Inspectors: Egg farms in recall unsanitary

Federal investigators found piles of manure up to eight feet tall, live mice, pigeons and other birds inside the hen houses at two egg farms suspected of causing a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness, officials said Monday. Investigators made public their observations of Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, two massive egg producers who have recalled nearly 500 million eggs since Aug. 13. During their inspection of the two Iowa farms in the past two weeks, FDA investigators have documented multiple unsanitary conditions that may have caused eggs to be contaminated. They found dead maggots and live flies that crunched under foot at Wright County Egg, where the FDA also documented a hen house bulging from manure. Investigators made numerous observations about holes in buildings or gaps in structures, which can allow rodents, pigeons and other animals to enter hen houses. On several occasions, investigators saw live rodents running through hen houses at both farms...more

EXCLUSIVE: Luxurious Newly Renovated CFPB Headquarters Is Infested By Rats

Richard Pollock

Rats — actual rodents — are infesting the newly renovated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s headquarters, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. Hundreds of the agency’s employees moved into their beautiful $124 million headquarters across the street from the White House in October as construction was still underway. Upon entering, they discovered rats also were making it their home, according to two sources who spoke to TheDCNF on the condition of anonymity. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) when she was serving in the Department of the Treasury during former President Barack Obama’s administration. The bureau’s mandate is to protect consumers, but it seems to be running into problems protecting its employees. “Right from the start there were reports of rats in the building,” one employee told TheDCNF in an interview. “There were rat sightings. One person had a rat in her trash can, and they couldn’t get it out. Rat feces were on the floor and on people’s desks. Rats are running across people’s feet when they’re sitting there trying to work,” he said. A CFPB spokesman confirmed rats do indeed run throughout parts of the building. “The Bureau identified an issue with rodents appearing in some areas of the building, due in part to the ongoing construction in the basement and ground level areas,” he told TheDCNF in a statement. Another source told TheDCNF rat traps can be found on all six floors of the building...more

Traps!

How cruel.

Did they comply with NEPA? Was there an opportunity for public comment? Surely the anti-trapping coalition is protesting this. 

Modest mouse: A bevy of rodents inspired the name of this New Mexico bordertown

 

A Spanish mouse takes center stage in this month’s column as we head north to the Colorado border where the Rocky Mountains loom, the winter hits hard and the sculpting of the American Southwest unfolded.

That place is the town of Raton and where it sits today got its start as a settlement called Willow Springs, but the railroad changed that. We’ll get to how exactly a little later because the name Raton was already being used in the area years before the city of Raton was founded in 1880, and it’s from that usage that the small community took its name.

Before there was a town, there was Raton Mountain that sits on the border between New Mexico and Colorado, and the treacherous Raton Pass through it that provided a lifeline for the American trade industry.

Raton the city, the mountain and the pass all lie within Colfax County. The name means mouse in Spanish and was first given to the mountain because it was inhabited by many small rodents, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Raton Pass came next. It was part of the 19th century, 1,200-mile Santa Fe Trail that connected Franklin, Missouri, to Santa Fe, according to the National Park Service. The pass cuts through a rugged area of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and became one of the most important segments of the trail because it allowed traders to access the western territory in wagons.

According to NPS, the pass also played a critical role in Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny’s conquest of Santa Fe during the Mexican-American War and the eventual annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846. Kearny used the Raton Pass to reach Santa Fe during the war instead of taking the easier, drier Cimarron Route. When his troops emerged, they found the valley on the New Mexico side of the mountain void of Mexican soldiers and were able to enact a swift takeover of Santa Fe...more

10,000 people at risk of hantavirus after Yosemite stays, CDC says

A new nationwide advisory issued Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that as many as 10,000 people were at risk for contracting hantavirus after staying in Yosemite National Park this summer. Park officials said Friday that they had sent letters and emails to about 3,100 people who reserved one of the 91 "signature tent cabins" in the park's popular Curry Village between June 10 and Aug. 24. The CDC alert — issued through its health advisory network, which reaches healthcare providers as well as health departments — said that an estimated 10,000 people stayed in the tents during that time. Six confirmed cases of the rare, rodent-borne disease have been linked to the park, officials said. Four have been traced to the signature tent cabins; the remaining two were still under investigation, Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said Friday...more 

If this was a private facility, you know they would be sued for negligence.  Can the feds be sued for the same?

UPDATE:

Report: Park Service warned about Yosemite rodents The National Park Service was warned in 2010 that efforts should be stepped up to inspect for rodents in Yosemite and prevent them from entering areas where people sleep, a report obtained Thursday states. The disclosure came just days after a Pennsylvania visitor became the second park guest confirmed to have died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Public health officials were able to confirm both victims had stayed at the park's Curry Village in Yosemite Valley. The 2010 report issued by the California Department of Public Health was commissioned by the park service. "Inspections for rodent infestations and appropriate exclusion efforts, particularly for buildings were people sleep, should be enhanced," it said.

Scientists study endangered kangaroo rat habitat Scientists plan to use satellite photos to count Giant Kangaroo Rats, the first-ever monitoring of an endangered species from outer space. Scientists will examine images taken from the same satellite used by Israeli defence forces to find the circular patches of earth denuded by the rats as they gather food around their burrows. From that they plan to get the first-ever accurate population count of the rodents, a bellwether for the health of a parched plains environment. The information will help scientists determine when cattle might be used to reduce non-native grasses, allowing the rats to more easily find food. Giant Kangaroo Rats, nocturnal rodents so named because they hop on back legs, adapted to their desert environment by extracting moisture from seeds and in their nasal passages from the humid air they exhale. For food, they pile seeds from native grasses in circles outside their burrows, which provide shelter for the endangered San Joaquin antelope squirrel and blunt-nosed lizards. Their fat five-inch (nearly 13-centimeter) bodies are a favoured source of food for the endangered kit fox....

Marmots plague Eastern Washington neighborhoods

Talk about an uninvited dinner guest. Diners at a restaurant in Prosser were startled Monday when a furry marmot wandered through the front door and settled into a corner. That was no surprise to city Administrator Charlie Bush, who says the big rodents have long been a problem in the central Washington wine town. "I know there's a lot of marmots in Prosser, there's no question," Bush told the Tri-City Herald. "They're happy marmots. They're fat, they're having a good time." Many species of marmots, including some known as woodchucks and groundhogs, are found across North America. They are closely related to ground squirrels and are among the largest of rodents, some reaching 30 pounds. The burrowing critters have long been a nuisance in this Yakima Valley city, where they dig through gardens, add unwanted mounds to yards and even chew through electrical wires...AP

Giant swamp rats are poised to dig into California. Should we eat 'em?

Filipa Ioannou

It's been about a month since California wildlife officials started sounding the alarm on nutria, invasive South American rodents that look like enormous, 20-pound rats and have the power to devastate wetlands. They're making a comeback after being eradicated in the 1970s and have been spotted in Stanislaus, Fresno, Tuolumne and Merced counties so far.
"We didn't know at first if it was a small, isolated population," California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Peter Tira told the Chronicle in February. "But it became clear that it's a breeding population, and they're reaching major waterways where they can move."
It was only a matter of time until someone suggested eating them.
A recent article on tech news site The Verge, entitled "The case for eating California's giant invasive rodents," broached the topic, pointing out that nutria "apparently taste great in jambalaya."
What's so bad about letting the nutria do their thing in the wild, anyway? Like many of their fellow Californians, they are devoted vegetarians; nutria have so voracious an appetite for the plants that populate wetlands that they are capable of shifting the balance of areas where they live into uninhabitable, overly salty dead zones, wildlife officials say.
They also pose problems for infrastructure, burrowing into dikes, levees and roadbeds, Tira told KCRA...more

So why not trap'em and eat'em? You best not, because that would be illegal in California:

As for now, trapping and eating nutria is illegal in California, because it's against the law to have an invasive species in your possession, according to the California Department of Fish andrden Wildlife.

