - or wither and die. And they are coming for it, making plans for a 285-mile pipeline to tap the aquifer that stretches from Salt Lake City to Death Valley and take the water south. At the same time, Utah wants to build a pipeline on Lake Powell to suck up Colorado River water and send it northward to growing desert communities before it gets anywhere near Glitter Gulch. For now, the two driest states in the nation are in a quiet standoff, fitfully negotiating or scuffing lines in the sand. Eventually, though, the outcome of this tale of two pipelines, begun with an agreement struck 86 years ago to share the Colorado and now groaning under rapid population growth and climate distress, could shake the foundations of Western water law....
Bridger Fire fuels distrust of Army One sign of the distrust between the Army and the ranchers around the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site is that weeks after the Bridger Fire was extinguished, questions remain about how Fort Carson personnel managed the 48,500-acre fire that burned for two weeks on the training site and spread onto private lands. "Did they throw all the resources at the fire that they could have? Nobody will know that because in the first days, the Army didn't tell anybody what was going on," said Lon Robertson, a Kim-area rancher and president of the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition. "I know people first spotted smoke on the training site on (June 9)." Robertson also is a firefighter with the Kim volunteer department and he said the rural fire departments at Hoehne, Branson, Springfield and elsewhere rely on each other for help when the summer wildfire season begins. La Junta Fire Chief Aaron Eveatt said his department largely was kept in the dark about what was happening with the Bridger Fire until the Type II incident team took over. The Forest Service incident teams, made up of veteran wildfire managers, are accustomed to dealing with big fires, the public, the news media and local communities when they arrive at a blaze. "I don't want to second-guess how another department fought a fire, but it was like night and day after the Type II team arrived," Eveatt said. "That's when we were notified to be on standby to protect residences on private land."....
Legacy of UT's oil wealth: a denuded landscape Investors appealed to the patron saint of impossible causes when oil drilling began on University of Texas System land in 1921. It didn't hurt. Santa Rita No. 1 blew in on May 28, 1923, after rose petals blessed by a priest were scattered from the top of the derrick at the behest of some Catholic women in New York who had purchased shares in the Texon Oil and Land Co., which drilled that first well. Since then, the UT System's 2.1 million acres in West Texas have produced $4.4 billion in royalty payments and other mineral income for the Permanent University Fund, an endowment that supports the UT and Texas A&M University systems. But this long-running bonanza for higher education exacted a price from the remote, semiarid landscape where it all began. Millions of barrels of salt water, a byproduct of oil and natural gas production, contaminated 11 square miles, or more than 7,000 acres, killing virtually all vegetation and leaving the land vulnerable to wind and water erosion. Hundreds of mesquite stumps with three feet of exposed roots testify to the dramatic loss of topsoil....
Focus on elk as disease persists near Yellowstone Federal officials are considering a tentative proposal that calls for capturing or killing infected elk in Yellowstone National Park to eliminate a serious livestock disease carried by animals in the area. Government agencies have killed more than 6,000 wild bison leaving Yellowstone over the last two decades in an attempt to contain brucellosis, which causes pregnant cattle to abort their young. Cattle in parts of Wyoming and Montana where bison haven't roamed for decades are being infected, and livestock officials in both states are now targeting elk as the cause. "We've got way too many elk," said John Scully, a rancher living in Montana's Madison Valley. "Clearly with so many elk, the risk rises. We need to reduce their numbers." A tentative proposal, drafted by federal officials, sets a goal of eliminating the disease — not just controlling it in bison and in elk. Livestock officials say infected elk herds around Yellowstone must be culled — an explosive proposition for a prized big game species that has thrived under the protection of a dedicated constituency of hunting groups. Nevertheless, pressure is mounting to kill or capture more of the animals....
