Monday, March 07, 2005

MAD COW DISEASE

Judge rejects meatpackers' bid to resume Canadian beef imports

A federal judge on Monday rejected an effort by American meatpackers to lift all mad cow-related barriers to Canadian beef shipments. The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Garrett Penn was the latest rebuff to supporters of reopening the northern border to Canadian cattle. The United States banned Canadian cattle when mad cow disease turned up in May 2003 in Alberta. The import ban was to have been lifted Monday on Canadian cows under 30 months of age, but a federal judge in Montana last week granted a request from U.S. ranchers to keep the border closed. The Senate also voted last week in favor of a resolution against the Bush administration's decision to allow Canadian cows back into the country. The developments are "a blow to free trade," said Mark Dopp, senior vice president and general counsel to the American Meat Institute, the packers' trade group. "The U.S. meat industry continues to believe as strongly as ever that full trade in beef and cattle products with Canada is justified by both the science and world animal health guidelines," Dopp said Monday. The Agriculture Department was pleased with Monday's ruling, spokesman Ed Loyd said. "USDA has decided to consider this issue through a separate rule-making process," Loyd said. The department currently is determining whether there is risk in allowing shipments of Canadian cattle older than 30 months and meat from older Canadian animals....
NEWS ROUNDUP

Western legislators bemoan firefighting budget A crust of snow still blankets parts of the West, but federal land agency leaders are already getting scorched by members of Congress nervous about the coming wildfire season. Western lawmakers have used recent Interior Department and Forest Service 2006 budget hearings to criticize proposed cuts to wildland firefighting funds and delays in removing insect-ravaged stands of tinder-dry timber. There's also bipartisan sentiment to get rid of the Bush administration's traditional method of determining wildfire suppression budgets. The federal agencies base funding requests to Congress on the average annual firefighting costs from the last 10 years, then later ask lawmakers for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of "emergency" supplemental funds if the account is drained by a busy fire season....
Fourteen years in making, Sierra plan still challenged In the thick timber just beyond this Gold Rush town lives a football-sized brown bird whose fate has been punted back and forth through 14 years of studies, debates, legal and bureaucratic wrangling - with no end in sight. The future of the white-mottled California spotted owl is entwined with 11.5 million acres of national forests running more than 400 miles the length of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Planning for the 11 national forests began 14 years ago with a three-paragraph memo seeking research on the reclusive owl. Planning documents now pile about three feet tall - not counting administrative appeals and the five lawsuits stacked against the most recent decision, still undergoing review by President Bush's top forestry official, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey....
AZ: Judge Confirms $600,000 Libel Award and Finds Fault with Environmentalists Judge Richard Fields entered formal judgment on March 2, 2005 against the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental activist corporation, and found that they must pay $600,000 in actual and punitive damages to Arizona rancher Jim Chilton and the Chilton Ranch and Cattle Company. The formal judgment confirmed a Tucson jury’s verdict, delivered on January 21, 2005, finding the Center for Biological Diversity guilty of making “false, unfair, libelous and defamatory statements” against Jim Chilton, a fifth generation Arizona rancher whose pioneering ancestors drove cattle into Arizona in the 1880’s. The jury awarded Chilton $100,000 in actual damages and $500,000 in punitive damages because the Center for Biological Diversity defamed him and his family business in a two-page press release which included links to 21 photographs posted on the Center’s website, from July 2002 until July 2003....