Keep those traps and forks holstered, or you'll have the game warden at your door.
Say, I wonder if its legal to neuter nutria in Ca.? Nutria nuts, that's the answer. Exquisite cuisine for Ca. liberals. Nutria fries. Sierra Madre oysters. A Rodent Rodeo to SAVE THE WETLANDS!!    

NEWS ROUNDUP

Mystery beast ravages flocks of Mont. sheep Ranchers in eastern Montana have a wildlife whodunit on their hands. Livestock growers in Garfield, McCone and Dawson counties have lost about 100 sheep this year to a ravenous creature that dispatches their 170-pound animals with ease and ferocity. And that creature is? "A wolf," says rancher Mike McKeever, who found one of his pregnant ewes disemboweled last month. "A wolf or wolf hybrid," says Carolyn Sime, statewide wolf coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "A dog or a hybrid," says Suzanne Asha Stone, the Boise-based Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife. A hybrid is a mixture of wolf and dog. The disagreement encompasses a century of passionate feelings about wolves in the West. The distinction is important: Defenders of Wildlife reimburses ranchers for proven kills of livestock by wolves. McKeever says he believes the Montana marauder is a wolf because it preys on adult sheep. Coyotes usually kill lambs, and only one or two at a time, he says....
Oh, Give Me a Home Where Prairie Dogs Roam -- in Boulder Many people in the West view prairie dogs as disease-carrying, pasture-damaging pests that they would be happy to see go the way of the bison. Yet Boulder County just built a half-mile barrier to keep the burrowing varmints from leaving. The chicken-wire fence blocks black-tailed prairie dogs from venturing into neighboring Broomfield County, where the 15-inch-long rodents face extermination as a health concern if they wander close to homes. Boulder County has bent over backward to make itself a prairie-dog haven. The animals have dug up everything from prime development parcels to Little League fields here, yet local politics and city ordinances make exterminating them next to impossible. Animal activists have picketed extermination sites, and Boulder herbal tea-maker Celestial Seasonings several years ago endured public scorn after it poisoned prairie dogs that dug up the grounds of its headquarters. The question of how to manage prairie dogs is a divisive one in the West and Great Plains. In the past decade, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has denied petitions by wildlife groups to put three species, including the black-tailed prairie dogs common in Boulder, on the threatened list. A fourth species, the Utah prairie dog, is currently listed as threatened, but it has so stymied development in fast-growing areas of Utah that state and federal regulators are considering allowing more construction on the critter's habitat as long as it is offset with preservation elsewhere. In South Dakota's 2004 Senate race between former Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Republican John Thune, who won the election, the candidates attempted to one-up each other in their disdain for prairie dogs, the bane of the state's ranchers....
CONTROLLING PRAIRIE DOGS Mary Kanode has spent almost all her 66 years on the family ranch northeast of here, a ranch that's been in the family since 1917. Prairie dogs were never a major problem -- until a couple of years ago. Kanode said she has been told repeatedly that the forest service wants to be a good neighbor, but she's having a difficult time buying into that -- for good reason. The forest service, in its proposal to manage prairie dogs on the grasslands, estimated that the population of the rodents is expanding in acreage by about 12 percent per year. Yet on Kanode's ranch, she has from zero population in 2004 to about 60 acres presently. Less than two years ago, she had 250 holes in the pasture across from the grasslands and presently she estimates she has more than 750 holes that are expanding almost daily. That's despite the fact that she's spent at least $2,000 and countless hours on her own to control the infestation, the forest service built three-quarters of a mile of fence intended to keep the animals on forest service land and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has helped with poisoning efforts. "I asked them (the forest service) to put the fence down in the ground at least 2 feet so the prairie dogs couldn't burrow under it, but Steve (Currey, grasslands district ranger) said they would need an archeological dig before they could do that. It's not stopping them from coming across onto my pasture," Kanode said....
Environmental activist challenges BLM's power Longtime environmental activist Andy Kerr says it's time to transfer U.S. Bureau of Land Management forestlands in Western Oregon over to the U.S. Forest Service. "I hope 10 years from now you'll find the BLM only in the history books," said Kerr, one of a dozen presenters at Saturday's "Beyond Big Timber" conference in Medford. "Our national forests are better managed than the BLM lands," he said. "Not as well as we would like but better than the BLM's. "The dark days we're in now have never been darker," he said later. "I miss James Watt." The session drew some 75 environmental activists from throughout the region to discuss the BLM's ongoing Western Oregon Plan Revisions. The agency manages about 2.6 million acres west of the Cascade Range....
Report: USFS at fault in burn A report blames the U.S. Forest Service for a prescribed burn that got out of control and destroyed four cabins and a camper last month near Lander. "The principal causal factors of the escape stemmed from an underestimation of the complexity of burning so close to private property and structures, and from a mistaken determination by the assigned fire personnel that, upon completion of firing operations, the burned area posed little or no remaining risk to adjacent private land and structures," said the report, released Friday. In addition, the report noted that the Forest Service failed to follow burn plans that required fire engines to be positioned near buildings while the burn was conducted and that required firefighters to closely monitor the outer edges of the fire to make sure it didn't go beyond its intended area....
The Checkerspot Mystery: An Ecological Whodunit For one week a year the vibrantly colored bay checkerspot butterfly is in its element on Coyote Ridge, flitting from one wildflower to the next in search of sustenance. The hillside used to be covered with these creatures -- which warm themselves in the sun, mate and deposit hundreds of eggs to launch the next generation before dying off. But on Coyote Ridge's northern edge, their numbers crashed in the early 1990s as Silicon Valley's high-tech boom spurred a wave of development. The species, with its brilliant orange-and-red-flecked wings, first crashed between Palo Alto and San Francisco in the 1980s, prompting federal officials to list it as threatened with extinction. Then in the early '90s its numbers dropped on the southern edge of San Jose, around the suburban subdivisions that abut Coyote Ridge. The cause was a mystery until conservation biologist Stuart Weiss figured out that the butterfly's woes stemmed from a combination of pollution from the freeway below and, surprisingly, a cutback in local cattle grazing. Over years of research, Weiss -- who has worked for utility and waste management companies as well as conservation groups and government agencies -- documented how the nitrogen oxide emissions from cars commuting to Silicon Valley enriched the nutrient-poor serpentine-rock soil that sustains the native grasslands on Coyote Ridge. This soil enrichment allowed invasive grasses -- which flourish in more nitrogen-rich soil -- to out-compete the native plants on which the checkerspot depends. When local ranchers stopped grazing their cows on one side of the ridge, it made things worse, because grazing helped keep invasive grasses in check. "The grazed side is great butterfly habitat, the ungrazed side is lousy," Weiss said. "You end grazing in the areas and it's bye-bye butterflies."...
HOUSE PASSES DOI, EPA BUDGETS The full House approved FY 2007 budgets for the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency last week. The budgets differ little from what the House appropriations committee passed earlier this month. Both budgets are larger than what President George W. Bush recommended in February, but are smaller than those approved for FY 2006. The House approved $9.65 billion for DOI, a $211 million decrease from last year, but a $40 million increase from the President’s request. The EPA is funded at $7.56 billion, a $55 million drop from last year. The funding level, however, is $254 million more than Bush requested. Both agencies’ budgets have declined over the past four years. In FY 2003, DOI was funded at $10.5 billion and the EPA was funded at $8.1 billion. Under the current bill, five programs would be cut: Stateside Land and Water Grants, the Forest Service economic action program, the Bureau of Land Management’s rural fire program and the Asia Pacific Partnership program....
