Monday, February 28, 2005

NEWS ROUNDUP


Mountain lion killing goats
When a Red Bluff rancher imported registered South African Boer goats from Argentina, he did not intend them to end up as a mountain lion's dinner. But they are, one after another. Former Tehama County Sheriff Lyle Williams used to advise people on what they could do in situations like this. Now, he's looking for help. Williams raises the chestnut-trimmed, white-bodied goats on Wilder Road just one-half mile from the Red Bluff city limits. The goats make a pretty picture against the green pasture, but the reality is not so pretty. "I had 100 head. I'm at 80 now," Williams said. "I'm having a mountain lion make a kill every 10 days. He got three since Feb. 1."....
Expert: Black-footed ferret recovery not guaranteed While black-footed ferrets have made a strong comeback in South Dakota, their recovery still faces an uphill battle nationwide, a federal official said. Black-footed ferrets were thought to be extinct until 18 of them were discovered near Meeteetse, Wyo., about 20 years ago. Today, nearly 500 of the animals live in the wild, with the majority of them at three sites in South Dakota, said Mike Lockhart, coordinator of the Black-Footed Ferret Recovery program for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service....
Hunting declines across West Across the country, the number of hunters declined by more than 1 million from 1991 to 2001, or 7.3 percent, according to Census Bureau and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The drop was even greater in the West -- 9.6 percent. Hunting has survived through generations by fathers passing it on to their children. Families bonded during hunting trips. Today, many people have given up on hunting, or never tried it at all. "If we think about how the country was explored and developed, it was hunters, it was trappers," said Steve Williams, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "If we lose that, I think in some way we lose part of the American character."....
Time, opportunity, growth drive out hunters Nearly a century after the grizzly bear was hunted to extinction in California, hunters are fast becoming an endangered breed in the nation's most populous state. While states around the West have seen a drop in the number of hunters, no state had a plunge like California, despite enormous population growth. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of hunters dropped 39 percent, from 446,000 to 274,000, according to the U.S. Census. With 36 million residents, its standing as the nation's population leader puts California at the top of many census categories. But Colorado, with only 6 million people, surpassed the Golden State in the total number of hunters, despite losing 19 percent of its own hunters in the same period. Tracing hunting licenses over a lengthier period shows a bigger decline. California license sales fell from 690,790 in 1970 to 248,190 in 2004. The state grew by about 16 million people during that period....
Animal rights activists aim to make hunting extinct The videos they show at the training camp for animal activists aren't for the squeamish. Students grimace and cringe -- some start to sob -- as images of trapped and wounded animals flash on the screen. At the camp sponsored by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, would-be activists are taught about the horrors of hunting, trapping and breeding animals for fur. Then, they learn the tools -- from writing letters to the editor to staging rowdy protests -- that PETA uses to try to shut them down. ''If you approach the hunters in a nonconfrontational way and just talk to them in a reasonable and level way, you can really change a lot of minds,'' facilitator Don Shannon said. ''I see it happen all the time.''....
Appraisals called into question In 2001, an appraiser hired by private land broker Scott Gragson valued about 5 acres of publicly owned land near Decatur Boulevard and Russell Road at $275,000. Relying on that figure, Clark County commissioners voted in November 2001 to trade the parcel to Gragson and several partners in exchange for land the appraiser pegged at a similar price. The county deeded the property to Gragson on June 7, 2002. Five days later, he resold it for $1.25 million, or more than 4 1/2 times the appraisal accepted by the county. While the $975,000 return is not the largest profit Gragson has realized by acquiring and selling taxpayer-owned land, it is one of the swiftest...."
Support grows to take funds from Nevada President Bush’s plan to shift millions of dollars from federal land sales from Clark County is receiving some favorable reviews on Capitol Hill, to the dismay of Nevada lawmakers who say it’s an unfair money grab. Republicans who head the appropriations panels that write spending bills are intrigued by the idea, which the Department of Interior outlined for them in recent weeks. “We’ll be taking a close look at the president’s proposal, but it does seem clear that the existing law governing Clark County land sale revenue needs to be re-examined,” said U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont....
Guv insists N-dump battle not over Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. says the battle is not over against storing highly radioactive nuclear rods in Utah's west desert, and he plans to bring up the issue with President Bush on Sunday. A day after the state lost a key battle to keep the Goshute Indian Reservation from obtaining a license to store 44,000 tons of waste on its land 45 miles west of Salt Lake City, Huntsman says he will exhaust every chance Utah has to keep the waste out. And if he can't bend the president's ear? "If not, we will be back in the next two to three weeks to meet with the secretary of the Interior and others and fight this battle with every ounce of energy we can muster," Huntsman told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday....
Attorney worried about tribe's request for land return The McLean County state's attorney says the transfer of land on Lake Sakakawea to the Three Affiliated Tribes could hurt public hunting and fishing in the future. Three Affiliated Tribes wants to get back some 36,000 acres of reservation land taken 50 years ago for construction of Garrison Dam on the Missouri River. McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson said there should be public involvement before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers transfers land to the Three Affiliated Tribes. The corps said it doesn't have to involve the public in an agency-to-agency transfer....
Old photos hold key to environmental changes Kay's photography work in southern Utah started as an assignment to measure the long-term effects of livestock grazing on forest lands. But in the course of the research, new trends revealed themselves. The good news, according to the researchers: Utah's southern rangelands are in considerably better shape than 100 years ago, owing to increased management and better grazing techniques. The bad news: A century of fire suppression has led not only to a buildup of fire fuels, but a reduction in the amount of wildlife habitat and riparian areas. Without regular fires to wipe the slate, "woody" vegetation such as sagebrush, pinyon juniper and conifer have crowded out grasslands and aspen stands - reducing, in the process, habitat that wildlife and even livestock can thrive in....
Thomas takes ESA reform on the road In an effort to boost support for his work reforming the Endangered Species Act, U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., canvassed the state last week talking to individuals and groups about the road ahead. One of his hopes, he said, is to incorporate local communities with the decisions made at higher levels on species protection. That will ultimately "strengthen the quality of life in Wyoming," he said. What's more, Thomas said the act needs to work in concert with appropriate management of other species....
Klamath farmers, fish at crossroads Through sickness and health, drought and abundance, Klamath basin farmers have been wedded to dirt-cheap power for nearly nine decades. Electric pumps lift water from an underground aquifer, help pull it from lakes and canals, spray it over some 450,000 acres of crops and then push the agricultural overflow back uphill from Tule Lake to the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, to start the process again. But there's trouble afoot, and this once-happy union of power and water, in the largest battleground over the federal Endangered Species Act in the country, is on the brink of dissolution. Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp, whose vast six-state service area includes the Klamath basin, overlapping southern Oregon and Northern California, wants to end subsidized power rates next year for 1,300 irrigators that have been virtually unchanged since the power started flowing in 1917....
For some, river not worth its salt Ever since the first settlers plowed up the prairie along the Arkansas River, farmers have poured its water on their fields to grow crops. They quickly learned the river was naturally salty and located their towns near river tributaries to find fresh water. Today the Arkansas is slowly poisoning the agricultural economy it helped create. Salt buildup in farm soil has slashed crop yields. High salt loads in the river have forced rural communities to confront huge drinking-water treatment bills, and have provided a potential flash point of litigation between Kansas and Colorado....
Federal subsidies in west damaged rural South Massive federal subsidies that helped move much of America's farm production into Western deserts also contributed substantially to the poverty and economic deprivation that now plague large portions of the rural South. “Irrigated farming in the West was very nearly the death knell of southern agriculture," says Richard McNider, a professor of atmospheric science at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). “Alabama alone has lost more than 10 million acres of row-crop farmland since 1950, when the major Western water projects came on line." Federal and state incentives to lure water-intensive portions of that farming away from Western states and back to Alabama and other Southeastern states could reduce rural poverty while providing a cost effective solution to on-going water problems in several western states, according to three scientists from Alabama....
Tribe sees dam plan as cultural genocide A plan to raise Shasta Dam could help ease California's water crisis, but a band of California Indians says the project will obliterate their culture and way of life. The dam proposal is a centerpiece strategy of CalFed, the joint federal and state agency empowered to distribute the state's water to its various stakeholders. The idea is to raise the dam 16 feet or more, vastly increasing the holding capacity of Shasta Lake -- and the state's water supply -- for a relatively small investment. Raising the dam by even 16 feet could boost Shasta's storage capacity by 300,000 acre-feet -- enough to supply 900,000 families with water for a year....
Trappers hope to cash in on fur revival Including the tabletop bundles of ring-tailed cat, the stacks of raccoon and the box freezer half full of jackrabbit, Marion Lindsey figures he has about 4,800 ready-to-ship pelts. That's not counting the piles of bobcat, raccoon and red fox thawing on the concrete floor, their fur awaiting a knife. "This is the skinning room," says Mr. Lindsey, lighting another cigarette, darting around the bodies, a local trapper's latest haul. "We do it the old-timey way. We scrape them by hand."....
Mad Cow's Stubborn Mystery Nearly a decade ago, clusters of young people in Britain started suffering mysterious symptoms. First they became depressed and withdrawn, prone to crying fits, anxiety attacks, and bouts of physical pain. Within months they lost the capacity to remember or speak, then they slipped into comas and died. Autopsies showed brains ravaged by a novel form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which they contracted by eating infected beef. Public health experts feared an epidemic, with some predicting that tens of thousands of people would eventually die. So far the predictions appear overly alarmist. Only 159 people worldwide are known to have died from eating BSE-infected meat -- including a Japanese man whose death from the disease was confirmed on Feb. 3. But each new case is a painful reminder of the unanswered questions that swirl around mad cow and similar scourges in sheep, deer, and elk. Despite a decade of intense investigation, scientists still disagree about how these diseases are transmitted, how long they can incubate without symptoms, if they can be cured, and what steps should be taken to lessen the toll. In recent months scientists have made some startling discoveries. Yet they are dismayed that mad cow is so slow to yield its secrets....
Highway on ice gives way Farmers and merchants were not the only people to use Utah Lake for commercial purposes during the winter. Ranchers and fishermen also used the ice highway to transport cattle and loads of fish. The ice occasionally broke, providing some exciting moments, but no ranchers or commercial fishermen lost their lives on the frozen lake. Utah Valley ranchers sometimes herded their stock across Utah Lake. In the early days of settlement, Henry Zufelt and his family lived on both sides of the lake. They spent the warm season ranching in Cedar Fort and moved to Payson during the winter to provide better schooling for the children. Since the snow was often deep and the road was long and dreadful, Zufelt drove his cattle and sheep to Payson across the ice-covered lake. His family, food and belongings rode in a horse-drawn wagon box mounted on sleigh runners. During the hard winter of 1879-80, hay was scarce, and many ranchers herded their cattle on the open range. Jesse Knight had just bought a large herd of cows, and he hired the Aitken family of Lake Shore to herd his cattle along with theirs....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Judgment is never correct when cows, trucks are involved Some cows you can walk right up to. Others you see and by the time you get there, they're gone. This particular cow was pretty skittish, so Keeler knew something was wrong when she wouldn't get out of the way of his pickup. He decided a shot of long-acting antibiotic would perk her up. He dug his rope out from behind the seat and tied it around her neck. He scanned the grassy meadow for something to snub her up to. Coiled like a snake in the bed of his pickup was a 7.50 x 16 LT, 8-ply truck tire still on the eight-hole rim. Keeler backed up to the cow, lifted the 60-pound wheel and ran the tail of his rope through the axle hole and tied it....