Key Senator Defends ANWR Strategy The U.S. Senate Energy Committee chairman on Sunday defended Republican plans to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge through a provision in a pending budget bill, although critics say the strategy is underhanded. Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, told a news conference that budget bills were not subject to parliamentary rules requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster, a hurdle environmentalists who oppose oil development in the Alaska refuge want to keep intact. "We say, 'Why not a majority?' It's going to turn out if they have 51 votes, they win. We don't have ANWR. If we have 51 votes, we win. We have ANWR," he said. "I think that's pretty American. I don't think we're denying anybody anything." Domenici was among five pro-drilling Republican senators, two Cabinet members and a White House official who traveled over the weekend to the North Slope to observe winter conditions and the oil industry's seasonal operations there....
Food at heart of tribe's dam dispute The tribe now is challenging a new operating license for four small hydroelectric dams on the Klamath owned by the Northwest utility PacifiCorp. The tribe wants the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to recognize that the high levels of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease can be blamed on the high-fat, high-sugar and high-sodium diet that replaced their lost salmon. "Government bureaucrats look at you a little bit sideways when you raise the issue of human rights," said Leaf Hillman, tribal vice chairman. "It's only credible when you raise the issue in Sudan or South America. "But whenever you deny or taint the food source for a people, it really is about human rights."....
City will push for EPA exemption By summer's end, new federal regulations could force Portland and its suburban water customers to spend at least $60 million to kill cryptosporidium, a nasty and occasionally lethal parasite that resists chlorine and medical treatment. You would think that would be a major victory for local public health officials. You would be wrong. For Dr. Gary Oxman, Multnomah County health officer, cryptosporidium is a blip on the radar screen of health risks. In the past six years and one month, 95 illnesses -- and no deaths -- have been attributed in the county to cryptosporidiosis, the gastrointestinal ailment associated with the fecal microbe. On Wednesday, Portland's City Council authorized an 11th-hour, long-shot lobbying effort to persuade the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to let the city skip building a plant to deal with cryptosporidium....
Texas is set to supersize highways Texans are known for doing things in a big way. But the state is planning a futuristic highway system that's gargantuan even by Texas standards: 4,000 miles of expressways, mostly toll lanes. The Trans-Texas Corridor, almost a quarter-mile wide, would carry cars, trucks, trains and pipelines for water, oil, natural gas, electricity and fiber optics. The roads would be built over the next 50 years at a cost of up to $185 billion, mostly with private money. The network eventually would crisscross the state, diverting long-distance traffic onto superhighways designed to skirt crowded urban centers. Trucks and trains carrying hazardous materials also would use the highways. But criticism is rolling in from farm groups, environmentalists and some local politicians, targeting the project's proposed route, width and financing — and even the need for it....
Column: Facts versus fears on biotechnology GM crops are created in laboratories, using highly precise techniques. They have been tested repeatedly, and they are regulated by the EPA, FDA, USDA and other agencies. Americans have collectively eaten over a trillion servings of food containing one or more GM ingredients, without a single case of harm. Indeed, as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore and others have demonstrated, every single claim of risk to people or the environment -- from monarch butterfly deaths to destabilized insect ecology and diminished biodiversity -- has been refuted by scientific studies. And still Dr. John and his fellow radicals place ultra precaution against minor, distant, theoretical risks to healthy, well-fed Westerners above the very real, immediate, life-threatening risks faced by our Earth's poorest and most malnourished people....
Column: Bush's EPA pick comes with outsider insight Stephen Johnson may be an expert on toxic substances and hazardous wastes. But as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, this trained scientist can only hope that his 24 years as an EPA professional will have prepared him for the murky, gritty world of Washington politics. Over its 35-year history, the agency has become one of the tallest lightning rods in federal government. Environmentalists see it as their best official friend - when they're not suing it, that is. Some industrialists, builders, and farmers deride it as one of the greatest impediments to economic development and the free market. EPA bureaucrats - especially those who write the regulations meant to define and enforce such fundamental US environmental laws as the Clean Air and Clean Water acts - have been likened to the Gestapo. The current chair of the Senate environment committee has said the agency should be done away with. Into this political thicket comes Mr. Johnson, the first EPA administrator to rise from the ranks of agency professionals....