Editorial: Saving Western Culture ALTHOUGH IT receives far less attention than the National Park Service or the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management -- the Interior Department's forgotten stepchild -- controls a huge chunk of the American West: 261 million acres of federal land in 11 states, or about as much land as the holdings of the other more famous agencies put together. Unlike the national parks or the national forests, the BLM's land is specifically designated as "multiple use." That means that it can be leased for grazing or mineral extraction, can be freely used for recreation, and is not fenced off from the locals, many of whom depend on it for their livelihoods. But this vast chunk of real estate is not only oil wells and pasture. It contains landscapes of intense beauty and cultural treasures as well: Native American archeological sites, cave and rock paintings, and historic trails. Although they have been there for centuries, the National Trust for Historic Preservation recently published a report pointing out that they are suddenly threatened. An exponential increase in the popularity of off-road vehicles, the recent expansion of exurbs and the administration's policy of rapid distribution of drilling licenses have led to an increase in destruction and vandalism. Among other things, the trust points out that only 6 percent of the BLM's land has even been surveyed for cultural and archeological resources. Obviously, it isn't possible to protect things that nobody knows exists....
Ex-Lobbyist Helps Companies Green Up David Ford was on his way to becoming a top timber industry lobbyist when he decided he'd had enough of the fighting that erupted in the 1990s over forests and the northern spotted owl. He now heads a nonprofit called metaFore, which evolved from promoting sales of wood products from forests certified as environmentally sustainable to helping Fortune 500 companies green up their paper supplies. "Some of my colleagues in the forest products associations said, `You've gone to the dark side, David,'" Ford said. "I learned that the conflict wasn't getting us where we wanted to be." Improving their public image and their bottom line, major corporations are moving from using less paper to demanding the paper they use comes from environmentally sustainable sources, and letting stockholders and customers know they are doing it....
Editorial: Salvaging Timber With fingers crossed that all goes as well as the optimists predict rather than as bad as the pessimists fear, we cheer last week's passage of the salvage logging bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver. Approval in the House of Representatives 243-182 sends the measure to the Senate, where prospects for the contentious measure are less certain. The politics and the science on this issue have been both intriguing and divisive, with shock waves felt in Baird's 3rd Congressional District, including Clark County, and on the campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis. Baird, who split from most Democrats on the issue, and principal sponsor Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., promise the bill would speed up logging of salvageable timber after fires without doing significant long-term damage to the forest. That goal is a good one and the two lawmakers deserve praise for working across party lines to reach it....
Four indicted in 1998 arson case Four people were indicted late Thursday in connection with a series of fires set at the Vail ski area in 1998. The federal grand jury in Denver handed down indictments against Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, 29; Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff, 28; Josephine Sunshine Overaker, 31; and Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, 33. Gerlach and Meyerhoff are in federal custody in Oregon, where they face separate arson charges. Overaker and Rubin are fugitives. The indictments was revealed Friday by Bill Leone, the U.S. attorney for Colorado. The eight-count indictment alleges the four set fires that destroyed eight buildings at the ski area, including the Two Elk Lodge and two restaurants...
Archaeologists uncover lost era Archaeologists scouring the historic John Marsh House-Cowell Ranch site in Brentwood say there are American Indian artifacts and bones buried within the soil, some dating back as far as 9,000 years to the "Paleo-Indian" era. "What we've found out there is extremely rare," said archaeologist Miley Holman, who is working with Shea Homes to study land associated with a residential development project next to the Cowell Ranch state park site. The village, he said, covers both the Marsh-Cowell property and a Shea-backed project called Vineyards at Marsh Creek. Both projects are in the planning stages. "The top layers of this Native American Village yield materials dating from as recent as a few hundred years ago, to 7,000 to 9,000 years ago," Holman said. "We are systematically studying this area, and at the end of the day, we hope to learn more about the region." He said the discovered artifacts and bones will give more insight into a people called "Windmiller."....
100 Years in the Back Door, Out the Front THE Texas cotton lobbyist tried to reassure Congress that the tens of thousands of Mexicans who labored in the fields of the Southwest were not a threat to national security. There "never was a more docile animal in the world than the Mexican," he told the Senate committee. Then he offered a way around the political problem the congressmen faced in extending the program that had let the workers in. "If you gentlemen have any objections to admitting the Mexicans by law," he said, "take the river guard away and let us alone, and we will get them all right." They did — and that was in 1920. Almost a century later, the debate over illegal immigration from Mexico often makes it sound like a recent development that breaks with the tradition of legal passage to America. Quite the contrary, say immigration scholars like Aristide R. Zolberg, who relates the anecdote about the Texas cotton grower in his new book, "A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America." A pattern of deliberately leaving the country's "back door" open to Mexican workers, then moving to expel them and their families years later, has been a recurrent feature of immigration policy since the 1890's....
Ag commissioner: Colorado needs moisture now Warm weather and decreased snowpack in much of Colorado mirror conditions found in 2002's drought and could hurt farmers and ranchers across Colorado, state Agriculture Commissioner Don Ament said. Alfalfa farmers in southern Colorado's San Luis Valley stand to lose much of their alfalfa crop this year and wheat farmers on the Eastern Plains are worried their crop could dry up unless rain falls on their fields soon, he said. The Pueblo Chieftain reported Thursday that the San Luis Valley could lose $60 million because of the alfalfa losses. That includes the loss of this year's crop, damage to subsequent harvests and the drop in farmers' income, according to Merlin Dillon, a Colorado State University agronomist, who discussed the situation with the Alamosa County commissioners this week. North of Denver, 200 farmers stand to lose up to more than $3 million worth of crops after the state shut down their wells after officials realized that snow had melted faster than expected. They're asking three cities to share their water with them to save their onions, corns and sugar beets. In southeastern Colorado, at least one auction barn has been busier than normal this week as some ranchers start to sell calves because they fear there won't be enough grass to support all their cattle....
Impact of poor wheat crop felt across rural Oklahoma This spring, Oklahoma will see its worst wheat harvest in 50 years, experts predict, because of drought, wild fires, high winds, hailstorms, insects and frost damage. With the harvest under way in some parts of the state, about 68 million bushels are expected -- less than half the yearly average since 2001. With the price of wheat, at harvest, estimated at $4.75 a bushel, farmers could lose $125 million in income. The average price since 2001 is $3.20. But that's not the whole story. When farm dollars circulated in rural communities are counted, this year's short crop could bring a $314 million loss to the state, said Oklahoma State University economist Kim Anderson. That's based on research showing that every $1 in farm income produces $2.51 for Oklahoma's economy. Already, farm towns such as Kingfisher, Altus or Frederick are hurting. Some farmers aren't buying new tractors or equipment. Repair jobs are being put off. Grain elevator operators are laying off workers. Vacations are being canceled. Some producers might even lose their farms....
W. Kansas thirsts for rain "The farther west you go, the more severe the drought conditions get," Kansas State Climatologist Mary Knapp said. "It improves as you move east from the halfway point, where it's basically neutral except the extreme eastern part of Kansas, which is abnormally dry." The state's farmers and ranchers have taken the biggest direct hit from the lack of moisture, while small downtowns and medium-sized cities also face the aftereffects of meager harvests. Knapp said if past drought periods are any indication, these drier-than-normal conditions could persist another two to three years. Outlook for the summer rainfall, however, now shows equal chances of normal or dry conditions. But southwest Kansas has already suffered, seeing more wheat fields abandoned this year than it has for several years, researchers say. Spring freeze, drought and an attack by the wheat streak mosaic virus each are taking a toll....
USDA declares New Mexico a disaster area U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., says the U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared New Mexico a disaster area due to continuing drought and wind storms. The declaration means that New Mexico farmers and ranchers are now eligible to be considered for low-interest emergency loans from the USDA's Farm Service Agency. Producers have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for emergency loans to help cover part of their actual losses, if all eligibility requirements are met. Bingaman asked USDA officials last month to approve Gov. Bill Richardson's request for a statewide drought disaster declaration....