Sunday, February 27, 2005

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

There will always be a story to tell

By Julie Carter

Occasionally and at least once a week a moment of panic will pass my way with the thought “what will I write about?” Have I run out of things say about cowboys, rednecks, life at the ranch and the good ole days?

Then some well-meaning fellow in a cowboy hat will reaffirm my belief that there is a never ending supply of stories about who they are, what they do and what in the world were they thinking?

In fact, just this week a friend of mine, a seasoned ranch wife who is still waiting for her cowboy to grow up, phoned me and the topic of Valentine’s Day came up. I ventured to ask if she had received a gift from her love of 25 years.

“Well, he did ask if I wanted something,” she said. “But after my Christmas gift I was afraid to let him think it was time for another gift.”

I asked the obvious, “What did you get for Christmas?”

“He brought me a cat from the pound.”

“Did you ask for a cat or even want a cat?”

“No to both. This gift just fit his budget. It was free.”

Of course it took time for him to go pick the cat out and take it home. But more than anything that job cut into the time he was spending building his new roping arena and making room for the new roping steers due in any day.

Keep in mind this is the now over 50 version of the college cowboy who lived ready to ride with his spurs never off his boots and a Coors beer can as a permanent fixture in his hand.

While his wife sat on the washing machine when it was in the spin cycle to keep it from walking across the floor of the tiny trailer house, he cheered her on. He claimed he really wanted to help her but his spurs might scratch the enamel and worse yet, that washer sitting made his beer foam up.

The other night I was watching the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and laughing enough for it to be an honor to the comedians. It is very funny when you hear what is so true told in stories in which you recognize your relatives.

My son, who is 11, said after a number of Jeff Foxworthy’s ‘you might be a redneck’ jokes, “Mom what is a redneck?”

I looked directly at him and said, “You are.”

He immediately laid his hand on his neck and started to ask the logical question. I quickly explained that it didn’t mean the color of his neck exactly.

It was more about his full closet of camouflage clothing, the hunting stories he already had stored in his memory and dreams of owning bigger guns, more ATV’s and better hunting hounds.

Like at least two generations before him, he wears a tag that is supposed to explain how we think and what we like. It just seems normal to us and before they came up with the name it had no name.

Recently this same boy spent a little time grounded from the television except for educational TV. When I set that parameter I had no idea how difficult it would be for this genetically disposed redneck child to decipher what was educational.

In passing through the room I had to point out that County Music Television was not considered educational programming.

“Well okay then. Mom, is Gunsmoke educational?”

Julie can be reached for comment at the Lincoln County Redneck Headquarters or jcarter@tularosa.net

© Julie Carter 2005

I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner.
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Equal Treatment Under the Law

Red-tailed hawks are a named species on and protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. That means they come under the primary jurisdiction of the Federal government. Article V of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits” the taking of nests or eggs of named migratory birds, except for scientific or propagating purposes”. So ask yourself why the Federal government did not prevent this very public “taking” of a migratory bird nest? Why wasn’t the Federal government telling everyone else that you cannot destroy a migratory bird’s nest? Why has there been no prosecution of those that destroyed the nest? Why isn’t the Federal bureaucracy waxing poetic about the value of such wild species in such a densely populated city? Why is there no publicity about Federal investigators descending on Manhattan to document and prosecute this very public outrage against Federal law? Could it be because the perpetrators are associated with rich and powerful persons? Could it be that there is not any justification for new money or new power to be gained by the Federal agencies? Could it be that the publicity from aggravating powerful urban residents is just the opposite from aggravating and arresting some rancher? Could it be that the Federal bureaucrats have different levels of concern for a red-tailed hawk in Manhattan as opposed a golden eagle in Wyoming? Could it be that human impacts on wildlife in a large city are not examples of why we need new laws or why more Federal land control is needed to “save” some critter? Could it be that wildlife impacts on urban folks (smelly nests by windows, dead rat and pigeon carcasses, and foul droppings on buildings and their entrances) do not have to be tolerated by the urban populace while it is OK to force wolves on rural areas and allow deadly predator populations to skyrocket at the expense of rural residents and their communities?....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Why Does an Important Climate Program Go Unheralded?

European greens expressed their displeasure with President Bush on his visit to Europe this week for American unwillingness to support the Kyoto accord, with its greenhouse gas emissions cuts for developed nations. But the Bush administration is taking concrete -- if largely unheralded by Europeans and a hostile American media -- steps on climate change issues. Upon the Kyoto agreement coming into force for its signatories last week, Gregg Easterbrook noted in The New Republic that "The world's first international anti-global-warming agreement to take force is not the Kyoto treaty. It is a Bush Administration initiative, and you have not heard a peep regarding the initiative because the American press corps is pretending it does not exist." That program is the Methane to Markets (M2M) initiative. According to Easterbrook, "The White House's July 2004 agreement requires the United States, United Kingdom, India, Ukraine, Mexico, and Italy to reduce global methane emissions by an amount equal to roughly one percent of all greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere by human activity." As Easterbrook pointed out: "[T]the best-case outcome for the Kyoto treaty is roughly a one percent reduction in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gas." Bush's methane initiative will remove 50 million metric tons by 2015. According to the Energy Information Administration, that amounts to the equivalent of:

· Taking 33 million cars off the road for a year.

· Eliminating 50 coal fired electricity plants.

· Providing enough heat to warm 7.2 million households for a year....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Consumer Group: Get PETA Out Of Schools

Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) urged Dr. Sue Dutton, principal of Middletown’s Louis L. Redding Middle School, to remove animal rights materials from her school’s lesson plans. This week the Middletown Transcript interviewed an anguished resident whose daughter was given propaganda from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) during a child development class. “I thought it was totally inappropriate for something like this to even be thought of being in the curriculum,” he told the Transcript. In a letter to Principal Dutton, CCF Director of Research David Martosko agrees, writing that the inclusion of PETA lessons in classroom teaching is “wholly inappropriate and runs counter to the well-being of your students.”....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Franken-Trees

The green lobby has been knee-jerkingly opposed to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). So what will its reaction be to genetically modified forests? If it’s anything like the anti-GMO crowd’s response to genetically modified food, expect the usual tales full of hysteria, shrill rhetoric and Franken-food. Consider the irrational position of Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, who said the spread of GM foods is “a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust.” Silly rhetoric aside, a GM-forest would actually be environmentally useful. The U.S. Energy Department, which sponsored the project that decoded the genome of the black cottonwood, says that GM trees would be effective for “sequestering carbon from the atmosphere,” which means less of that devilish carbon dioxide that environmentalists believe is warming the Earth (a debatable claim). GM trees could also have “phytoremediation traits that can be used to clean up hazardous waste sites.” So what’s not to like about GM trees?....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

KYOTO IS A PAIN IN THE PROVINCE FOR CANADA

The Kyoto Protocol is proving problematic and politically divisive for Canadians, whose economy and consumption habits create more challenges in reducing emissions than for Europeans, says the Wall Street Journal.

Canada, a major oil supplier to the United States and China, is experiencing stronger than expected economic growth, creating quite a predicament in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases:

* Canada has pledged to reduce greenhouse gases to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012; however, greenhouse gas emissions in Canada are currently increasing at an average of 1.5 percent per year.
* Furthermore, Canadians are bigger energy consumers than Europeans; attempts in Ottawa to have consumers voluntarily reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent yielded only about half the expected goal.
* Canada, unlike most European nations, is a large oil exporter and must extract its oil from sticky, gritty “oil sands” in Alberta, which requires large amounts of steam and electricity and produces massive quantities of carbon dioxide, the chief suspected global-warming gas.