Local cowboy brings 'Deadwood' to life At the center of each stands one man, bringing the spirit of each to life: Gary Leffew, 1970 world bull riding champion, mentor to aspiring rodeo cowboys at his Nipomo ranch and muse to David Milch, creator of the award-winning HBO television series "Deadwood." The link between the two towns was forged more than three years ago in one of those typically unlikely Hollywood encounters. Milch was searching for inspiration for a script that kept falling flat to his ears. Leffew was searching for a master to sculpt his emerging talent for and love of writing. The rodeo king and screenwriter met through a mutual friend, a horse trainer who had worked with Milch in the past. The connection was instant; so was the birth of "Deadwood."....
TV's BIG guns Peering into the West, you can spot two approaching cowboy figures on the television horizon. The first is HBO's acclaimed Western series, "Deadwood," which begins its mud-soaked, blood-drenched, profanity-filled second season at 9 tonight. Farther off in the distance is the 50th anniversary of TV's longest-running drama, "Gunsmoke." It was on Sept. 10, 1955, that 6-foot-7 Marshal Matt Dillon started keeping the streets of Dodge City safe for CBS. "Gunsmoke" had been on the radio since 1952. Also saddling up and heading west is Steven Spielberg, an executive producer of a 12-hour cable miniseries, "Into the West," which TNT will air in June. The opening of the American West is told on an epic scale with a cast that includes Matthew Settle, Skeet Ulrich, Rachel Leigh Cook, Josh Brolin, Graham Greene, Zahn McClarnon, Simon Baker, Michael Spears, Sean Astin, Tom Berenger, Wes Studi, Beau Bridges, Gary Busey, Lance Henriksen, Russell Means, Matthew Modine, Keri Russell and Will Patton....
Whittet's Store and Cowboy Grill bids farewell It's headline news when any town loses half its businesses and all of its restaurants at the same time but, in the tiny town of Dacoma, Oklahoma that's exactly what's happening. The famous Whittet's Store and Cowboy Grill is closing after almost a half century of business. They hung on longer than a lot of folks thought they might. Billy and Floy Whittet ran a meat locker and cowboy grill for close to fifty years in the town of Dacoma, just south of Alva. Even in goodbye, there are still so many hellos. Billy Wayne Whittet, his wife Floy, his daughter, his son, his longtime waitress Lily and Nettie the cook, they've all been saying hello and goodbye for weeks now. Billy has decided it was time to close the store and cowboy grill....
Rodeo takes city back in time The nation's largest rodeo and livestock show blows into this city with a transformational wind, turning the cosmopolitan city into a cowboy town for three weeks every spring. As much spectacle as big business, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, running through March 20, makes hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, brings in as much money for the city as a Super Bowl and draws such diverse big-name entertainment as Alicia Keys and Brooks & Dunn to its nightly concerts. "It's pretty amazing how people embrace everything that is country during rodeo time," said Skip Wagner, the show's chief operating officer. "The whole city goes back to its Western roots." Despite its rural flavor, surveys show more than 80 percent of the event's visitors are from the greater Houston area and fewer than 1 percent live in rural, agricultural households....
On The Edge Of Common Sense: You say Tayassa tajacu, I say pig family "These are javelina," pointed out the zoo tour guide, "Tayassu tajacu, the collared peccary." "Pig family," I commented, in an effort to dazzle the 6th graders on the tour. "No," stated the guide, "A common mistake by the ill-informed unknowledgeable ranger groupies who cover up their ignorance of the species with self-important and completely wrong pompous pontifications." "Well, they look like a pig," I said defensively. "Only to amateur wildlife wannabes," he said with a sneer. "Okay, Bambi Buns," I challenged, "describe a javelina to me without using the word pig, pork, snout, oink, grunt, root, swine, University of Arkansas, boar blunt or BLT! He couldn't....