Industry reacts to ‘damaging’ fast food film The US food industry has launched a campaign to counter the bad publicity it expects to receive from a new film linking fast food chains and the industries that support them to the nation’s health and social problems. The film, based on Eric Schlosser’s 2001 book Fast Food Nation and staring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, is set to premiere today at the Cannes Film Festival in France. It is a fictional version of the book, which had examined the social changes resulting from the rising dominance of the fast food industry. The industry is accused of using political influence to increase profits at the expense of human health and the social conditions of its workers. But according to a goup of food industry associations, this is the latest move in a series of attacks by “critics of our food system” who are “promoting their agendas using information that is inaccurate, misleading and incomplete.” In retaliation, 18 industry organizations this month launched a website, called Best Food Nation, which claims to provide fact-based responses to the concerns raised. Members include the Food Products Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation, as well as a number of commodity trade associations....
1,000 turn out for sugar beet factory centennial t was a perfect day for a party, although a bit dry for the sugar beets, especially up the Clarks Fork valley. No matter. More than 1,000 people showed up to say "Happy 100 years" Friday as the Western Sugar Co-op refinery marked its centennial. At least 900 stayed for lunch. "This has been a helluva deal for the community," said rancher Bud Sherrodd of Pompeys Pillar. He has trucked beet pulp from the factory to his own cattle and those of his neighbors for more than a dozen years. He rents land to neighbors who raise beets. "People don't see the business it creates," Sherrodd said. "There are trucks in and out of here constantly." They haul beets to the factory, pulp to cattle and sugar to the rest of the country, he said. The sugar refinery on the south edge of Billings was built in 1906 and produced 161,000 hundred-pound bags of sugar during that first campaign. The just-completed 100th campaign produced 10 times that amount: 1.62 million hundredweights. The first crop of the second century is starting to grow....
Doyon couple raises, sells Norwegian horses DEVILS LAKE ­ The Tangle Tree Ranch, located east of Devils Lake at Doyon, is the home of the first Norwegian Dole horse in America, according to ranchers Marte Holen Stensli and Robert Nelson. The couple bill themselves as "The Dole Horse People." The first Dole Horse, named Vollaug Silver, came to the United States because of the marriage of Marte and Bob. The horse arrived in the fall of 2001. He was joined by three more Dole (pronounced Dolly) horses in April 2003. How the first horse got to the country is a story in itself. Vollaug Silver was flown from Gotenberg, Sweden, to New York where he spent three days in quarantine. Next, he was trailered to a Wisconsin equine clinic by a transport company where he was picked up by Marte for the rest of his trip to the ranch in North Dakota. On April 12, 2003, Silver was joined by three more Dole horses that were brought to the ranch from Norway. They had to stay at a Wisconsin equine center for a month in quarantine because they are breeding stock. The Dole horse, an all-around breed, is the largest of the four native Norwegian horses. It has been called the Gudbrandsdalis Horse and the East Country Horse denoting the area where the breed was developed. The Dole horse breed is an old one. In his writings from the 1530s, Archbishop Olaus Magnus mentioned the breed. As early as the 1850s, the breed type was established....
Mini Moos Desi the heifer lolled in the shade at Bob Potter's ranch, her belly swollen by a calf she was about to produce. She looked big, but big is a relative term on this spread, where Potter raises miniature Hereford cattle. The animals grow to no more than 900 pounds, about two-thirds the size of conventional cattle, he said. They are ideal for people with small ranches, such as his 10 acres on Fisher Road, he said. "They are the most efficient feed converters in the animal world," said Potter, who has 10 head and hopes for 20 to 25. Miniature cattle are the result of decades of breeding bulls and cows that were on the small side, leading to animals distinct from the large cattle that dominate today's beef industry. Some are as little as a third the size of regular livestock. Potter, one of only a few producers in California, shows his cattle throughout the West. He also sells them to other people who want to show them or have them slaughtered for home freezers....
'Doc' Holliday's legend impervious to dissection He's been called "Aristocracy's Outlaw" and the "good bad man of Tombstone." But who was John H. "Doc" Holliday, really? Was he simply an innocent dentist with a predilection for gambling who just kept stumbling into tight situations, or a cold-hearted, calculating killer? Even among those who knew him well, opinions differed. Wyatt Earp remembered him as a "mad, merry scamp with heart of gold and nerves of steel." Bat Masterson was less enamored, pegging him for a mean drunk with a little-man complex. He was, Masterson wrote, "hot headed and impetuous and very much given to both drinking and quarreling, and among men who did not fear him, he was very much disliked." Like Billy the Kid and Jesse James, Doc Holliday is one of those Western historical figures who has been so completely obscured by legend and mythmaking that getting at the man himself seems an impossible task. Gary L. Roberts, emeritus professor of history at Abraham Baldwin College, is well aware of the difficulties but makes a heroic attempt in "Doc Holliday: The Life and the Legend" (Wiley, $38.99). In 414 pages of text buttressed by almost 90 pages of notes, Roberts thoroughly excavates the record, examines the legend and speculates why the latter has proved so enduring....
A Rodeo Home Where Traffic Drones and Suburbs Expand All Day This is the territory of shadow-traffic updates, a landscape of commuters who often form a bumper-to-bumper ribbon of road rage into San Francisco along Interstate 580 during rush hour. But once a year in a canyon fleetingly visible from the freeway and the Bay Area Rapid Transit line, the Peet's-Coffee-and-pinot-noir culture of the Bay Area gives way to the Jack Daniel's salute, a bottle of whiskey hoisted high in the air to celebrate the cowboys at the annual Rowell Ranch Rodeo. It is rodeo season in California, when chili cook-offs and sweat, dust and manure connect suburbs like Hayward to a past that existed before weekend soccer games and the mall. It is a time of yes ma'ams and no ma'ams, a throwback to the days before tract development, when cowboys like Cecil Jones, now 88, drove rodeo stock through the Livermore Hills down the two-lane blacktop that is now I-580. "This was big-time cowboy country," said Mr. Jones, a saddle-bronc rider who managed the ranch for the rodeo's namesake, Harry Rowell, an English-born sailor turned slaughterhouse-and-stock entrepreneur who died in 1969. "Today, the newcomers don't know what-all." The rodeo — the culmination of a week that included a parade, a dinner dance, a barbeque, the chili cook-off at the nearby Castro Village Shopping Center and the crowning of Miss Rowell Ranch Rodeo Queen 2006 — is one of the country's oldest such competitions. It is one of 45 rodeos in California, which has the distinction of being the country's second-largest rodeo stronghold, surpassed only by Texas, which has 107, according to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association....
PRCA hasn’t exactly committed to Springs When the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association decided Tuesday to stay put after saying it would leave Colorado Springs for New Mexico, the abrupt change in direction was reminiscent of a bull’s maneuvers to buck off its rider. “I can’t get inside their brains and know what happened,” said Jon Goldstein, a spokesman for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who announced in February the PRCA was accepting that state’s $17 million offer to relocate. “All I know is, it’s unfortunate the way things played out in the end.” And while the PRCA said it’s not moving to New Mexico, it gave no guarantees it wouldn’t listen to other offers — which wouldn’t surprise some rodeo backers. Rob Alexander, Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Foundation chairman and part of a community task force formed to try and keep the PRCA, said efforts locally and by New Mexico to woo the organization amounted to an economic development tug of war. And once word gets out a business or organization is looking, other cities circle like sharks....
On the Edge of Common Sense: ANTIs love their trees, but hinder progress Gale Norton, once Colorado's attorney general, is resigning as the nation's interior secretary. "She has been an integral part of the most anti-environmental administration we've ever seen," one of the so-called 'environmental' groups is quoted as saying. What they didn't say is, "She's been an integral part of one of the most pro-energy, pro-forest restoration, pro-multiple use, pro-rural community, pro-common sense, balanced federal lands policies in twenty years." I prefer to call the environmental groups the ANTIs. It is as if they have not noticed America's addiction to skyrocketing energy prices, our increasing dependence on foreign oil, the horrendous forest fires consuming the west, the grinding erosion of rural communities, the elimination of ranchers, lumbermen, miners, and the enmity between themselves and the citizens who actually live in the land they are trying to protect. This is the same ANTI mind-set that prevented beefing up the levees around New Orleans years ago, that stopped development of nuclear power, that still condemns the use of pesticides, antibiotics and genetically modified foods....