In fact, Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Canada’s largest oil producer, will begin a new “oil sands” project in 2008, worth about US$8.75 billion, which will further add to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Canadian government is scrambling to find a way out. Solutions include the possibility of providing tax breaks and subsidies to energy companies, although the Finance Ministry will likely balk at the idea of tinkering with the budget, which is currently in the black. Another solution is using taxpayer money to invest in emission reduction projects around the world, which would yield emission “credits” for Canada, says the Journal.

Source: Tamsin Carlisle and Jeffrey Ball, “Nations Wince at Kyoto Reality,” Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2005.

For text (subscription required):

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110842173232054531,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
OPINION/COMMENTARY

CLEAR SKIES OPPOSITION IS HOT AIR

The Bush Administration’s proposed Clear Skies program, which would reduce emissions through a cap-and-trade approach, is being assailed by Democrats, environmentalists and even editorial cartoonists.

According to New Republic editor Gregg Easterbrook, President Bush’s goal of cutting pollution from power plants would usually win praise from environmentalists -- that is, if a Democrat such as Al Gore had proposed it. But opposition to the program is simply motivated by politics, says Easterbrook.

If passed, Clear Skies would:

* Cut power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury by more than 70 percent.
* Set an overall reduction quota for the power industry, but let market forces work by allowing individual plants to decide how to reduce emissions through trading pollution permits.

The plan would also permanently cap plant emissions nationwide, meaning that pollutant levels must not rise no matter how much more power is generated in the future. The proposed cap for sulfur dioxide is 90 percent lower than the amount emitted in 1970; the cap for nitrogen oxide is 94 percent lower than 1970.

In practice, cap-and-trade systems have proved faster, cheaper and less vulnerable to legal stalling tactics than the "command and control" premise of most of the Clean Air Act. For example, a pilot cap-and-trade system, for sulfur dioxide from coal-fired power plants, was enacted by Congress in 1990. Since then sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen by nearly a third (the reason you hear so little about acid rain these days is that the problem is declining -- even though the amount of combustion of coal for electricity has risen,) says Easterbrook.

Source: Gregg Easterbrook, “Clear Skies, No Lies,” New York Times, February 16, 2005.

For text (subscription required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/opinion/16easterbrook.html
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Kyoto and the End of Hot Air

THE GOOD NEWS is that the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions came into effect last week, legally binding the 34 industrialized countries that have ratified the treaty to cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2012. Good news not because the agreement can do much to affect the rate at which the globe is warming, if indeed it is. But good news nonetheless, and for two reasons. First, the participants have agreed to adopt America's position that the best way to keep the cost of compliance down is to institute an emissions trading system. Companies are assigned permits to emit a certain amount of GHG, and fined €40 per ton in the European Union if they exceed that "cap." To avoid such a fine, companies exceeding their cap can buy unused permits from firms who have found it efficient to reduce their own emissions and sell off unused "emission credits." It is ironic that this provision to allow cost-minimizing compliance was included in the Protocol at the insistence of the American delegation to the Kyoto meeting, over the objections of the Europeans. The Europeans have since warmed to the idea of emissions trading, while the Americans have cooled on the idea of any treaty at all. The second reason the coming into force of the Protocol is good news is that it is forcing the signatories to re-examine premises and practicality. The pro-Kyoto nations are finding that there is some merit in the American position that compliance with the treaty, at the pace it requires, is simply impossible without doing serious damage to economic growth. Tony Blair, who plans to make the fight against global warming the center-piece of his E.U. presidency, has found it necessary to seek a relaxation of the very ambitious targets he once embraced lest many British industries find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Japan, the country that played host in 1997 to the Protocol's drafters, saw its GHG emissions rise by 8 percent last year, making it unlikely that it would achieve a 6 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2012. And Canada, an enthusiastic backer of Kyoto, also finds itself in difficulty: like Japan, Canada agreed to cut emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels, only to see them rising at an annual rate of 1.5 percent....

Saturday, February 26, 2005

NEWS ROUNDUP

Shasta County man shoots mountain lion who mauled pets State Department of Fish and Game officials say a Shasta County man shot and killed a mountain lion in his back yard that had earlier killed the family's pet dog. John Trunnell lives about 15 miles east of Redding. He was clearing brush Thursday when he heard the small dog barking in the bushes. Game warden Daniel Fehr says when the mountain lion emerged with the dog in its mouth, Trunnell threw a rock, causing the big cat to drop the dog and run. The dog's wounds proved fatal. When the family returned to their home, the mountian lion was again in the back yard -- probably to feed on a house cat that it had killed and hidden....
U.S. to suspend wolf-breeding program The federal government will suspend a red wolf breeding program at Bull Island that has played a key role in saving the endangered species from extinction. A family of red wolves that roamed the island will be shipped to other federal preserves because wildlife managers say the animals are needed more at those sites. Since 1987, the government has kept pairs of red wolves on Bull Island so they would breed and raise pups in the wild. Biologists would later move pups from the undeveloped barrier island to the vast Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. The young Bull Island wolves would be adapted to the wild, making it easier for them to survive at Alligator River....
Trapper kills Denali wolf pack's alpha female The alpha female in the Toklat wolf pack, which has delighted visitors to Denali National Park and Preserve for years, was killed by a trapper outside park boundaries. Gordon Haber, an independent wildlife scientist who has studied the pack for 40 years, said the radio-collared wolf was killed Feb. 11 by a trapper on state land on the Savage River within a few hundred feet of the park's northeast boundary and on the outside edge of a wolf buffer zone created in 2001. Haber reported the wolf kill to the National Park Service. An Alaska State Trooper later determined that the trapping site was legal and just outside the wolf buffer zone....
Editorial: Split estate law will help Wyo The passage of Senate File 60, the split estate bill, is a huge step forward for the state's minerals developers and surface landowners. In Wyoming, nearly half of all private land falls in the split estate category. The surface rights are owned by one party, while another party owns the mineral rights. As a result, split estate conflicts have been common in the state for much of its modern history. And because mineral rights holders have primacy over surface rights holders, oil and gas companies and mining companies have held the upper hand in such disputes. Those companies have routinely entered into voluntary agreements with surface owners to compensate for damages to the surface and to coordinate drilling activities. In most cases, industry and landowners cooperated, working together toward a mutual benefit. But in some cases, landowners were left with depleted water resources, rutted roads, scarred landscapes and little or no payment to show for it. Until now, cooperative agreements weren't required, and no standards existed for notification, negotiation, damages or mediation....
Judge said BLM study on coal-bed methane development inadequate A Bureau of Land Management study of the potential environmental effects of coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin is inadequate because it failed to analyze a phased-development alternative, a federal magistrate decided Friday. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Anderson said his findings do not automatically mean that all development activities must cease pending further administrative review. Rather, he set an evidentiary hearing for March to determine the extent of relief, if any, to grant in the challenges brought by a conservation group and the Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe. "From the record presently before it, the court cannot determine to what extent, if at all, development should be suspending during the completion of a new environmental impact statement that includes a phased development alternative," he wrote....
Arizona Trust Land Effort Falls Apart A package of state trust land changes to benefit education funding, preservation of open space and planned development around urban areas has foundered at the Legislature. Talks on numerous issues related to the state’s 9.3 million acres held in trust to benefit public schools, universities and other institutions broke off amid disagreements on at least two major issues, lawmakers and interest-group advocates said this week. The development could doom chances for lawmakers to act on the trust land issue this year in any comprehensive or even piecemeal fashion, several participants in the talks said....
Ozone levels rise but don't threaten Yellowstone The world's smog continues to creep into the air over Yellowstone National Park. Ground-level ozone - an invisible gaseous mix mostly of machinery exhaust that's cooked in the sun's rays - is increasing over several national parks in the West, according to a study released by the National Park Service. In Yellowstone, though, the ozone isn't threatening human health or, apparently, even plants that are sensitive to ozone damage. But the trend, which includes other parks in the Rocky Mountains, has piqued the curiosity of air researchers, especially because ozone levels are dropping in many urban areas....
Ranchers, tribes make water deal Ranchers who irrigate out of streams above Upper Klamath Lake have reached an agreement with leaders of the Klamath Tribes over how to resolve a longstanding dispute over water rights. Under the agreement, ranchers and other landowners will drop their opposition to the Tribes' claim for water rights that would maintain high streamflows in the Sprague, Williamson and Wood rivers and their tributaries. In exchange, the tribes have agreed to not exercise their water right in a way that would harm irrigators whose claims to water were established before July 1, 1961. The agreement announced today was described as a modest start to untangling a complex tangle of claims and protests among hundreds of water users in the Klamath Basin....
U.S. officials find no evidence to sway them from dropping cattle ban The U.S. Agriculture Department gave Canada good marks on safety measures to combat mad cow disease Friday, saying there's no impediment to resuming the cattle trade next month. A U.S. technical team that's been looking at Canada's compliance with cattle feed rules released a positive report, affirming the decision to lift the ban March 7. The team arrived in Canada on Jan. 24 after the discovery last month of two new mad cow cases. One of the cows caused particular concern because it was born after new feed regulations to combat mad cow went into effect in August 1997. And some American politicians complained that Canadian feed companies were flouting the laws. But U.S. officials found solid compliance by feed mills and rendering facilities and said Canada, like the United States, is always looking for ways to make it even better....
Animal lobby protests at Campbell Soup The video looped repeatedly, showing scenes of cattle being violently jerked from their hooves in rodeos. Far from entertaining, the film was meant to shock - and it did, slowing traffic Wednesday evening outside Campbell Soup Co.'s headquarters. An animal-rights group launched a protest at the site with a four-sided video truck showing scenes of what they said was cruel and inhumane treatment of some rodeo animals. The group, Showing Animals Respect & Kindness, wants Pace - a Campbell subsidiary that makes salsa and other food products - to withdraw as a sponsor of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association, the largest sanctioning body of professional rodeo. But officials from Campbell and PRCA say the animal-rights group's video doesn't tell the whole story. The company and the rodeo association both claim the animals are maintained well and that very few are injured in events....