Sunday, March 06, 2005

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Talking to the animals-- the sounds of the new moo

By Julie Carter

It is one of the few places where a full grown man will chose to look and even sound like a fool. If he ever gives it a thought, he doesn’t care. It comes with the job.

Trying to outsmart Mother Nature and in this case, a cow, is a talent honed over generations of cattlemen. One of the jobs that come to all cowmen is fine tuning his own personal replica of the “baby calf cry.”

Wandering around in the pasture alone and bleating like a newborn calf is not something portrayed by the glossy magazines when detailing the cowboy’s life on the western range.

It is almost Spring and new baby calves are hitting the ground (being born) all over cow country. The “hide the baby” game that momma cows play so well presents an annual challenge to the rancher who wants to move, tag or otherwise check the new little one.

After hours of searching trying to find where momma cow stashed her offspring, and they can and do hide them amazingly well, the cowman will resort to imitating the cry of a baby calf.

His intent is to trick the cow into thinking she needs to check the safety of the hidden calf, or at least look in its direction. That gives a clue to its hiding place.

This bleating and blatting noise can go on for a long time, hours in some cases. If civilization were to drop in for a visual at that time, like a candid camera moment, that full grown seemingly sane responsible human being would appear to have none of those characteristics.

Every now and then, the old biddy will actually make a small mistake and give up the location of the new baby. The little one will be curled up tight under a yucca, cedar tree, or a cholla cactus daring not to move as per the instruction given by Mom.

Often none of it works. The cowman is resigned to leave for home with the score Cow 1, Cowboy 0. He will return to the challenge again tomorrow.

Calling cows to the feed ground is another “noise” made by the cowman that defies description. Sounding somewhere along the lines of Tarzan’s call to the jungle animals, a rancher will bellow a tone repeatedly that will echo through the pasture. The intent is to alert the cows in the distance that it is “chow time.”

Each call is unique to the caller. My grandfather’s cow call was much different than my father’s. The many I have heard over my lifetime have sounds of their own and the source could be identified sight unseen.

Standard equipment to replace the vocal chords has been the honking of the pickup horn until it is worn out. Then they return to the “beller.”

More modern ranching techniques have brought in the use of the air horn or the siren to alert the cattle. There is nothing more disconcerting than to be in what you think is the middle of nowhere, tuning into nature’s sounds on a cool crisp morning, and then be blasted with what sounds like a semi truck on approach or the cops in hot pursuit, siren blaring.

Cattle seem to adapt to any and all methods used to “call to chow”, as long as they are fed when they get there. Now that I think about it, that same concept works for the cowboys too.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net

© Julie Carter 2005

Email me your submissions for this feature. We can't all be a Julie Carter, but send me stories of ranch life, horses, mom, grandpa, etc. Also send a nonfiction piece if that is your preference.
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Property Rights

When Eastern Europe began to open up in the late 1980s, one of the great shocks was the severity of its environmental problems. Journalists reported on skies full of smoke from lignite and soft coal, children kept inside for much of the winter because of unsafe air, and horses that had to be moved away from the worst areas after a few years or they would die. Many of the environmental ills reflected an abysmally low level of technology. Old, polluting factories of the kinds that are dim memories in the United States were the mainstay of socialist industry. Smelly, sluggish automobiles polluted the roads. Energy waste was tremendous. Their own statistics showed that socialist economies were using more than three times as much steel and nearly three times as much energy per unit of output than market economies. One cannot look about in Warsaw or Moscow, Budapest or Zagreb, Krakow or Sarajevo, wrote economist W. W. Rostow in 1991, without knowing that this part of the world is caught up in a technological time warp. Not everyone realized it at the time, but the state of the environment was directly connected to the absence of property rights in the Soviet system. The authorities had refused to allow most resources to be privately owned. Most market exchanges were criminal acts, and entrepreneurship of most kinds was declared to be criminal behavior. Production was centrally planned, with land and other resources owned by the state, not individuals....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Migratory Birds & Invasive Species