Cattle Fever Ticks Lay Claim To A Million Acres In Texas The Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) marked an ominous anniversary July 3 by expanding the preventive cattle fever tick quarantine area in south Texas by 307,000 acres, after the dangerous livestock pests were detected on cattle outside quarantine areas in Starr and Zapata counties. Fever ticks, capable of carrying and transmitting deadly “tick fever” to cattle, have been detected on livestock or wildlife on 139 Texas pastures during the past 12 months. “In July 2007, the first preventive quarantine was established-39,325 acres in Starr County-to enable the US. Department of Agriculture’s Tick Force and the TAHC to inspect and treat livestock moved from the area, get ahead of the fever tick and push it back across the quarantine line,” said Dr. Bob Hillman, Texas’ state veterinarian and head of the Texas Animal Health Commission, the state’s livestock and poultry health regulatory agency. “Now, a year later, we have more than a million acres under preventive quarantines in Starr, Zapata, Jim Hogg, Maverick, Dimmit and Webb counties, in addition to the half-million acres in the permanent fever tick quarantine zone that runs alongside the Rio Grande, from Del Rio to Brownsville.”....
Weak horses sent to Mexico to be slaughtered The traders at Dallas County's half-filled horse auction knew the fate of their scrawny thoroughbreds even before they herded them into the ring. And it wasn't to go back to the ranch. The ones with visible backbones and skin stretched over their ribs – at least half of the 36 horses for sale – would probably end up in Mexico, where money can still be made off horse slaughter. Texas horse traders say it's the best solution to the combined wallop of forced American slaughterhouse closures last year and one of the worst horse markets in history. "We don't have anywhere to move them, and they're starving to death," said Steven Oden, a horse trader from Terrell whose prize horses once sold for $8,000 but now go for $800. Breeders, ranchers and cowboys are struggling to continue a livelihood that extends generations. The closure of the kill plants coupled with the rising price of hay and fuel means rising numbers of horses with dwindling funds to care for them. Horse owners say they're left with little option but to sell their horses to a "killer buyer," or trader who buys the horses at a reduced price and takes them to Mexico for slaughter. About 25,000 horses have been shipped to Mexico for slaughter this year, 10,000 more than this time last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture....
Taste of western culture The best place to get a taste of western culture at the Stampede is at the Western Showcase art show. Since 1912, western art has been a fixture at Stampede and now the showcase has grown to become one of the top western art shows in Canada. Located in Hall C and Hall D of the Roundup Centre, the Western Showcase features work of over 100 artisans. The Western Showcase is the largest western art show in Canada and gives visitors a first-hand look at unique pieces that celebrates cowboy culture. From a life-size moose sculpture, to landscapes and native art this show attracts buyers from around the world and brings together artists from across North America. "This is the best show, absolutely the nicest show," says Stephen Lee a rancher and artist from New Mexico. "The international crowd and the attention [we] get is like no other." Lee says, for him, western art is about telling a story with every piece. The inspiration for his bronze piece called Cruz, which has been chosen for this year's art auction, came from his own horse. "Cruz is one of my mares. She's a horse we raised at our ranch and we broke her. As you can see from the piece the topic is her bucking which is something she did alot when I was raising her, but I broke her. It's about her and I growing up together," says Lee....
Longhorns announce return of ranch rodeo At high noon in downtown Colorado Springs Friday the streets looked reminiscent to a scene from an old western movie. Hundreds of Texas longhorn cattle took over Tejon Street to announce the arrival of the Ride for the Brand Ranch Rodeo. Now in its sixth year, the ranch rodeo is has become part of the summer rodeo tradition in Colorado Springs. Following the rodeo on Saturday, the Pikes Peak Range Riders will return from their trek around the mountains on Sunday. They will then ride in the rodeo parade Tuesday night to celebrate the beginning of the 68th Annual Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo on Wednesday. In professional rodeos, the competitors are often professional athletes who spend much of the year competing in rodeos around the country. But at the ranch rodeo, all one hundred of the competing cowboys come from working ranches. Even the competition events are typical of ranch life. They include wild cow milking, ranch bronc riding, trailer loading, stray gathering, and sorting and branding....