Friday, February 25, 2005

NEWS ROUNDUP

Final report also blames Forest Service safety lapses for deaths in Cramer fire The third and final investigative report into the July 22, 2003 deaths of two firefighters on the Salmon-Challis National Forest agrees with two previous reports that the fatalities may have been prevented had Forest Service (FS) fire managers followed standard safety procedures. Jeff Allen, 24, Salmon and Shane Heath, 22, Melba, were killed the afternoon of July 22, 2003 when the Cramer Fire burned over them. “Had existing FS fire suppression policies and tactics been followed in a prudent manner, particularly by the IC [Alan Hackett, the incident commander], the fatalities of Heath and Allen may have been prevented,” said the report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General. The report agrees with a 2003 FS accident report that determined Hackett and the firefighting team violated all of the agency’s 10 “Standard Firefighting Orders” and 10 of the FS’ 18 “Watch Out Situations.”....
Couple Questioned About Ventura County Tiger State authorities investigating how a 425-pound tiger wound up roaming eastern Ventura County have questioned a Moorpark couple whose menagerie of exotic cats was confiscated from their rental home in the Tierra Rejada Valley earlier this month. The couple had a state permit for three tigers, though authorities who originally inspected the cages found only two. Officials had been alerted to the presence of exotic cats by neighbors who reported that a bobcat had escaped from the property. Fish and Game officials said Thursday that after reports of large paw prints in the area surfaced, they returned to interview Abby and Emma Hedengran about the possibility of a missing tiger. Authorities declined to provide details of the questioning, and the couple could not be reached for comment. When first visiting the couple Feb. 9, the state officials had not yet learned about the prints discovered Feb. 8 at a nursery in the Santa Rosa Valley near Moorpark, according to Steve Martarano, a Fish and Game spokesman. The tiger that left those tracks was shot dead by trackers Wednesday in a narrow ravine off California 23 in Moorpark....
State DNR seeks OK to trap wolves Stung by a court ruling that put the gray wolf back on the endangered species list in Wisconsin and other states, the Department of Natural Resources has asked federal authorities for approval to once again kill and trap problem wolves. DNR officials briefed members of the natural resources and agriculture boards on Wednesday about their efforts to reclaim some of their authority after a federal judge's ruling. The agency has asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for permission to trap wolves so that the state could continue its monitoring program. Trapping also would allow the state to again move problem wolves to other parts of the state where it is believed they would be less of a nuisance. The DNR also is asking federal authorities for approval to kill wolves where they have repeatedly killed farm animals....
Editorial: Water conservationists should be commended Finally there is consensus among some of the major players on the Rio Grande that water conservation and ecological values are worthy. Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez and a coalition of six environmental groups on Wednesday announced an agreement they say will ensure the survival of the river, whose waters are the source of much competition and conflict. They are to be commended for compromising rather than continuing a protracted and costly legal confrontation that was counterproductive. In exchange for significant conservation concessions from the city that acknowledge the need for water to sustain the river itself as an ecosystem, the environmental groups agreed to end their litigation over the city's San Juan-Chama water diversion project....
Big day for a little fish Gila topminnows that dart beneath mats of algae and Sonoran mud turtles that slide down boulders to splash in pools here surely don't realize this is a big day for them. But those species and others in this watery habitat stand to benefit from a major land purchase being announced today. Rather than subdividing the bulk of Coal Mine Canyon into 36-acre ranchettes, First United Realty is selling 2,628 acres to the state so it can be protected in perpetuity. The $2.25 million deal in Santa Cruz County is mainly motivated by conservation of the tiny topminnow, one of the first species listed as endangered by the federal government....
Bush Team Readying Backdoor Route to Drill Arctic Refuge Having been thwarted repeatedly in its effort to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling for oil, the Bush Administration and its Congressional leadership have come up with a plan for a sneak attack on the issue. Rather than holding a straightforward vote on the Senate floor, where strong public opposition halted drilling in the past few years, House and Senate members are quietly planning instead to attach the drilling measure to upcoming budget legislation, where it would be all but impossible to stop (budget bills are exempt from filibuster or extended debate)....
List puts N.M. park in Arizona This natural wonderland made it onto a list of 10 favorite hidden parks - but the list hid it even more, by locating it in Arizona. The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees this week released a list of members' favorite parks, but accidentally listed the archaeological site in Arizona instead of Chaco Canyon. The 400-member group discovered the mistake and fixed it, said coalition coordinator Bill Wade. "That mistake slipped through several reviewers, but really, we know it's in New Mexico," Wade said. "Having been there myself, I know how beautiful it is." Chaco Canyon is home to massive ancestral Pueblo Indian ruins that date from A.D. 850 to A.D. 1250. Archaeologists consider it one of the most important sites in the Southwest....
Former U.S. Park Police Chief Suing Interior Department Former U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers is suing the Interior Department, alleging that he supervisor withheld documents that could have cleared her of charges raised in her firing. Chambers was suspended in 2003 after going public with complaints that her department was understaffed and underfunded. her superiors also contended that5 she was insubordinate. She was fired in July. The group representing Chambers in her legal struggle, PEER, says Chambers is trying to get U.S. Park Service officials to release a her performance evaluation....
Interior Dept. rebuts criticism The Interior Department has a strong commitment to environmental regulations intended to protect wildlife and their habitat, Assistant Interior Secretary Rebecca Watson told Trout Unlimited, reacting to criticism from the conservation group. A week ago, Trout Unlimited accused the federal agency of allowing rapid, inadequately researched oil and gas development in the West. The group advocates the protection and restoration of North America's coldwater fisheries. Watson sent Trout Unlimited a letter Thursday focusing on concerns the organization raised in its recent letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton....
Tiny trees spur new growth in industry A question is humming around the edges of the Oregon Logging Conference this week, like the distant sound of a chain saw bucking firewood. Can a small-time logger find a new living with tiny trees - thinned from federal or private forests - that are most commonly chipped for pulp or burned on slash heaps? Now appears to be a good time for small operators to find niche markets for logs as small as 3 to 5 inches in diameter, a few Northwest firms are finding. They're converting the tiny waste trees into products such as tongue-and-grove flooring for homes, produce bins for grocery stores and round-log stud or beam replacement in construction....
Where the Critters Roam On Frank Long's foothills, cow pies apparently are signs of good health for nature. The ubiquitous dark blobs mean cows have been eating the grass, opening up many places in the thick green carpet where small critters flourish and buttercups, lupines and poppies put on brilliant spring shows. After 54 years of ranching here, Long has no wish to see houses in place of critters, wildflowers or even cow pies. He sold the development rights to conservationists who won't allow homes, commercial development, oak tree removal or other significant changes on about 2,900 acres near Mariposa. His property will remain a working ranch, even as development reaches into the oak-studded foothills between the new University of California at Merced and Yosemite National Park....
Roosevelt Lake swells, boosting Valley supply Roosevelt Lake will reach historic high levels today and likely will fill to capacity by spring, three years after the giant reservoir nearly dried up. Runoff from a series of winter storms has more than doubled the lake's size in just 55 days. Water is now lapping up against never-before-used sections of Roosevelt Dam, which was expanded in 1996 just as a record nine-year drought began. As a result, the Valley's water supply is in its best shape in more than a decade. Salt River Project, which manages Roosevelt and five other reservoirs, will head into the warm-weather months with a nearly full system for the first time since the early 1990s, allowing the utility to stop tapping backup wells....
Utah loses key battle over N-waste A utility consortium planning to store 44,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste on the Skull Valley reservation reached a major milestone Thursday when a panel of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) judges swept aside the last of Utah's administrative objections. The two Atomic Safety Licensing Board rulings - on separate appeals from the state and Private Fuel Storage (PFS) - cleared the way for the NRC to approve a license for the consortium to build and operate the facility 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The ruling is a significant setback in the state's efforts to stop construction of the facility....
Editorial: Support Bush's `Clear Skies' Environmentalists are foolish to oppose President Bush's "Clear Skies" initiative to reduce air pollution from power plants. The proposal contains provisions that would make it more effective than existing law. Clear Skies would reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury from power plants by more than 70 percent. It also would permanently cap plant emissions nationwide, meaning pollutant levels could not increase regardless of how much additional power were generated in the future. These rules would apply equally to older power plants, which now must add pollution controls only when they modernize, and thus would render obsolete the controversial "new source review" rule....
Horse sale grows out of 'crazy' idea Seven hundred, thirty-two horses -- and an ample number of their human counterparts -- from around the country are converging on Shawnee this weekend for the Triangle Sales Co. Inc. Mid-Winter Classic Sale. It's the largest sale of it's kind in the world -- supplying horses to buyers in 47 states and attracting attention from buyers in Japan, Germany and Israel. But, it is still organized out of the addition built on a rambling blue house on Benson Park Road. Cindy Bowling Garner began the business 26 years ago with husband, John Bowling, before his death in 1994. A "crazy idea" to hold a horse sale in the winter led them to the Heart of Oklahoma Expo Center in Shawnee, which then had the only heated facility around....
John Wayne Still Biggest Movie Money-Maker Get back, pilgrim. Legendary movie cowboy John Wayne has outshot Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" and has cruised by Tom Cruise. The late actor has been named as the Top Money-Maker of All Time in the Quigley Publishing Company annual star poll. Born Marion Michael Morrison, Wayne made movies for more than 50 years, including classic westerns "Stagecoach" (1939), "Fort Apache" (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949), "Rio Grande" (1950) and "The Alamo" (1960). He won a best actor Oscar for playing Rooster Cogburn in 1969's "True Grit." In order to compare The Duke's box-office sales to that earned by contemporary stars, a weighted score was given to the star's ranking for each year: 10 points for finishing first, nine for finishing second, etc. Theater owners placed Wayne on the poll 25 times from 1949 to 1974, yielding a total of 172 points....
Hooked on barbed wire? It is a simple reproduction of nature, yet considered to be an invention of genius requiring numerous patents. It connected points while disorienting people and animals. It is treacherous, yet considered a thing of beauty and is housed in museums. If you have not guessed what it is, these questions might give it away: What was rumored to be a northern plot to wipe out cattle, and was thought to be the work of the devil? Barbed Wire. Yes, barbwire fencing, that is now taken for granted, was controversial in its early years. It may still raise some barbs when you realize that the first patent for barbwire was issued in France in 1860 for fencing, which the French called "artificial thorns." In the United States, several factors set the stage for a desperate need for cheap fencing....