News Item: “The Fish and Wildlife Service has drawn up a list of 113 birds it is proposing to exclude from protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. As required by the 2004 Migratory Bird Treaty Reform Act passed by Congress in the Omnibus Appropriations Bill, FWS will exclude non-native birds from protection under the law.” Translation: Federal bureaucrats and appointees in the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture want what the environmental radicals want. That is Federal authority to embark on a Federal program of mammoth proportions that will dwarf the Endangered Species Act in so far as growing the Federal bureaucracy. They want to transfer the remaining State jurisdiction over plants and animals to Federal agencies, and in the name of Native Ecosystem restoration (which is synonymous with Invasive Species eradication) generate unimagined new Federal authority over citizens and property owners. The abuses and results of this will be the harms of the Endangered Species Act times 10. Every time the subject of Federal Invasive Species or Native Ecosystem legislation comes up, it is rejected on the facts. United Nations bureaucrats are involved in such efforts as they look for an opening to convene a UN meeting to discuss a Treaty or Convention to give the UN bureaucracy and US Bureaucrats who would implement such a Treaty the same sort of Constitution-trumping Federal authority as was done with the Endangered Species Act....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

ENVIRONMENTAL PROPAGANDA NOW TARGETS TYKES

Environmental misinformation is finding its way into children’s books, says Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute. A recent publication, “The Future of the Earth,” by Yann Arthur-Bertrand, targets children between the ages of 10 and 12 with blatant falsehoods about the environment.

Some examples:

* Arthur-Bertrand predicts that air pollution from cars will increase 25 percent in the next 10 years; in reality, it is significantly declining although the number of cars is increasing.
* It also proclaims that twelve percent of all species are endangered; while there is no scientific evidence to support this number, it is estimated that less than 1 percent are endangered.
* Arthur-Bertrand mentions that more than 20,000 square miles of ice are disappearing annually, although this figure fails to take into account growing ice fields in other regions.
* The book also claims that 50,000 square miles of forest land are disappearing every year around the world, but the fact is that forest land has increased over several decades in all developed countries.

Finally, the book warns that radical dietary changes are needed in order to provide enough to feed the entire planet. He recommends eliminating commercial animal herds and industrial fishing.

While the book uses attractive and colorful pictures to entice children, virtually every page contains blatant distortions, says Lehr.

Source: Jay Lehr, “Environmentalist Propaganda for Kids,” Heartland Institute, January 2005; and Yann Arthur-Bertrand, “The Future of the Earth: An Introduction to Sustainable Development for Young Readers,” Harry N. Abrams, Inc., September 2004.

For text:

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16210
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Green War Gets Radical

This book is a reality check for those who still view the environmental movement through rose-tinted glasses. While it does not sketch the rise of environmentalism and the launching of Earth Day on Lenin's birthday on April 22, 1970—it delivers one into a mature, popular and well-funded 25-year old movement. It paints a vivid picture of the Greens in action in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest that is so different from the conventional view of environmentalism, that all but the least reflective reader will ask: What is going on here? "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari" documents the efforts of left-wing, radical environmentalist and Earth First! leader Bari to organize the Redwood Summer in 1990. Her goal was to gather thousands of people from across the nation in the California coastal counties of Mendocino and Humbolt and shut down the timber industry, especially the harvest of redwood trees. Large corporations, their sawmills and logging jobs were specifically targeted. Their tactics involved confrontational marches and blockades, trespass, chaining themselves to trees and trucks and the destruction of logging equipment. This escalated into continuous confrontations and near-violence. Loggers and sawmill workers were deeply angry at the efforts to destroy their industry, jobs, families and communities. Although opposed by traditional natural resource users, the Greens got support from liberals, soccer moms, hippies, artists and an army of marijuana growers and users. Fears of violence and concerns about ecoterrorism brought in police departments, the California Highway Patrol and the FBI....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