Early settlers pushed into New Mexico One of the biggest land deals in United States history helped bring about the settlement of the barren plains of Eastern New Mexico. In 1881 brothers Charles and John Farwell and others organized a syndicate of eastern investors and agreed to build the red granite capitol building in Austin in exchange for title to 3 million acres of land in the Texas Panhandle. This grant took in portions of 10 counties ranging from Yellow House near Lubbock in the south to the Oklahoma Panhandle in the north. The brand of this new ranch, “XIT,” was designed to foil rustlers, and XIT became the name of the ranch. In 1882 when they began surveying and fencing this vast area, it forced the settlers who were already there to move on. Many of them moved west into New Mexico. Yellow House, near the present site of Lubbock, fell inside the XIT property, so in 1882, Newman began moving his cattle to Salt Lake, now Grulla Wildlife Refuge, just across the state line in New Mexico. Since his brand was “DZ,” the ranch was known by that name. With him came several cowhands, including my step-grandfather, R. L. “Bob” Wood, who was Newman’s first cousin; Sid Boykin; Walter Fulcher; and Julius Darby, a black man. Newman had bought the rights to the water from Andy McDonald, and McDonald’s brother Will’s wife, Lizzie, became camp cook. The men dug troughs at the northeastern end of Salt Lake to catch the spring water which flowed into the lake and built an adobe house. The logs for beams and door frames had to be hauled from Las Vegas, N.M., and Newman complained that they cost him $10 apiece....
Uncle Amos Oliver and Gene Autry This time of year, rodeo stories come out of the woodwork. Jack Oliver reminds that Belton July 4 rodeos were the training ground for three Belton/Bell County All Around American Cowboys on the National Circuit, Cotton Proctor of Belton, Bob White of Three Forks and Les Hood of Killeen. Which brought up the close friendship Jack's uncle, the late Amos Oliver, well known farmer-rancher in the Three Forks Community, with the late Les Hood, and Uncle Amos meeting up with the cowboy movie star singer, Gene Autry. Uncle Amos was a good friend and strong supporter of Les Hood and attended every rodeo in driving distance when Les Hood was riding. Back of the chutes visiting with Les and other rodeo hands was where Autry came in. Both Oliver and Autry were strong and well known breeders of shorthorn cattle. They checked out the shorthorn pens carefully and faithfully at every show. "One year at Ft. Worth Gene Autry asked Amos if he would consider buying a $10,000 registered shorthorn bull from Scotland. If they each would buy one it would help on shipping costs. Uncle Amos and Gene Autry each bought one of those $10,000 calves to be shipped from Scotland, the British Isles....
9th Circuit: Judges shouldn't act as scientists An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled it's improper for federal judges to act as scientists when weighing in on disputed U.S. Forest Service timber projects. Timber industry lobbyists and Forest Service officials called the unanimous ruling overturning a challenge to a northern Idaho logging sale significant, partly because it emerged from a court often seen as favorable to environmental groups. In the ruling released Wednesday, the judges dumped a July 2007 decision by a three-judge 9th Circuit panel that halted the Mission Brush timber sale in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. Environmental groups The Lands Council, based in Spokane, Wash., and the Wild West Institute, in Missoula, Mont., contended the Forest Service's logging plan exceeded what was needed to restore the forest's historic character and claimed logging would harm the region's ecosystem for species including small, migratory owls. The ruling also overturns a 2005 9th Circuit decision in which judges concluded the Forest Service's approval of logging in burned areas of western Montana's Lolo National Forest was based on an arbitrary and capricious environmental analysis. U.S. Agriculture Department Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, called this "the most important decision involving a Forest Service environmental case in the last two decades," saying it restores the ability of federal agencies, not meddling judges, to exercise discretion over timber sales. "The judges established a much more limited framework for judicial review of Forest Service decisions - a framework that's much more consistent with the standard use by other circuits," Rey told The Associated Press on Thursday. "The court says its role is not to act as a panel of scientists. They wanted to move back to a more appropriate role." Timber industry representatives said this will help stop judges from asserting their opinions over the decisions of Forest Service managers....