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Feds claim 91.9% of Nevada Nevada is getting smaller. At least the parts of it that Nevadans can call their own. All but 8.1 percent of the state is in the hands of federal agencies, according to an inventory by the U.S. General Services Administration. This information is not new. The 91.9 percent calculation of federal land comes from a 2003 report by GSA. However, lawmakers and state officials continue to quote a lower figure of 87 percent when talking about the amount of federal land in Nevada, and the state Department of Conservation & Natural Resources posts an even lower 86.1 percent on its Web site. Federal land managers keep close tabs on their holdings in each state, but the GSA report consolidates statistics from all departments. Lands controlled by the Department of Defense and Indian reservations apparently were not included in earlier estimates....
NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT 9TH CIRCUIT NOMINEE ROLE IN SLEAZY DEAL In a curious report that raises more questions than it answers, the Interior Office of Inspector General last night released a report blasting an improper settlement reached with a politically connected Wyoming rancher. In a press statement sent only to selected reporters, but not posted on its web site, the Office of Inspector General contends that it has cleared William Myers, the former Solicitor for the Department of Interior, who has been re-nominated by President Bush to serve on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, of any wrongdoing. That conclusion is strongly disputed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) whose complaint prompted the OIG report. The report blames a deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management and an associate Solicitor, hand-picked by Myers for reaching and enforcing a deal of questionable legality that virtually immunized the rancher from penalties for grazing violations and left BLM’s own employees in legal jeopardy. “Under Earl Devaney, the Office of Inspector General has become the Office of Deflector General; its reports target obscure middle managers while shielding the higher-ups who gave the orders,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that OIG admitted that it “could not determine what motivated senior BLM officials to propose and advance the idea of a settlement.”....
Ranchers must learn how to negotiate, speakers say Don Spellman has worked with 10 different companies since coal-bed methane development came to his Campbell County ranch seven years ago. One of the first companies made a bad impression. The company had a high turnover rate, so he was never quite sure who to talk to. Then Spellman and a company representative agreed to a new two-track road. Later, Spellman watched a bulldozer peel a two-mile-long swath across his ranch. "That's not my idea of a two-track road," Spellman said....
Lawmakers unlikely to pass coalbed legislation Those hoping the 2005 Legislature would approve new regulations for coalbed methane development in the state are finding those wishes quickly dashed, with three major bills already dead and at least one other stalled and unlikely to pass. Proponents of the measures blame their defeat largely on what they characterized as a mind-set of some lawmakers that the energy industry is too important to the state to burden with additional regulations. Lawmakers introduced a handful of measures earlier this session that were intended to address energy exploration in Montana, particularly growing interest in coalbed methane, a type of natural gas found in coal seams. One of the more prominent bills was one by Sen. Mike Wheat, D-Bozeman, that was intended to give surface owners more bargaining power when dealing with developers with mineral or gas leases under their property....
Trackers Kill Tiger in Ventura County Sharpshooters searching for a 425-pound tiger that had prowled the hills of Simi Valley for two weeks shot and killed it Wednesday after a family awoke to find it walking past their backyard. The decision by government trackers to use high-powered rifles instead of tranquilizer darts to bring down the elusive cat outraged animal rights activists. But state officials said they had no alternative but to shoot to kill, because the animal could have attacked or bolted onto a highway or into a public park nearby. Thus ended a bizarre two-week saga that brought wilderness trappers to suburbia and forced families to keep children and pets indoors after huge cat tracks started being spotted throughout the oak-studded hills of eastern Ventura County....
Senate OKs bill calling for more radio-collared wolves The Montana Senate has passed a bill that would require state officials to capture and radio collar more wolves. Senate Bill 461 passed by a wide margin and is now awaiting action in the House. The bill would require the state spend about $25,000 the first year for equipment and personnel to monitor collared wolves. The bill has since been amended to give the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks the responsibility and to focus efforts on areas where depredations on livestock are "chronic or likely." Montana has about 40 wolf packs, which are defined as "two or more animals running together," Smith said. Of those packs, about 20 are in areas where trouble with livestock is more likely, he said, and 15 of the packs already have a collared animal among them....
Coyote bounty focus of legislative effort Four years ago, three western Minnesota counties put $10 bounties on coyotes in hope of reducing their numbers. But the counties soon discovered a major problem: The bounties were illegal. Now, bills in the Legislature would allow Minnesota counties to pay bounties on coyotes. Bob Padula says the idea is a no-brainer. "Coyotes eat sheep. I've had four attacked in the last five years," said Padula, a sheep rancher in Montevideo in western Minnesota and president of the Minnesota Lamb and Wool Producers Association....
Albuquerque, group reach deal on minnows The city of Albuquerque and environmental groups reached a settlement Wednesday in a five-year legal battle over the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. Organizations including the Sierra Club and National Audubon Society agreed to pursue no further legal action against the city in exchange for measures they said will help the tiny fish species to survive. Under the settlement, Albuquerque will set aside 30,000 acre-feet of water in a city reservoir to help preserve the minnow. Environmentalists said that will make the reservoir one of only a few in the West with significant space devoted to an environmental effort. An acre-foot is the amount of water that can cover an acre to a depth of 1 foot. The city also agreed to commit $250,000 from the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Authority and $25,000 from environmental groups to a water-leasing program for the middle Rio Grande. The program would increase water flow, which will help further protect the minnow and other species....
Alaskan otter sick with parasite killing California otters An injured sea otter found last month tested positive for a lethal parasite that has infected or killed hundreds of California sea otters in an outbreak blamed on domestic cats. This appears to be Alaska's first confirmed case of an otter sick with Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan that matures only inside cats and spreads through their feces. The otter is under care at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward after being found in Resurrection Bay....
Wild horse advocates voice disappointment in Reid’s inaction Wild horse advocates said Wednesday that they’re disappointed in U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s position on handling of the animals, arguing he should be doing more to preserve and protect the living symbols of the West. In a demonstration outside the Nevada Legislative Building just before the Democratic senator addressed state lawmakers, about a dozen wild horse supporters said Reid needs to use his leverage as Senate minority leader to help prevent the sale and slaughter of the animals....
2 Utahns admit to killing 9 wild horses Two Utah men Tuesday admitted to killing nine wild horses on federal land in Iron County. Fred Eugene Woods and Russell Wesley Jones each pleaded guilty to three criminal counts — one felony charge of injuring U.S. property and two misdemeanor counts of causing the death of a wild, free-roaming horse. Woods, 48, acknowledged shooting six horses — including a 1 1/2-year-old buckskin filly and a 4-year-old bay stallion — and Jones, 30, admitted killing three — including two black stallions, one 7 years old and the other 2 years old. The case is believed to be the first in which the killing of wild horses has resulted in a felony conviction....
County to buy ranches for open space An array of desert grasslands and archaeological sites will be in public hands once Pima County closes on a multimillion-dollar deal that's part of a larger effort to preserve open space. County supervisors voted unanimously this week to spend $20.6 million to buy a nearly 10,000-acre ranch near the rural town of Arivaca and a smaller ranch southwest of Tucson. The larger ranch, called Rancho Seco, is the largest of nine properties the county has agreed to purchase with open-space bonds approved by voters last year....
Senate OKs end to Choteau bird preserve Lawmakers voted Tuesday to eliminate a bird preserve near Choteau, citing complaints about damage the deer population has caused in and around the preserve. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Joe Tropila, D-Great Falls, eliminates the Teton Spring Creek Bird Preserve, which was established in 1923. Ranchers with land in and around the preserve boundaries have complained for years that the deer living there eat a lot of hay and leave much more unusable as livestock feed because of droppings and urine. Rifle hunting is not allowed within the preserve, but the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks began allowing limited archery hunting within the boundaries in 1976....