More Fishing Chicanery

I have written several articles recently that concerned the ongoing campaigns to eliminate most of the excise taxes that support State fishing management programs. Here is a quick summary of what I have said. State fish and wildlife agencies are the government entities responsible for the management of all sport fishing in the United States with but a few exceptions. Certain Federal lands (a tiny minority) where the Federal government has Exclusive Jurisdiction and coastal waters on oceans or the Great Lakes are areas where State authority is limited but still requires active State cooperation with Federal agencies to maintain sport fishing and the annual harvest of fish species. A major portion of all State fish and wildlife fishing program budgets (20 to 35%?) comes from the collection of excise taxes and import duties on fishing tackle and motorboat fuel taxes. The funds are collected by the IRS and Customs and transferred to the US Fish and Wildlife Service where they are held and apportioned annually to State agencies for SPORT (per the law) fishing programs based on criteria such as area of the State, population, and fishing license sales. The current collections of such taxes and import duties total $400 to $500 Million each year. Last year (2004) tackle box manufacturers silently lobbied successfully to have the 11% excise tax on tackle boxes reduced to 3%. This resulted in an unmentioned loss of funds probably in the neighborhood of $6 to $10 Million annually. Archery manufacturers (who pay an excise tax on bows and arrows that similarly goes to State agencies for hunting programs) silently “partnered” with the tackle manufacturers in lobbying Congress and were also successful in having the excise tax removed entirely from certain bows and arrows. These excise taxes had been in place and supporting fishing and hunting programs for over half a century. The US Fish and Wildlife Service knew what was going on but remained silent. Hunting and fishing organizations were likewise silent about what they knew was going on....
OPINION/COMMENTARY

WHY KYOTO WON’T WORK

As the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect there has been little or no discussion about the causes of global warming, the implications of implementing the treaty or whether the treaty is an appropriate response, according to NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett.

“Whether or not human actions are causing the current warming trend,” Dr. Burnett said. “The greenhouse gas reductions required under the Kyoto Protocol will not prevent it.” Why won’t Kyoto work?

* Even if all signatories meet greenhouse gas emission targets, the effect on global temperature would be insignificant.
* Fast growing, non-developed countries, such as China, India, South Korea and Indonesia, are exempt from emission reductions.
* According to the International Energy Agency, as much as 85 percent of the projected increase in CO2 emissions over the next 20 years will be produced in exempt countries.
* Signatory countries, such as Canada and Japan, are not likely to meet Kyoto’s emission cuts, and the European Union is on a path to exceed its commitments.

The Bush Administration has been severely criticized for not signing the treaty even though economic forecasts show that compliance would hurt the U.S. economy. During the Clinton Administration the Energy Information Administration, the official forecasting arm of the Department of Energy, issued a report predicting that meeting Kyoto greenhouse gas limits would:

* Increase gasoline prices by 52 percent and electricity prices by 86 percent.
* Decrease gross domestic product (GDP) by 4.2 percent and reduce disposable income by 2.5 percent.

Furthermore, an NCPA study written by Dr. Stephen Brown of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank determined that compliance would reduce GDP by as much as 4.3 percent in 2010, representing a loss of up to $394.4 billion, or $1,320 per person.

“Rather than spending time and resources slowing the increase in greenhouse gases, which may not be the cause of global warming, we should prepare for a warmer world and all its effects, regardless of the cause,” Dr. Burnett added.
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Nuclear future coming together?

Representatives of the United States, Japan and Europe will sign an agreement Monday that, in a best-case scenario, will lead to a future in which nuclear power is seen as a boon to the environment and less of a risk to world security. Known as the International Forum Framework Agreement, the pact being signed at the French Embassy in Washington will encourage further technical research into the development of the next generation of reactors on which a possible renaissance in nuclear power will be based. "Nuclear technology can play a key role in the future by providing a means of supplying people all over the world with a safe, proliferation-resistant, and economic means of producing electricity -- and eventually hydrogen -- without harming the environment in which we all live and breathe," the Energy Department declared in a tidy summation of the so-called Generation IV Nuclear Energy System. Generation IV is a collection of a half-dozen designs for different types of reactors. The names will likely ring a bell with engineering types: lead-cooled fast-reactor system, molten-salt reactor, super-critical water-cooled reactor system, and so on. These designs, however, are all pointed at replacing aging reactors starting in 2030 and fostering a resurrection of an industry that has been stalled since the 1970s, even though it is capable of generating large amounts of electricity with virtually nothing in the way of emissions that can pollute the air or aggravate the problem of global warming. The 2030 timetable is not unreasonably long when considering the enormous lead time needed to complete the design work and draw-up plans for actual electricity-generating plants....