NEWS ROUNDUP

Battle line drawn Many who live off the land here cast the debate in the starkest terms. In the first 10 years after their reintroduction in the Rockies, gray wolves killed 505 head of cattle and 1,306 sheep, and the numbers are rising. It's us or them, ranchers say. Incredibly adaptable, the animals hunt together, with older wolves teaching younger ones. Packs have spread quickly into Idaho's central valleys and north into the panhandle, and along the fingerlike mountain ranges that stretch from Yellowstone south and east deep into Wyoming. A popular bumper sticker here reads: "Wyoming wolves, smoke a pack a day." On most ranches, the wolf is seen as not a noble beast but a brutal killer, one of the few things on the range that can compete with man for dominance. The Danas have seen cattle so frightened by wolves, they've ripped through three fence lines before they could be brought under control. A sheep rancher in the area says she has seen a pack kill 42 sheep in 12 hours. "If you don't like wolves, watching them kill something will fit right in with your worldview," Jimenez said. "They have powerful jaws that bite into (the) throat and hindquarters of their prey, often sending them into shock. "They basically rip their prey apart. There's a lot of blood on the snow after a wolf kill."....
Water experts wary of N.M. proposal If sharing Colorado River water isn't a contentious enough issue now, Southwest Colorado water interests say a recent New Mexico proposal could lead to them being left high and dry because of the need to protect endangered fish. According to calculations by New Mexico and the federal Bureau of Reclamation, there's an extra 220,000 acre-feet of water available annually to Upper Colorado River basin states because less water is evaporating from its reservoirs than previously thought. (That's enough water to fill nearly two reservoirs the size of Lake Nighthorse - the Animas-La Plata Project reservoir under construction just west of Bodo Industrial Park.) "It's going to be controversial," Steve Harris, the engineer for the Southwestern Water Conservation District, said of the New Mexico proposal. "We learned about it only in March." All future users of water in Southwest Colorado, even a rancher who wants to create a stock pond, could be affected, Harris said. The situation is critical, Harris said, because thirsty New Mexico is using all the water available to it in the Laws of the Colorado River, which allocates Western water among seven states. New Mexico currently receives about 675,000 acre-feet of water from several sources - a tunnel that transfers Colorado water from the upper San Juan River through the Continental Divide to the Rio Grande River, Navajo Reservoir and the San Juan, Animas and La Plata rivers. Under the water-sharing formula, New Mexico stands to gain 25,000 acre-feet of the 220,000 acre-foot windfall. Officials there want to use the additional water to help meet future needs of the yet-unauthorized Navajo-Gallup Project and allow full development of the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, a slowly developing project to irrigate up to 110,000 acres south of Farmington....
Trout Unlimited plan snags criticism A bill designed to help Utah's trout ran into a few rapids Wednesday when a legislator wondered if environmental groups could use it to hijack water, such as the Provo River. The bill would allow private entities to lease water rights and allow the water to remain in streams for the specific purpose of improving trout habitat. Current law permits water rights for in-stream flows to be held only by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and the Utah Division of State Parks and Recreation. Otherwise, private water rights can only be granted for actual use, such as diverting water to irrigate cropland. The bill, supported by the fishing and conservation group Trout Unlimited, carries a bundle of restrictions. Water rights can be granted only for a term of less than 10 years, and must be reapplied for following that; the purpose must be to protect trout; no other existing water right may be impaired. But Rep. David Ure, R-Kamas, co-chairman of the task force, worried that the law could be the means to speculate in water, or if leases might not run up the cost of water for municipalities or agriculture....
Demonstration project to test grasslands grazing plan The Forest Service plans to test new rules for livestock grazing on North Dakota's national grasslands, a project that will take at least 10 years. The project is part of the final management plan for the grasslands, which include more than 1 million acres in the Little Missouri National Grasslands in the west and Sheyenne National Grasslands in the southeastern part of the state. Some grazing rules, such as those affecting prairie dog habitat, are being changed to guidelines, which at least one environmental group worries might be less strictly enforced. The grasslands project "moves the argument away from the hypothetical and esoteric, to practical field application," regional U.S. Forester Gail Kimbell said in documents released Friday. The Forest Service had estimated overall grazing cuts of 9 percent as a result of its plan. Ranchers said the estimates were low by as much as 60 percent. The grazing portion was put on hold in 2002 while a team of independent scientists spent the next two years studying it. The scientists last year concluded that the Forest Service's projected grazing cuts were more accurate than the ranchers' estimates. However, the team also said the Forest Service projections were based on too many assumptions....
Army taking comments on Pinon Canyon study U.S. Army officials on Friday released a draft environmental impact study for the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, which is an assessment of what impacts will occur if the Army sends thousands of additional troops to train at the current 230,000-acre site. For Fort Carson officials, the report was just part of the process of having an additional 8,500 troops assigned to the post over the next few years - as planned by the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure process. For ranchers opposed to the Army's plan to expand its maneuver site by 418,000 acres in the future - the draft report is just another shot in what they expect to be a long war to stop any expansion. "Anyone looking for an assessment of the planned expansion of PCMS, won't find it here," said Robin Renn, the PCMS environmental coordinator. "This is simply an impact study of what we would expect by training more soldiers at the current maneuver site."....
Wolverine roams Yakama reservation Believed to be living only in the remote northern Cascades and in the dense forests of Idaho and Montana, a wolverine has been spotted near Mount Adams on the Yakama reservation. While state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists say it's not clear whether wolverines once lived in the southern Cascades, Yakama wildlife officials have little doubt about the animal. "They've always been here on the Yakama reservation, especially in the primitive areas," said Yakama wildlife manager Arlen Washines in an e-mail. "We've had many sightings by tribal members, even within the last few years." Tribal biologists placed a camera northeast of Mount Adams that photographed a wolverine in August, but the camera wasn't retrieved until a month later. It was the first documented sighting of a wolverine in the southern Cascades, according to the tribe. Often called a skunk bear because of its ability to emit a noxious smell and its skunklike appearance thanks to the white stripes running down its sides, the wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family....
Snowmobilers want trails in caribou recovery zone reopened U.S. Forest Service officials and groups that want caribou habitat in northern Idaho protected from snowmobiles plan to meet to decide which trails could be reopened for snowmobile enthusiasts. The trails were closed last month when U.S. District Judge Robert H. Whaley banned snowmobiles throughout nearly 470 square miles of national forest land in northern Idaho in an effort to save the last mountain caribou herd in the contiguous 48 states. The caribou recovery zone in the Idaho Panhandle National Forests remains closed to snowmobiles until the Forest Service develops a winter recreation strategy taking into account the impact of snowmobiles on the herd. Forest Service officials and caribou advocates plan to work on the issue in the next several weeks. On Friday, snowmobilers organized a rally that drew riders from around the region to protest the snowmobiling ban....
Places to play, space for refuge On many weekends, Pojoaque resident Jorge Bencomo and his children, 13 and 11, ride their dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property near Alcalde. "It's a sport I've always liked," said Bencomo, 40. "I've ridden since I was a child. I raced in Mexico. Now I'm teaching my children how to ride." Bencomo and his children enjoy an increasingly popular pastime -- exploring public land on off-highway vehicles. The U.S. Forest Service says the number of visits to national forests across the country involving off-highway vehicles grew from about 5 million in 1975 to 51 million in 2005. And the number of off-highway vehicles in the U.S. rose from less than 400,000 in the early 1990s to more than 8 million by 2003, according to a 2005 national survey on off-road recreation. New Mexico public land managers say the state mirrors the nationwide trend....
Forest plan backs use of now-illegal roads A management plan for roads in the Medicine Bow/Routt National Forest, scheduled for release next month, will call for almost 100 miles of unauthorized roads to be approved for motorcycle and all-terrain vehicle use. Clint Kyhl, Laramie District Ranger, said the plan would not affect some 785 miles of authorized roads in the forest. However, it would put about 100 miles out of the 265 miles of unauthorized roads to use. "We have a variety of unauthorized roads we needed to decide to use or close," Kyhl said. "(And) we have zero miles of motorized trail in the district right now. We want to provide that opportunity as well, and use some of these roads to do it."....