More Utah wilderness proposed A coalition of environmental groups on Wednesday unveiled a proposal to designate as wilderness 3.6 million acres of sprawling canyons, blue-ribbon trout streams, twisting red rock formations, and popular hunting and hiking areas in the three national forests in southern Utah. The coalition, consisting of 12 groups, first presented its plans to the U.S. Forest Service in the fall but did not publicly unveil them until now. They come as the Dixie, Fishlake and Manti-LaSal national forests are working on forest-management plans that could end up redrawing wilderness boundaries. Wilderness designations within the forests would bar users from operating off-road vehicles in the area and prevent industry from logging or drilling for oil and gas. If the groups' recommendations were accepted, those restrictions would apply to 75 percent of the three forests' combined 4.8 million acres....
Cadre grows to rein in message The ranks of federal public affairs officials swelled during the Bush administration's first term, but that hasn't meant that government information is easier to get. The staffs that handle public relations for government agencies grew even faster than the federal work force, personnel records show, yet at the same time the White House tightened its control over messages to the news media and restricted access to public information. Between September 2000 and September 2004, the number of public affairs officials rose 9 percent, from 4,327 to 4,703, in executive-branch agencies, according to U.S. Office of Personnel Management statistics. Meanwhile, the federal work force grew 6 percent. Nearly half the jump at Agriculture came at its Forest Service, which oversees the vast tracts of national forests and now has 306 public affairs staff. Lennon said his staff grew, in part, because of a growing number of advisory panels required by Congress and a controversial program that opens some forests to logging over environmentalists objections....
Rains put forests at new risk This winter's relentless storms have decimated an estimated 70 percent to 90 percent of the 1,300 miles of back roads that lace the San Bernardino National Forest, leaving them impassable and useless with fire season a few months away and sufficient funding for repairs nowhere in sight. "My immediate concern is fire suppression through the course of the summer," San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman said Wednesday. "Those forest roads are incredibly important." U.S. Forest Service surveys by helicopter and crews on the ground revealed the vast majority of visible roads have been washed away, covered with mudslides and strewn with boulders, forest engineer Mike Florey said....
Hunter Ordered to Pay $18M in Calif. Fire A lost hunter who started a forest fire in northern California while trying to keep warm was ordered to pay $18.2 million in restitution Wednesday. The fire in the Mendocino National Forest burned 6,058 acres and cost $33 million to suppress, authorities said. The restitution covers the U.S. Forest Service's cost of fighting the fire and restoring the burned area, prosecutors said. Jason Hoskey, 26, of Willows, lit a campfire when he got lost hunting on Sept. 27, 2003. The fire spread after he fell asleep. Flames had been banned in the area because of extreme fire danger. Prosecutors said Hoskey also violated the ban by smoking several cigarettes....
Forest chief answers critics Stanislaus National Forest's leader yesterday faced a roomful of upset mill workers who blame the Forest Service for recent layoffs. Forest Supervisor Tom Quinn attended the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors meeting to explain why timber sales on the forest have dropped. Sierra Pacific Industries officials and workers say the drop resulted in temporary layoffs of about 150 employees at the company's Standard and Chinese Camp mills. Supervisors asked Quinn to explain why 12 million board feet of lumber is harvested annually when about 300 million board feet grows in the forest....
Judge upholds limits on off-road vehicles in Big Cypress preserve A federal judge has upheld limits on swamp buggies and other off-road vehicles at Big Cypress National Preserve. U.S. District Judge John E. Steele ruled Tuesday that the National Park Service followed the law in preparing a plan that restricted off-road vehicles to certain areas of the neighbor of Everglades National Park. He rejected arguments by hunting clubs that the park service failed to consider the consequences or alternatives. The ruling caps a long battle between hunters and environmental groups over how the park should be used....
Critical juncture for property rights Given the prominent role courts have come to play in every facet of American life, each meeting of the U.S. Supreme Court can result in rulings with profound implications for us all. But this session is shaping up as one of the most momentous yet on the subject of property rights; more specifically, the question of what constitutes a government "taking" under the Fifth Amendment. On Tuesday, the black robes heard arguments in Kelo v. New London (Conn.), a fairly typical takings case in which a city used the power of eminent domain to confiscate private property based on its claim that a waterfront redevelopment project qualifies as a "public good" under the law. Today, the court begins mulling an even more intriguing case, touching on the question of whether government actions that deprived California farmers of irrigation water also qualifies as a "taking," requiring that compensation be paid....
Under NAFTA provision, Canadians want U.S. to pay for beef ban Under an obscure provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadian cattlemen are asking the U.S. government to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to cover losses they incurred when the border was closed to Canadian beef after mad-cow disease turned up in Alberta. With the ban set to be lifted early next month, the case spotlights NAFTA's little-known Chapter 11, which allows companies to claim damages from governments if their laws or actions damage trading partners. About 500 cattlemen, mostly from the province of Alberta, have filed 121 claims under NAFTA seeking at least $325 million in compensation from U.S. taxpayers for the May 2003 decision to halt imports of Canadian beef and cattle, their lawyer said....
Burning Manure In Nebraska Finally Goes Out It took nearly four months, but to the relief of neighbors miles around, a burning manure pile has been extinguished. David Dickinson, owner and manager of Midwest Feeding Co., said Wednesday that several weeks of pulling the 2,000-ton pile apart proved effective by late last week. "We got far enough through it, that it quit," Dickinson said. Dickinson's feedlot, about 20 miles west of Lincoln, takes in as many as 12,000 cows at a time from farmers and ranchers and fattens them for market. Byproducts from the massive operation resulted in a dung pile measuring 100 feet long, 30 feet high and 50 feet wide. Heat from the decomposing manure deep inside the pile is believed to have eventually ignited the manure....
CHAMPIONS SQUARE OFF SATURDAY AT LOS ALAMITOS Champions Catchmeinyourdreams and Whosleavingwho will break from posts 3 and 6, respectively, in Saturday’s $251,200 Los Alamitos Winter Championship (G1). The winner of the 400-yard stakes will earn the season’s first berth to this year’s Champion of Champions (G1), American Quarter Horse racing’s richest and most prestigious race for older horses. Racing for Kirk Goodfellow of Minden, Texas, and trained by Chris O’Dell, Catchmeinyourdreams is the sport’s reigning champion aged gelding. The Pritzi Dash gelding is coming off of a season in which he won the Grade 1 Go Man Go Handicap and Los Alamitos Invitational Championship and earned $208,493. Cody Jensen, who rode Catchmeinyourdreams in those stakes wins, will ride him again on Saturday. Whosleavingwho shared the sport’s world champion title with Streakin Sin Tacha in 2002. Owned by Arizona-based ranchers Jim Geiler and Kim Kissinger, and trained by Paul Jones, the 7-year-old gelding by Chicks Beduino has won 20 of 41 races – including eight stakes – and has earned $1,121,127. Alejandro Luna will ride Whosleavingwho on Saturday, as the gelding attempts to qualify to the Champion of Champions for the fourth consecutive year....
Cowboy poets, musicians to perform this weekend Roughhewn cowboy poetry, folksongs of the West and a hearty cowboy breakfast around the campfire. That’s what it’s all about Friday through Sunday (Feb. 25-27) at the 19th Annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine. Sul Ross State University will serve as host and gathering place Friday through Sunday for the 49 performers and singers scheduled to entertain this year, at the second oldest cowboy poetry gathering in the country. Only the cowboy poetry gathering in Elko, Nev., is larger and older, said Michael Stevens, president of the organizing committee....
Calling All Cowgirls: Montana's Mountain Sky Beckons 'Wild Women' Seeking Western Adventure Women yearning to heed the call of the Wild West are invited to drop their briefcases and house chores and head for Big Sky country to enjoy a special offer filled with adventure and pampering at beautiful Mountain Sky Guest Ranch in Montana. Nestled within more than 6,000 acres of breathtaking countryside, this historic guest ranch is offering a " Wild West Women Adventure" package, tailored to meet every need for fun, food and friendship. From Saturday, May 7 through Wednesday, May 11, cowgirls from California to the Carolinas can gather their friends and lasso this special four-night adventure, which includes accommodations in refurbished rustic or modern guest cabins, gourmet dining, unlimited riding and ranch activities, a Yellowstone Park tour, airport transportation and gratuities - all for just $1,000....