High gas prices threaten to shut down rural towns The price of gas isn't an annoyance here. It's a calamity. Peggy Hanley uses a generator that burns a gallon of diesel fuel every hour — at about $5 a gallon— to power Forks General Store, the only place to buy groceries for miles around. There's no electric service, so Hanley, the owner, uses the generator to run eight refrigerators, nine freezers, lights and two ice machines for the store, which has been in a trailer since a fire destroyed the original building in 1994. There are no utilities and no public transportation in this unincorporated town of a couple hundred people along a narrow road that winds through the mountains 314 miles north of Sacramento. Many people here buy gas for their vehicles and gas or diesel for generators that power their homes. "I'm scared to death" of rising fuel prices, Hanley says. At the store, the hub for visiting whitewater rafters and residents of other isolated towns, gas cost $5.30 a gallon on a recent day when the national average was $4.07. This community may be an extreme example of how rising gas prices are hitting rural Americans particularly hard, but people in small towns from Maine to Alaska are in a similar bind as those here. Soaring gasoline prices are a double whammy for many rural residents: They often pay more than people who live in cities and suburbs because of the expense of hauling fuel to their communities, and they must drive greater distances for life's necessities: work, groceries, medical care and, of course, gas....
Utah-Nevada water standoff quiet, fierce On moonless nights here in the Utah-Nevada borderlands of Snake Valley, the naked eye can see five planets, countless stars and the great swath of the Milky Way. Climb the hill to Great Basin National Park and one can see the nighttime glow of Las Vegas, whose leaders say their sprawling city must have the water under Snake Valley - or wither and die. And they are coming for it, making plans for a 285-mile pipeline to tap the aquifer that stretches from Salt Lake City to Death Valley and take the water south. At the same time, Utah wants to build a pipeline on Lake Powell to suck up Colorado River water and send it northward to growing desert communities before it gets anywhere near Glitter Gulch. For now, the two driest states in the nation are in a quiet standoff, fitfully negotiating or scuffing lines in the sand. Eventually, though, the outcome of this tale of two pipelines, begun with an agreement struck 86 years ago to share the Colorado and now groaning under rapid population growth and climate distress, could shake the foundations of Western water law....
Bridger Fire fuels distrust of Army One sign of the distrust between the Army and the ranchers around the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site is that weeks after the Bridger Fire was extinguished, questions remain about how Fort Carson personnel managed the 48,500-acre fire that burned for two weeks on the training site and spread onto private lands. "Did they throw all the resources at the fire that they could have? Nobody will know that because in the first days, the Army didn't tell anybody what was going on," said Lon Robertson, a Kim-area rancher and president of the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition. "I know people first spotted smoke on the training site on (June 9)." Robertson also is a firefighter with the Kim volunteer department and he said the rural fire departments at Hoehne, Branson, Springfield and elsewhere rely on each other for help when the summer wildfire season begins. La Junta Fire Chief Aaron Eveatt said his department largely was kept in the dark about what was happening with the Bridger Fire until the Type II incident team took over. The Forest Service incident teams, made up of veteran wildfire managers, are accustomed to dealing with big fires, the public, the news media and local communities when they arrive at a blaze. "I don't want to second-guess how another department fought a fire, but it was like night and day after the Type II team arrived," Eveatt said. "That's when we were notified to be on standby to protect residences on private land."....
Legacy of UT's oil wealth: a denuded landscape Investors appealed to the patron saint of impossible causes when oil drilling began on University of Texas System land in 1921. It didn't hurt. Santa Rita No. 1 blew in on May 28, 1923, after rose petals blessed by a priest were scattered from the top of the derrick at the behest of some Catholic women in New York who had purchased shares in the Texon Oil and Land Co., which drilled that first well. Since then, the UT System's 2.1 million acres in West Texas have produced $4.4 billion in royalty payments and other mineral income for the Permanent University Fund, an endowment that supports the UT and Texas A&M University systems. But this long-running bonanza for higher education exacted a price from the remote, semiarid landscape where it all began. Millions of barrels of salt water, a byproduct of oil and natural gas production, contaminated 11 square miles, or more than 7,000 acres, killing virtually all vegetation and leaving the land vulnerable to wind and water erosion. Hundreds of mesquite stumps with three feet of exposed roots testify to the dramatic loss of topsoil....