Feds: Mine will benefit bears Grizzly bears stand to benefit if a copper and silver mine is developed beneath Montana's Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday in a rewritten opinion. The proposed underground mine involves a "conservative approach" and mitigation measures, such as buying land to be protected as bear habitat, that would leave grizzlies in better condition than if the mine was not developed, the service said. "We really think this is a good thing for bears," Mark Wilson, a Fish and Wildlife Service administrator in Helena, said Friday. The Fish and Wildlife Service's findings are in a biological opinion rewritten after a federal judge last year sided with environmental groups that charged the agency conducted inadequate studies before finding the mine would not jeopardize bears and trout. The agency Friday also endorsed mine measures for protection of sensitive bull trout. Both the trout and grizzlies are federally protected as threatened species....
Copper mine plan aims at santa ritas It's no secret there's copper deep under the foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains southeast of Tucson. Rosemont Ranch, off Arizona 83 going to Sonoita, has been the occasional focus of mining companies large and small for decades. Asarco was the last company to talk of putting the mining claims at Rosemont into production, but sold off the property in 2004. Now, an upstart Canadian firm is again touting Rosemont as a good candidate for large-scale mining. The Rosemont deposit has been explored before, but Augusta is doing detailed drilling to better define the ore body and design a mine. It could produce more than 4 billion pounds of copper, 100 million pounds of molybdenum and 100 million ounces of silver over 20 years, Augusta says. At today's high metal prices, that's more than $13 billion for just the copper — enough to stimulate some interest in the project. When might Rosemont transition from ranch to mine? As soon as 2010, says one Augusta official, if the company's plan is well-received by the U.S. Forest Service and other regulators. Rosemont is surrounded by the Coronado National Forest and the use of public land is essential to the mine's development....
Troubled waters Logging trucks once rumbled up this narrow creek valley 30 miles northeast of Coeur d'Alene. Today, there's not even a trace of road left. The biggest creatures now roaming the banks of Yellow Dog Creek are the pair of moose that have recently taken up residence in the quiet valley. Only a well-trained eye would notice the signs of the recent $400,000 restoration project just completed here: the flecks of surveyor's tape, the hidden cables anchoring massive logs to bedrock along the stream, the faint tracks from the heavy machinery that removed the dirt logging road. District Ranger Randy Swick hiked up the valley on a crisp September morning, showing off the stream as if it were a once-troubled kid who just earned a spot on the honor roll. It's a small but important part of the U.S. Forest Service's long-term plan to fix hundreds of square miles of damaged watersheds in the region, he said....
Column - An endless journey For more than a century, our national forests have served the nation's needs for timber, minerals, forage and other resources. At the same time, they have provided millions of people with an unparalleled recreational and aesthetic resource, and with the satisfaction that comes with knowing that our society has preserved vast natural landscapes more or less intact. The 386,000 miles of existing roads in our national forests are more than adequate to ensure that the forests will continue to be used to help supply our nation's need for resources. Far less secure and far more valuable to future generations are those remaining tracts of undeveloped land that have managed to survive in our forests. If we lose these lands now, we will never get them back. We should bear that in mind as we engage in the ongoing debate over the protection of forest roadless areas. That debate, thanks to a recent court decision, seems destined to drag on for several more years, prolonging the uncertainty about the future of our forests. Use of the forests has been debated for more than a century, but the current round kicked off on Jan. 5, 2001, in the waning days of the Clinton administration....
Researchers hope tree vole discoveries will prompt buffer zones It was the fir needles that gave the red tree vole away. Researcher Nathaniel Mitchell thought he might be onto the trail of the small nocturnal rodents when he spotted the rice-sized scat. But the fir needles were the real giveaway for scientists working to protect the species' old-growth habitat, since voles both feed on the needles, and use their resin ducts to make nests. Mitchell is a member of the Northwest Ecosystem Survey Team, who are trained to survey for voles by researchers at Oregon State University. Since 2000, Mitchell has spent summers searching for the little rodents, who spend most of their life high above the ground. This summer, he and fellow researcher Laura Beaton found 122 new red tree vole sites on federal forest in southwestern Oregon. Researchers hope uncovering new red tree vole sites will convince federal agencies to set aside buffers on timber sales where the nests have been located....
BLM mulls study on effects of winter natural gas drilling Bureau of Land Management officials are considering a study that would examine the effects of natural gas drilling in the winter, a practice restricted to protect wildlife such as deer and elk foraging for food in snowy weather. If approved, the multiyear study would be conducted on up to three of Williams Production's federal leases in the Rulison and Grand Valley gas fields outside of Parachute, said David Boyd, spokesman for the BLM's Glenwood Springs field office. "This is something we've talked about very extensively with the (state Division of Wildlife) and BLM," Williams spokeswoman Susan Alvillar said. "Right now, I think were all on the same page." Winter drilling restrictions traditionally last from Dec. 1 to March 1, but certain rigs might be allowed to remain in operation throughout the winter during the study. DOW West Region Manager Ron Velarde said the study will help wildlife biologists and others see the impacts in a specific drainage area....
EPA tightens emission regs Energy companies around Wyoming may have more work ahead reducing certain air pollutants, as a federal agency has tightened allowable emissions to protect human health. The Environmental Protection Agency last month reduced the amount of so-called "PM 2.5s" that can be in the air before standards are violated. Those tiny particles can cause aggravated asthma, lung and heart diseases, and are a major cause of smog. The definition of "PM 2.5" refers to unhealthful fine particles that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller, according to the EPA. They are derived from combustible and industrial activities. The new rules will affect how companies operate nationwide. In Wyoming, the attention is on the Jonah natural gas field southeast of Pinedale, where the Bureau of Land Management released a study earlier this year of predicted air quality impacts. Some of the predicted emissions of PM 2.5s will violate the new federal standards. Steven Hall, spokesman for the BLM, said the agency will not revise the Jonah Infill Record of Decision document in light of the new standards, but the agency will comply with all federal regulations....
'We're going to feel it' The news is not that oil and gas development is ramping up throughout the state. Instead, the news is that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is increasingly taking notice. The department itself has mapped projections for oil and gas development across the state, and overlapped those projections with wildlife habitat, showing a grim picture for wildlife's future. "This has really gotten our attention," said Vern Stelter, statewide habitat protection coordinator for Game and Fish. "Obviously, we're very focused on this as a department, trying to moderate impacts as much as we can." The agency has highlighted areas including the Powder River Basin, Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields, Moxa Arch, Continental Divide and Atlantic Rim areas, which are projected to see increases of up to 10 times more oil and gas wells. Sage grouse and big game are identified as primary users of habitat eyed by energy. The department is working with energy companies and the Bureau of Land Management -- the primary public lands agency permitting the energy development -- to minimize impacts to wildlife, Stelter said....
Energy Bill Is a Boon to Oil Companies Tucked into a massive energy bill that would open the outer continental shelf to oil drilling are provisions that would slash future royalties owed to the federal government by companies prospecting in Rocky Mountain oil shale deposits. Sponsored by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) and passed by the House earlier this year, the bill would amend an existing requirement that the federal government receive a "fair return" from oil companies that hold oil shale leases on public lands. Instead, Pombo's bill, modeled after a Canadian law, would reduce royalties from the customary 12.5% of annual revenue to 1%. Further, the bill could cut the reduced rate by as much as 80% if the price of oil fell. Over many years of oil production, the royalty discounts could amount to tens of billions in lost federal receipts, said James T. Bartis, an analyst at the Rand Corp. who wrote a widely used study of the economic prospects of the developing oil shale industry. Pombo and others argue that oil companies need incentives to invest in the unproven billion-dollar technology, which squeezes oil from deep rock formations. Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have the world's largest known oil shale deposits, with estimates of up to 2 trillion barrels, although only about 800 million barrels are believed to be recoverable....
Alternative energy proponents push piñon pellets U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa, and other officials touted pellets made from piñon trees as a local, renewable source of heating for Southwest Colorado during a visit to the Avon Hotel on Friday. Rob Davis, president of Forest Energy Corp. of Show Low, Ariz., helps U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa, open a bag of piñon pellets at the Avon Hotel in Silverton on Friday. Salazar was in town touting renewable energy. Forest Energy Corp. of Show Low, Ariz., recently began producing what are believed to be the first pellets made from piñon. The trees were harvested on Bureau of Land Management property on the Uncompahgre Plateau. Salazar poured a bag of the pellets into a 65,000-BTU wood stove used to heat the 2,500-square-foot first floor of the historic hotel. "That truly is a Colorado resource heating Colorado," said Rob Davis, president of Forest Energy. Davis said the pellets were whole-tree pellets that incorporate needles, cones, bark and whatever else comes along with the trees. "Anything that gets into the truck, we make a pellet out of it," Davis said. Officials involved in the piñon project said it required a great deal of cooperation, from the prison crew that cut the trees, to the BLM that allowed the project to go forward, to Forest Energy for producing the pellets and even ZE Supply in Silverton for selling them....