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

NEWS ROUNDUP

Judicial Nominee Cleared in BLM Case Interior Department Inspector General Earl E. Devaney absolved former department solicitor William G. Myers III of blame in a case involving a January 2003 legal settlement between the Bureau of Land Management and a Wyoming rancher. In a 24-page report made public yesterday but dated Oct. 13, Devaney criticized the conduct of BLM Deputy Director Frances Cherry, Associate Solicitor Robert Comer and an unnamed lawyer in the solicitor's office for reaching the settlement with rancher Harvey Frank Robbins despite written objections from the Justice Department, the U.S. attorney's office in Cheyenne, Wyo., and career BLM staffers. "While the report speaks for itself, the inspector general has expressed his hope that it will dispel the criticisms directed at former Solicitor William G. Myers, III," Roy Kime, a spokesman for the inspector general's office, said in a written statement yesterday. "In transmitting the report to the present solicitor and assistant secretary for land and minerals, the inspector general ascribed no fault whatsoever to Mr. Myers. To the contrary, a fair reading of the report would suggest that Myers was, in fact, victimized when he was given a distorted explanation by one of his senior associate solicitors." Myers, now an Idaho-based lawyer whom President Bush has nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, has been a target of the environmental group Community Rights Counsel, which argued this month that the settlement gave Robbins "carte blanche authority to violate federal grazing laws."....
Officials limit use of ATVs in retrieving downed animals Grand Mesa National Forest officials have announced plans to discontinue a provision that allows the use of all-terrain vehicles on non-designated routes to retrieve downed game. The new rule goes into effect for big-game hunting seasons in 2005. Previously, hunters were allowed to drive off designated routes during the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to retrieve any downed game. District Ranger Connie Clementson said Forest Service employees found that many hunters were abusing the privilege by traveling into areas without following the rules, disrupting the hunting experience for others and complicating forest management....
Molas Pass battle reaches new level Silverton snowmobile riders are butting heads with a Snowcat skiing operator on Molas Pass over the wintertime use of the land there. Mounting tensions between Tim Kuss, owner of El Diablo Alpine Guides, and the Silverton Snowmobile Club came to a head on Saturday, Feb. 5, after Adam DeVeny of Silverton and a group of snowmobilers were approached by a gun-toting Kuss, who was also on a snowmobile. DeVeny and the group wanted to snowmobile where Kuss planned to take skiers. "He said it was an A-area (closed to motor vehicles), and he said we were on his ski hill," recalled DeVeny, who said he thought they were in an area where motorized vehicles are allowed. "But he was entirely out of line bringing a shotgun into the whole issue." DeVeny said Kuss never pointed the gun at anyone and kept its breach open and unloaded. Kuss said he was carrying the weapon because he had felt threatened by snowmobilers in the past who "became pretty violent right off the bat."....
Sleds vs. Skico in the backcountry On the back of Aspen Mountain exists an enormous winter playground choked with deep powder and crisscrossed with public and private land. Whether accessed by foot or motorized vehicle, the area has been used by an assortment of backcountry enthusiasts for years. But now, snowmobilers - mainly those who are backcountry skiers using their sleds to spin quicker laps - are being told they can no longer access national forest land. Meanwhile, Aspen Mountain Powder Tours, a snowcat-skiing operation that conducts trips on the back of Aspen Mountain, is permitted to go wherever they please. It's a common occurrence in mountain towns of the West, where land-use issues have been the source of more clashes than 1980s ski fashion....
Top Forest Service official says user fees 'here to stay' People who visit national forests can expect to pay fees more often at special attractions like the Maroon Bells, but access to the vast majority of the public lands will remain free, according to a top U.S. Forest Service official. Regional Forester Rick Cables said he believes charging user fees at a few, select sites is an excellent way for the U.S. Forest Service to stretch its limited budget. He points to the Maroon Bells as a poster child for the program's success. Traffic to the internationally famous Maroon Bells is restricted during the heart of summer. Visitors pay $5 to ride a bus. Cables said 80 percent of the funds raised get plowed back into facilities and staffing at the area....
On different frequencies Tracking surveys of radio-collared Canada lynx show the shy cats have been located hundreds of times inside the White River National Forest since the state reintroduced them to southern Colorado in 1999. Yet a top U.S. Department of Agriculture official in December ordered forest officials to scrap strong lynx protections in the new management plan for the forest based on the "lack of documented lynx sightings." Ongoing state studies show lynx were recorded within the 2.3-million-acre forest at least 300 times. Biologists identified 43 individual animals - including two females that denned on the forest's southern boundary last year - based on their unique radio-collar frequencies....
Groups oppose plan to lower water level It isn't the poisoning, it's the yo-yoing water levels that pose the biggest problems with a plan to save Diamond Lake, according to Francis Eatherington, the conservation director for Umpqua Watersheds Inc. The group, along with the Oregon Natural Resources Council and the Cascadia Wildlands Project filed an appeal with the Umpqua National Forest of an approved plan to lower the lake, poison invasive tui chubs -- along with other gill-breathers in Diamond Lake -- refill it, then restock it with trout. A decision on the appeal by officials with the U.S. Forest Service is due in March. Diamond Lake is a popular fishing and recreation lake just north of Crater Lake in southwest Oregon....
California farmers ask high court to help them get paid for water Supreme Court justices were wading into the West's contentious water wars Wednesday, hearing arguments from Central Valley farmers who want the government to pay them for water they say they were due but never received. The government said the water had to be diverted to protect two threatened fish. Government lawyers also said the farmers don't have standing to sue the Bureau of Reclamation directly, because water districts, not individual land owners, negotiate government water deals. The state of California and environmental groups are backing the government. At issue is a water service contract between the federal agency responsible for managing water in the West, and Westlands Water District, which encompasses 600,000 acres of farmland in western Fresno and Kings counties....
Park rules on Rainbow Bridge stand A National Park Service policy asking guests to respect the sacred status of Rainbow Bridge in southern Utah by not walking under the mammoth archway will not be reviewed by the Supreme Court, the justices announced Tuesday. The Natural Arch and Bridge Society and Evelyn Johnson and Earl DeWaal sued the Park Service in 2000, claiming the policy is unconstitutional because it grants special treatment to American Indian religions. The 275-foot redrock span, the largest natural bridge in the world, is a significant cultural site for several American Indian tribes, including the Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Paiute....
U.S. Fish & Wildlife May Outsource Biological Staff The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service may soon be replacing hundreds of its biological technicians and fish hatchery workers with private contractors. The USFWS Director, however, is asking his superiors at the Department of Interior to stop the process, according to the all-employee email released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). On February 8,USFWS Director Steve Williams sent out an all-employee email confessing his unhappiness with the way contractor competitions (under a Bush Administration initiative called “Competitive Sourcing”) had been conducted for its biological science technicians and aquatic husbandry staff. Williams contended that the competition results did not match departmental needs and were not conducted in a manner that “is fair to both our employees and to potential private bidders.” Williams’ action strongly implies that the private companies underbid the federal employees and are in a position to take over these job classes. Offices of Personnel Management records show USFWS employing 659 biological science technicians, who conduct much of the fieldwork for agency scientists, and 90 aquatic husbandry personnel, who support the agency fishery and hatchery operations....
Column - Hell on wheels: ORVs invade desert Like clockwork, every major holiday, our communities are invaded by a hoard of off-road vehicle riders who terrorize residents, trespass with abandon, tear up our public lands and permanently mar the landscape. They come from Los Angeles and Orange County with their RVs and trailers full of off-road vehicles and consider our home their playground. This last President's Day weekend was a virtual hell for residents and homeowners who saw a doubling of the number of ORVs grinding day and night. Well, guess what? This is our home and community and we are not going to let irresponsible people destroy the reason why we live here!....
The Waning Reign of Monarchs High on a remote mountaintop, Alfredo Cruz Colin gazed at a panorama of giant pines and firs where millions of orange and black monarch butterflies spend the winter after flying as far as 2,000 miles from Canada and the United States. He saw two things: one of North America's most spectacular natural wonders and trees that could be sawed down and sold for $300 each. "We can contemplate the butterflies," said Cruz, a lawyer. "Or we can send our children to school and feed our families" with the cash from the cut trees. "It's a tough choice." The winter migration of monarch butterflies to Mexico, a stunning sight that draws vast numbers of tourists to mountain forests 100 miles west of Mexico City, has been devastated this year. One of the chief causes is logging that destroys butterfly sanctuaries, according to Mexican and U.S. environmentalists. The butterfly population this winter is the lowest since researchers began detailed surveys 12 years ago and perhaps the smallest since the 1970s, when international scientists first discovered the colonies in central Mexico, according to Lincoln P. Brower, a biology professor at Sweet Briar College in central Virginia and an authority on monarch butterflies....
U.S., Germany to Agree Climate Change Measures The United States, criticized for its refusal to sign the U.N. Kyoto climate pact, will agree with Germany to strengthen efforts to limit global warming, according to a draft agreement obtained by Reuters. The agreement, to be sealed during President Bush's visit to Germany on Wednesday, outlines plans to improve energy efficiency and cut emissions of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases, without setting targets or giving details. The two countries will agree to improve environmental and energy-efficient technologies, to cooperate in expanding climate research and to find common measures to cut greenhouse gases at home and abroad....
The Choice Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Jared Diamond. : Viking, 2004, 575 pp. Huls Farm and Gardar Farm seem to be models of successful agricultural enterprise. Both have lush settings, good grass, and imposing barns that house 200 head of cattle, and they are owned by respected community leaders. They also face significant difficulties: their high-latitude locations make for short growing seasons, and a changing climate signals greater problems to come. The two farms form the center of an anecdote that comes at the beginning of Jared Diamond's Collapse, and the story's O. Henry ending, stealthily arrived at, encapsulates the book's message. Huls, Diamond reveals, is a still-expanding fifth-generation farm in Montana's Bitterroot Valley; Gardar, despite its apparent prosperity, was abandoned 500 years ago when Greenland's Norse society collapsed amid starvation and civic unrest. One might draw from this parallel a pessimistic conclusion about Montana's environmental future, but Diamond is no pessimist. The fall of Greenland's Norse society was not inevitable: its inhabitants could have saved themselves but, trapped by tradition and blinded by prejudice, declined to take the necessary steps. The collapse of Gardar Farm thus serves not as a warning of imminent apocalypse but as evidence that if modern society can learn from the failures of its predecessors, it can avoid their fate....