Focus on elk as disease persists near Yellowstone Federal officials are considering a tentative proposal that calls for capturing or killing infected elk in Yellowstone National Park to eliminate a serious livestock disease carried by animals in the area. Government agencies have killed more than 6,000 wild bison leaving Yellowstone over the last two decades in an attempt to contain brucellosis, which causes pregnant cattle to abort their young. Cattle in parts of Wyoming and Montana where bison haven't roamed for decades are being infected, and livestock officials in both states are now targeting elk as the cause. "We've got way too many elk," said John Scully, a rancher living in Montana's Madison Valley. "Clearly with so many elk, the risk rises. We need to reduce their numbers." A tentative proposal, drafted by federal officials, sets a goal of eliminating the disease — not just controlling it in bison and in elk. Livestock officials say infected elk herds around Yellowstone must be culled — an explosive proposition for a prized big game species that has thrived under the protection of a dedicated constituency of hunting groups. Nevertheless, pressure is mounting to kill or capture more of the animals....
Cattle Fever Ticks Lay Claim To A Million Acres In Texas The Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) marked an ominous anniversary July 3 by expanding the preventive cattle fever tick quarantine area in south Texas by 307,000 acres, after the dangerous livestock pests were detected on cattle outside quarantine areas in Starr and Zapata counties. Fever ticks, capable of carrying and transmitting deadly “tick fever” to cattle, have been detected on livestock or wildlife on 139 Texas pastures during the past 12 months. “In July 2007, the first preventive quarantine was established-39,325 acres in Starr County-to enable the US. Department of Agriculture’s Tick Force and the TAHC to inspect and treat livestock moved from the area, get ahead of the fever tick and push it back across the quarantine line,” said Dr. Bob Hillman, Texas’ state veterinarian and head of the Texas Animal Health Commission, the state’s livestock and poultry health regulatory agency. “Now, a year later, we have more than a million acres under preventive quarantines in Starr, Zapata, Jim Hogg, Maverick, Dimmit and Webb counties, in addition to the half-million acres in the permanent fever tick quarantine zone that runs alongside the Rio Grande, from Del Rio to Brownsville.”....
Weak horses sent to Mexico to be slaughtered The traders at Dallas County's half-filled horse auction knew the fate of their scrawny thoroughbreds even before they herded them into the ring. And it wasn't to go back to the ranch. The ones with visible backbones and skin stretched over their ribs – at least half of the 36 horses for sale – would probably end up in Mexico, where money can still be made off horse slaughter. Texas horse traders say it's the best solution to the combined wallop of forced American slaughterhouse closures last year and one of the worst horse markets in history. "We don't have anywhere to move them, and they're starving to death," said Steven Oden, a horse trader from Terrell whose prize horses once sold for $8,000 but now go for $800. Breeders, ranchers and cowboys are struggling to continue a livelihood that extends generations. The closure of the kill plants coupled with the rising price of hay and fuel means rising numbers of horses with dwindling funds to care for them. Horse owners say they're left with little option but to sell their horses to a "killer buyer," or trader who buys the horses at a reduced price and takes them to Mexico for slaughter. About 25,000 horses have been shipped to Mexico for slaughter this year, 10,000 more than this time last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture....
Taste of western culture The best place to get a taste of western culture at the Stampede is at the Western Showcase art show. Since 1912, western art has been a fixture at Stampede and now the showcase has grown to become one of the top western art shows in Canada. Located in Hall C and Hall D of the Roundup Centre, the Western Showcase features work of over 100 artisans. The Western Showcase is the largest western art show in Canada and gives visitors a first-hand look at unique pieces that celebrates cowboy culture. From a life-size moose sculpture, to landscapes and native art this show attracts buyers from around the world and brings together artists from across North America. "This is the best show, absolutely the nicest show," says Stephen Lee a rancher and artist from New Mexico. "The international crowd and the attention [we] get is like no other." Lee says, for him, western art is about telling a story with every piece. The inspiration for his bronze piece called Cruz, which has been chosen for this year's art auction, came from his own horse. "Cruz is one of my mares. She's a horse we raised at our ranch and we broke her. As you can see from the piece the topic is her bucking which is something she did alot when I was raising her, but I broke her. It's about her and I growing up together," says Lee....