Trouble in the air: How Government flights pumped out 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide The inevitable head-on collision between Britain's climate change and aviation policies moves a step closer today with figures showing the total distance flown by the Government's own ministers and senior officials last year alone is equivalent to 14 return trips to the Moon. Tony Blair, his cabinet colleagues and their officials clocked up 6.5 million air miles, according to the Cabinet Office's list of flights during the 2005-2006 financial year - and in doing so pumped almost 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, analysis shows. Environmental groups went on the attack last night over the huge scale of the emissions. The figures starkly underline the fact that, although the Blair Government is talking ever more loudly about the problem of global warming, it cannot itself get to grips with its fastest-rising cause - emissions of greenhouse gases from aircraft engines....
A Power-Grid Report Suggests Some Dark Days Ahead Companies are not building power plants and power lines fast enough to meet growing demand, according to a group recently assigned by the federal government to assure proper operation of the power grid. The group, the North American Electric Reliability Council, in its annual report, to be released Monday, said the amount of power that could be generated or transmitted would drop below the target levels meant to ensure reliability on peak days in Texas, New England, the Mid-Atlantic area and the Midwest during the next two to three years. The council was established in 1965 after a blackout across the Northeast, and has since set voluntary standards for the industry. After the blackout of 2003, which covered a vast swath of the Midwest, Northeast and Ontario, Congress set up a process that would eventually give the council the authority to fine American companies that did not follow certain operating standards. It is seeking a similar designation in Canada, since — electrically speaking — the border is irrelevant. For years, the council has produced often-gloomy annual reports, but this is the first to be officially filed with federal agencies, and to recommend specific action....
Investigation finds farmers double-dipping in federal funds In spring 2000, Congress decided to do something about its costly and politically driven practice of giving farmers a disaster payment each time a storm damaged their crops. The lawmakers voted to use $8 billion in new taxpayer subsidies to help farmers buy crop insurance to protect against losses. The insurance would replace the disaster payments and reduce government costs. But shortly after passing the Agricultural Risk Protection Act, Congress lost its fiscal will. One week before the presidential election, it passed a new $1.8 billion disaster bill to assist farmers hurt by bad weather. Two others followed in subsequent years, totaling more than $6 billion. Today, after a searing drought in the plains, farm-state legislators are pushing for billions more in aid. The result is that farmers often get paid twice by the government for the same disaster, once in subsidized insurance and then again in disaster assistance, a legal but controversial form of double-dipping, a Washington Post investigation found. Together, the programs have cost taxpayers nearly $24 billion since 2000. The government pays billions to help farmers buy cheap federal insurance, billions more to private insurance companies to help run the program and billions more to cover the riskiest claims. On top of all that, it spends billions more on disaster payments....
Japanese rules prompt cattle ID tag use Japanese consumers aren't just asking, "Where's the beef?" They want to know: "Where's the beef from?" That question is proving to be a good opportunity for cattle businesses to test a new national system for tracking animals that federal officials hope to have operative on a voluntary basis by 2009. The Japanese government is making sure that any U.S. beef it imports can be traced to its origins and comes from cows not more than 20 months old. "It creates an opportunity for ranchers or producers that can verify the age of the calves they are selling," said Todd Clemons, president of Okeechobee Livestock Market in Okeechobee. Local ranchers get a premium of about $20 per animal. Since April, the Okeechobee Livestock Market has sold 25,000 cattle through online auctions; 80 percent of those were calves with tags that make it possible to verify their age and birthplace. The calves are shipped to feedlots in states such as Texas, and some are eventually sold to Japan and other export markets....
Stray cows hit on road: Who gets ticket? If a cow wanders onto a four-lane highway, who, if anyone, gets the ticket if it then gets run over - six times? This is no hypothetical. In fact, the question was raised this week before the Cache County Council. On Sunday evening, several cows escaped from a Utah State University-owned pasture near the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station South Farm, 3580 S. U.S. 89-91, in Wellsville. The unluckiest member of the stray herd was hit by six vehicles, yet caused only minor injuries to drivers and passengers, according to Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Tony Hutson. The officer verified that a 62-year-old USU farmer, who arrived at the accident scene a few moments later, was cited with a class C misdemeanor because the animals were loose. A subsequent phone call from a Farm Bureau representative to County Council member Darrel Gibbons prompted a discussion about who is prosecuted and why in these situations. "He wanted to know if it is the policy to issue citations whenever that happens," Gibbons said....
Squeezed in Star Valley It's 1 in the afternoon on a rainy Thursday, and Jody Bagley is doing something he'd rather you not know. Bagley, a regional vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, is herding lambs onto a truck. He's a cattleman, but his work as a rancher has him dabbling in all kinds of activities, including helping a friend load lambs on this day. Bagley raises some sheep and was filling the truck with some of his stock as well. Bagley is well known in Star Valley. He's on the Star Valley Land Trust and from the Bagley Ranch, which has been in the family for generations. But all that may change for the 48-year-old father of three. Soaring land prices and increased costs in fuel, feed and drought have Bagley and other longtime western Wyoming ranchers looking to leave for different, if not greener, pastures. "We're looking at trading one acre for 23 acres north of Lusk," he said. "One cow for three cows." Bagley and many other ranchers are feeling the pinch. Big-money land offers stemming from residential development in picturesque pockets of Wyoming are prompting many longtime ranchers to consider selling to developers. Maintaining livestock herds in fierce winters and fending off multimillion-dollar offers for land becomes more difficult each passing year, even when livestock prices are high....
Dispute over property deed lives on in Imperial County A stocky rancher with a reputation for stretching the truth breezed into this desert town about 40 years ago with big news. The way several people recall it, Robert Earl Harvey Sr. announced he owned about a quarter of eastern Imperial County and had the paperwork to prove it. County officials allowed him to record a deed on the land, largely sand dunes and wheat-colored badlands. Some of it was near Harvey's ranch in Blythe. But nearly all of the property – roughly 760,000 acres – was, and still is, owned by the federal government. Harvey deeded the land in 1992 to a Palm Desert businessman. County records show that eight years later, it was deeded to a Massachusetts business named HHH Investment Trust. And there are signs that HHH is trying to profit from it....
Pearce trying to save Mexican Canyon trestle Congressman Steve Pearce isn't just one of those politicians who try to fix every problem by throwing money at it. At least, that's not his only tool. In fact, the Roswell Republican is leading an initiative to save the Mexican Canyon trestle through statesmanship. Rebuffed in his efforts to get federal money to save the sagging railway bridge in Cloudcroft, Pearce decided to see what he could get done without cash. In that vein, he has met with local leaders in Cloudcroft, the Mescalero Apache Nation, the Forest Service and the engineering department at the University of New Mexico. All this talk has resulted in a loose-knit coalition to shore up the trestle. "It's a visual symbol of the past and if we don't save it we're going to lose that connection to the past," Pearce said. The Mexican Canyon trestle is one of the few remaining pieces of the long defunct Alamogordo-Sacramento railroad's 32-mile track. That track once ran between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft, spawning the then-lucrative logging business in the area....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Farming a partnership between man, wife Farming is a partnership: man and wife engaged in the century's old "business" of raising livestock and coaxing a crop from the ground. And yes, there really are moments that inspire the romantic images poets and artists portray: the couple sitting on the porch swing watching the sun set over a dark green field of soybeans; or mom in her apron holding a steaming platter of biscuits as hubby and the haying crew look up from the breakfast table smiling; or the wife chatting pleasantly as she explains to the implement dealer exactly what part her husband sent her to town for; or the joy on her face as she stands ankle deep in mud next to her stuck pickup holding her dead cell phone, waiting for hubby to arrive. Yes, these are the ties that bind....