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

NEWS ROUNDUP

Land war goes before Supreme Court A fight by homeowners to save their New London, Connecticut, neighborhood from city officials and private developers -- an important property rights case with an unusual twist -- will reach the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. At issue is whether governments can forcibly seize homes and businesses, for private economic development. Under a practice known as eminent domain, a person's property may be condemned and the land converted for a greater "public use." It has traditionally been employed to eliminate slums, or to build highways, schools or other public works. The New London case tests the muscle of local and state governments to raise what they see as much-needed revenue, which they argue serves a greater "public purpose." Legal analysts said they see the case as having major implications nationwide in property rights and redevelopment issues....
Comments support wilderness area Bighorn National Forest officials are considering creation of a new wilderness area based on public support for the idea. Nearly twice as many people submitting comments from the four-county area surrounding the forest favored an option designating additional wilderness than those who did not. "There was a little bit more local support than we expected (for the wilderness option)," said Bernie Bornong, forest planner. As a result, the Forest Service is considering revising its preferred management plan - which originally did not call for further wilderness designation - to include a new wilderness area near Rock Creek, he said....
Seismic-test questions asked Dan Renner's 300 acres on the Beartooth Front are going to undergo seismic testing to see if oil and gas lie under the land where his horses now graze. But before he signed the release allowing Quantum Geophysical Inc. to set off explosive charges to conduct the 3-D seismic mapping for Windsor Energy Group, Renner asked some questions. "What happens if one of the charges doesn't detonate?" he asked. "Who is liable? Is that covered under my property insurance?" The answers he got back surprised him. Not only would his insurance be canceled, but no one had asked this question before. And under Wyoming law, if Renner didn't sign the release, his property could be condemned under eminent domain and the testing could be conducted anyway. "I'm faced with a Catch-22 - I either allow them on my property or get condemned. If I let them on my property, I lose my insurance," Renner said. "So what do you do?"....
County rejects methane company's road request County commissioners turned down a drilling company's request to open a remote private road to the public, rejecting the contention that the road was illegally abandoned by Campbell County 30 years ago. Williams Production RMT Co. sought to overturn the action of the Campbell County Commission in 1975 because it wants access to the road, which leads to the company's nearby coal-bed methane leases. The company has been unable to reach agreement with landowner William P. Maycock regarding access....
Threatened sturgeon could delay beach project The five-mile beach renourishment project, expected to start here next month, could be delayed because of a fish. The Gulf sturgeon, a threatened species of fish that can grow to 8 feet long and weigh more than 200 pounds, is why the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has asked the Board of Supervisors to delay the $500,000 project. "We have a letter that's telling us not to do anything," said board President Rocky Pullman. Pullman said the National Marine Fisheries Service wants more time to study the sturgeon population near the Bay of St. Louis. The fish is regulated by the Fisheries Service, according to the Endangered Species Act....
School district faces habitat penalties The Escondido Union High School District contends it misunderstood the city's directive to clear a 100-foot-wide fire break when it bulldozed 10.7 acres of land, including 1.45 acres of coastal sage scrub, home of the endangered California gnatcatcher bird. To attempt to make up for the damage, the school district must either buy occupied sage scrub land in a conservation area, or buy similar land that will be independently preserved and managed, said Barbara Redlitz, principal planner for the city. Redlitz said California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service guidelines for destroying coastal sage scrub without a permit is for the culprit to buy four acres of habitat for preservation for every acre that they damage. The stiffer penalty discourages others from grading sensitive habitats without permits, Redlitz said....
In Fish vs. Farmer Cases, the Fish Loses Its Edge Legal fights over water in the West are as common as summer rains are rare. But a flurry of cases in California is attracting intense attention from scholars and state officials who see them as an extraordinary assault by agricultural interests on protections for endangered fish and other wildlife. In a series of lawsuits, including one to be argued before the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, farmers and water districts are pushing property-rights claims to the forefront of the debate over how to divvy up water among farms, cities and the environment. In doing so, they are demanding compensation from the government for irrigation water diverted for environmental purposes, calling into question rules mandated by Congress under the Endangered Species Act that favor the protection of fish over the growing of food when water is in short supply. It is an approach that has won sympathy from the Bush administration, which in December agreed to pay $16.7 million to farmers in Tulare and Kern Counties in one lawsuit over reduced water supplies. But the claims have alarmed California officials and many conservation groups, who fear that demands for payment for lost water could spread to other Western states and undermine protections for wildlife....
A Big Bump on the Road to Riches There is just one problem. The family - some named Sharpe, some named Hill - do not technically own the land. It seems that their patriarch, Louie Sharpe, neglected to have an official witness sign the deed to his homestead 60 years ago, and now the federal government has restaked its claim to the family's home. "Mr. Sharpe never completed his application," said Kirsten Cannon, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management. "The family doesn't have true title. I know this sounds like evil government trying to kick these poor Native Americans off their lands, but that's farthest from the truth. No action has been taken to remove them." The bureau says it cannot overlook the forgotten signature and simply award the family its ancestral land, because homesteading was abolished by the federal government in 1976. The family does have the first right, however, to buy the land. "I'm scared," Ms. Hill said, standing in the wind dressed in thin shoes and an old sweater. "We have nowhere to go if they throw us off. There's nothing left for the grandchildren."....
Editorial: Environmentalists must alter tactics Almost 35 years after the first Earth Day, U.S. environmentalists are in a fix. Membership and donations are up for many organizations, but broad support for the movement appears to be stagnant, if not retreating. In the last four years, membership in the Sierra Club increased by 22 per cent. Revenues and membership in other environmental groups also grew, apparently mobilized in opposition to Bush administration environmental policies. Yet there are not many recent accomplishments environmental organizations can claim for all that influx of money and members. There may even be an erosion of public enthusiasm for environmental causes....
Noise makers Every 20 seconds, a boom like a whale striking its hull rips through the research vessel Maurice Ewing as the ship's powerful air guns fire deep into the ocean's floor. For the last month, the US vessel has been conducting seismic tests of a meteor crater off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in hopes of cracking the mystery of why the dinosaurs went extinct. But the study has triggered heated protests from environmentalists in the latest in a growing international debate over underwater testing. Advocates say the research has crucial applications, including helping to predict underwater earthquakes like the one that caused the devastating Dec. 24 tsunami in Asia. They also argue that there is little evidence that the tests cause widespread harm to marine mammals. But critics say that underwater testing is responsible for dozens of whale strandings over the past decade and should be banned....
Column: Be honest about Kyoto pact How important to the world's future is the Kyoto global-warming pact, which went into effect last week? It can't be that important, since Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told the Washington Post: "The greatest value is symbolic." Symbolic is the word. The Kyoto treaty won't reduce emissions in America, because this country never ratified it. What's more, negotiators at Kyoto in 1997 had to know the United States never would ratify the pact. Before Vice President Al Gore left to attend the Kyoto summit, the Senate voted 95-0 in favor of a resolution warning that the Senate would not support a global-warming pact that exempted developing nations such as China and India. Kyoto won't make a difference in those developing nations because they don't have to reduce emissions or even agree to curb how much their pollution grows. While 141 countries ratified the pact, Kyoto's emission caps apply only to some 35 countries....
Nuclear waste pile worries western U.S. The Bush administration is risking yet another nuclear controversy in the West as the president's Energy Department hems and haws over what to do about a huge pile of radioactive waste rock heaped uncomfortably close to the Colorado River. The Energy Department and its incoming secretary, Samuel Bodman, have yet to give any solid reassurances to area governors that their concerns that the Moab, Utah, site won't be pushed aside as they were when the president pushed ahead with the controversial nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. "We cannot afford to assume the risks associated with having uranium tailings strewn along river banks and bars of the Colorado River below Moab," Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman insisted in a letter sent last week to the Moab project manager. "Good science and good sense tell us the tailings must be moved."....
Sempra Energy buying up water An energy company’s recent purchase of options on water rights on the Smoke Creek Desert — where a coal-fired power plant has been proposed — is drawing opposition from area residents. Sempra Energy officials said they have rounded up options on 25,000 acre-feet of water, a crucial step toward building the proposed $2 billion plant in northern Washoe County. The amount is 9,000 acre-feet more than is naturally replenished each year, according to a 60-year-old U.S. Geological Survey....
A vision to share logging's history Inside the banquet room of a 1922 Colonial mansion built for a lumber baron, an intimate gathering hears a pitch about creating a larger-than-life bronze sculpture to memorialize the thousands who have died while logging in Washington. "I'm not a logger and I'm not an artist," Enumclaw jewelry-store owner Tom Poe tells about 20 prospective donors. A full-color rendering of the sculpture is projected onto a screen beside him — a man driving two oxen pulling a log with a chain. Poe then delivers the punch line: the "Logging Legacy" monument is budgeted to cost $450,000....
Colorado ranchers head for Wyoming The Isaksons are part of a trend of northern Colorado farmers - and ranchers in particular - who are moving their operations north because they are finding it more and more difficult to keep those operations running around encroaching urban sprawl. And they can get good ranch land on the high plains of eastern Wyoming at a good price. Sidwell Herefords, with a main ranch between Nunn and Carr in Colorado just south of Cheyenne since 1941, is in the process of moving north across the border. Harold Sidwell said development led to the decision to make the move. "For every acre we sold down here we were able to buy five acres in Wyoming, which is another reason for the move," Sidwell said, noting new homes going up in northern Weld County and escalating cost of land made it impossible to enlarge the main ranch....