Longhorns announce return of ranch rodeo At high noon in downtown Colorado Springs Friday the streets looked reminiscent to a scene from an old western movie. Hundreds of Texas longhorn cattle took over Tejon Street to announce the arrival of the Ride for the Brand Ranch Rodeo. Now in its sixth year, the ranch rodeo is has become part of the summer rodeo tradition in Colorado Springs. Following the rodeo on Saturday, the Pikes Peak Range Riders will return from their trek around the mountains on Sunday. They will then ride in the rodeo parade Tuesday night to celebrate the beginning of the 68th Annual Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo on Wednesday. In professional rodeos, the competitors are often professional athletes who spend much of the year competing in rodeos around the country. But at the ranch rodeo, all one hundred of the competing cowboys come from working ranches. Even the competition events are typical of ranch life. They include wild cow milking, ranch bronc riding, trailer loading, stray gathering, and sorting and branding....
Early settlers pushed into New Mexico One of the biggest land deals in United States history helped bring about the settlement of the barren plains of Eastern New Mexico. In 1881 brothers Charles and John Farwell and others organized a syndicate of eastern investors and agreed to build the red granite capitol building in Austin in exchange for title to 3 million acres of land in the Texas Panhandle. This grant took in portions of 10 counties ranging from Yellow House near Lubbock in the south to the Oklahoma Panhandle in the north. The brand of this new ranch, “XIT,” was designed to foil rustlers, and XIT became the name of the ranch. In 1882 when they began surveying and fencing this vast area, it forced the settlers who were already there to move on. Many of them moved west into New Mexico. Yellow House, near the present site of Lubbock, fell inside the XIT property, so in 1882, Newman began moving his cattle to Salt Lake, now Grulla Wildlife Refuge, just across the state line in New Mexico. Since his brand was “DZ,” the ranch was known by that name. With him came several cowhands, including my step-grandfather, R. L. “Bob” Wood, who was Newman’s first cousin; Sid Boykin; Walter Fulcher; and Julius Darby, a black man. Newman had bought the rights to the water from Andy McDonald, and McDonald’s brother Will’s wife, Lizzie, became camp cook. The men dug troughs at the northeastern end of Salt Lake to catch the spring water which flowed into the lake and built an adobe house. The logs for beams and door frames had to be hauled from Las Vegas, N.M., and Newman complained that they cost him $10 apiece....
Uncle Amos Oliver and Gene Autry This time of year, rodeo stories come out of the woodwork. Jack Oliver reminds that Belton July 4 rodeos were the training ground for three Belton/Bell County All Around American Cowboys on the National Circuit, Cotton Proctor of Belton, Bob White of Three Forks and Les Hood of Killeen. Which brought up the close friendship Jack's uncle, the late Amos Oliver, well known farmer-rancher in the Three Forks Community, with the late Les Hood, and Uncle Amos meeting up with the cowboy movie star singer, Gene Autry. Uncle Amos was a good friend and strong supporter of Les Hood and attended every rodeo in driving distance when Les Hood was riding. Back of the chutes visiting with Les and other rodeo hands was where Autry came in. Both Oliver and Autry were strong and well known breeders of shorthorn cattle. They checked out the shorthorn pens carefully and faithfully at every show. "One year at Ft. Worth Gene Autry asked Amos if he would consider buying a $10,000 registered shorthorn bull from Scotland. If they each would buy one it would help on shipping costs. Uncle Amos and Gene Autry each bought one of those $10,000 calves to be shipped from Scotland, the British Isles....
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