USFWS - Use drones to deliver medicine for prairie dogs

Drones might soon be dropping peanut butter-flavored treats laced with vaccine across some Montana prairie dog colonies under a plan to inoculate the rodents against the plague. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it wants to protect prairie dogs from the disease because they're the primary food source for highly endangered black-footed ferrets. Plague can nearly wipe out prairie dog colonies, putting the ferrets at risk. The agency wants to scatter vaccine-laden bait on colonies at the Charles M. Russell and UL Bend national wildlife refuges in northeastern Montana. The plan has already been through safety and research phases...more

'Beaver Believers' say dam-building creatures can make the American West lush again

Beavers, the largest rodents in North America, are sometimes seen as pests. But a growing cohort of self-styled “Beaver Believers” is celebrating the dam-building creatures as a keystone species on which entire freshwater ecosystems depend. In his 2018 book, "Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter," author Ben Goldfarb examines the history, ecology and physiology of beavers — and describes why some landowners are welcoming beavers to help store water and revitalize streams in the increasingly arid American West.So, what does it mean to be a “Beaver Believer?”“The Beaver Believers are a tribe of scientists, land managers, farmers and ranchers — really anyone — who believes that restoring these incredible little ecosystem engineers can help us deal with all kinds of environmental problems,” Goldfarb says. “The Beaver Believers are people like me who have come to recognize that this is an incredibly important animal that we should cooperate with in landscape restoration.” When beavers build their dams, they create ponds and wetlands; they help store water for farms and ranches; they help filter out water pollution, which improves water quality; they create habitat for many kinds of fish and wildlife that we care about; they slow down floods; and their ponds can act as fire breaks...MORE

HT: Free Range Report

FRIF: Of Lice and Coyotes

Of Lice

FRIF

And, Coyotes

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            We are making repairs to what remains of the territorial house at the ranch. It is only part of the original house. The rest, and the most historically significant part, burned the night the purchase contract was signed years ago. The fire marshal concluded a combination of propane leakage and old wiring was the cause of the fire, but the fact remains. The absence of that dwelling continues to be a void.

            It was a huge loss.

            Only the west wing remains. It was built as early as 1876. On Friday, we discussed what we will to do with the front door. In keeping with the material used in the renovation (barn wood that was salvaged from a nearby barn that was about to collapse), planking with heavy livestock use is probably going to be selected.

            We want a door. Leave the other chaos outside!

The desire is to have a door befitting the surroundings. When it closes it needs to sound like a door shutting. It will be the official sally port and symbolic of old ranch houses of long ago that may not meet the criteria of being uptown outside, but as bright and cheery as possible inside.

            Further symbolism will reflect the livestock use facing outward and the more original and less blemished surface facing inward. We look forward to completion. If only we could find an effective barrier to keep the chaos of the rest of the world away from our lives.

That would be the stuff of real magic.

            FRIF

            With the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 that put a degree of order into the chaos of the checkerboard land ownership across the West, a promise of funds referred to as Farm and Ranch Improvement Funds (FRIF) was thrown in the deal. The source of those funds came from grazing fees paid by ranchers for the right to graze the lands. To the extent it was a bone to reduce the fallout over the reneging of the disposal of lands promised to the original states, it was intended to capitalize certain practices that support endeavors of primary producers.

            In fact, the New Mexico law addressing the federal remittance directs those funds toward measures that directly affect the livestock industry. There are six approved uses of the funds. These include soil and water conservation measures, control of rodents and predatory animals, extermination of poisonous and noxious weeds, construction of dipping vats, the acquisition of spray equipment and other structures to control parasites in livestock, and the maintenance of secondary roads.

            The funds come to the state from the feds, get funneled through New Mexico State University under the direction of its president or designated FRIF coordinators and are distributed back to the counties based on prorated grazing fee collections. Although the county commissions have the authority to direct the uses of the funds based on the six approved criteria, they “shall” seek the advice of officials with knowledge and experience in matters reflecting the allowable uses of the money.

            In predator control, that official has normally been the animal control arm of the Department of Agriculture, APHIS. In fact, counties normally have a contract with APHIS where the money received is leveraged with other funds to cover the expense of an animal control official. That is the way it has been done for years, and, generally, it works as it was intended. That is until Dona Ana County’s commissioners decided the next enemy of their environmental state was that group and unilaterally declared coyote control would not be allowed with FRIF funds.

            Of Lice

            Coyotes can’t be controlled with FRIF funds?

            The document, the resolution, approved by the commission is extremely poorly written, but the testimony of the proceeding is very explicit. APHIS is a collective of coyote murderers whose sole intent in life is to fully decimate the ranks of the wily coyote in southern New Mexico and thus in the universe. The reality is just the opposite. APHIS is the only arm of predator control that is objective and trained for the selective removal of problem predators. They respond to coyote issues on the basis of landowner requests when actual problems arise. They come in, they target the specific area of issue, and they act.

            Predator control isn’t a first act of some fairy tale stage production.

            It is obvious those commissioners have never witnessed or fathom the consequences of predator damage. It is also obvious they have no connection to a cornerstone of their constituency that know full well their best interests have long been ignored, misunderstood, and woefully underrepresented.

            They are playing with fire.

            In the matter of predator control, it isn’t just empathy of coyotes that needs to be considered. It isn’t just the tax base they jeopardize with their green agenda, either. It is parvo, it is rabies, and it is the documented and growing reality of tapeworm that crosses the threshold from canine to humans that comes into play when the little wolves eat the family cats and canaries in urban backyards.

            Who is going to be the agent of importance when those consequences of predator damage are witnessed?

            Of Coyotes

            Lifting coyotes from a predator control mission is akin to the singular withdrawal of killing of lice in a dipping vat. It leaves everything upended and uncertainty prevails in all directions. If the official can’t kill a problem coyote, he can’t take care of the skunks, the pigeons, or the rattlesnakes he is called for because his contract with the county is centered upon predation control and coyotes are the center piece of that predation.

            What a mess this has become.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Tyranny!”