Saturday, March 05, 2005

NEWS ROUNDUP

Schweitzer predicts 'powder keg' season Plagued by continuing drought, a shortage of mountain snow and forests full of dry timber, Montana is a powder keg as the summer wildfire season approaches, Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Friday. Schweitzer has asked the Pentagon to return some of the 1,500 Montana National Guard troops and aircraft called to active duty because of Iraq. He is urging anyone with firefighting equipment to sign up with the U.S. Forest Service so they can be summoned quickly when help is needed on the fire lines. Schweitzer also plans to ask governors in Idaho and Washington, and provincial officials in Saskatchewan and Alberta to commit manpower and machines should the fires ignite as he expects. Such mutual aid will be critical, he said....
Northwest fears tinder-dry summer season Authorities are bracing for a seventh year of drought in Montana, where the mountains are so bare that peaks will need three times the usual snowfall between now and when the spring runoff begins just to reach average levels. In Idaho, snowpack is at about 50 percent of average with the lone bright spot - albeit a rather dim one - being Eastern Idaho at 75 percent of average. Parts of the state already have endured five straight years of drought. Conditions are even grimmer in Washington, where snowpack stands at just 16 percent of average in some places. Spokane saw the driest February since record-keeping started in 1881....
Activists make camp in old-growth forest marked for logging Environmentalists opposed to plans to log an old-growth forest reserve burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire have set up a camp to protest Bush administration policy. "This is the front line in a national struggle," Laurel Sutherlin, spokeswoman for the Oxygen Coalition, said yesterday. Members of the group were among a few dozen people who have been camping out where the road leading to the Fiddler timber sale crosses the Illinois River. "If the Forest Service allows a timber company to start logging in old-growth reserves for the first time ever, that's something people need to know that is happening," Sutherlin said....
Simplot wins OK to explore mining in a roadless area Just more than a year after federal officials asked Caribou-Targhee National Forest administrators to reconsider their decision, the U.S. Forest Service again granted permission for Simplot to explore the possibility of mining in an Inventoried Roadless Area near Georgetown. Greater Yellowstone Coalition spokesman Marv Hoyt said his group will appeal the decision. The exploration project, which involves extending Simplot's current Manning Creek Mining Lease to the south, includes building 14,850 feet of new road and reconstructing 2,000 feet of previously reclaimed road. Simplot plans to drill 25 exploratory holes and install two groundwater monitoring wells. According to the plan, the roads must be returned to their original land contours and revegetated after the exploration....
This year's water supply is looking scarce for Klamath farmers, fish Federal water managers say they hope to be able to give most Klamath Reclamation Project farmers their full ration of water this year. But conditions are looking a lot like the drought of 2001, when they had to cut off most farms to provide for threatened and endangered fish. The mountain snowpack that provides much of the region's water is 43 percent of normal, and streamflows from April through September are forecast to be 52 percent of normal into Upper Klamath Lake, the project's primary reservoir. A drought forced the bureau to shut off water to most of the project at the start of the 2001 irrigation season, though water was restored later in the year....
Agency will review pygmy rabbit status The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to decide by May 16 whether threats to the North American pygmy rabbit warrant a yearlong review that could lead to protection under the Endangered Species Act. The animal lives in the western half of Wyoming, particularly on the edges of deserts and in the Jack Morrow Hills area. The agreement came in a settlement of a U.S. District Court lawsuit by environmental groups that contended the Fish and Wildlife Service had refused to consider their petition for protection of the rabbit. The settlement was approved Thursday by Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise....
House committee tables measure to shoot cougars on sight A House committee has tabled a bill that would have allowed mountain lions to be shot on sight in New Mexico. The measure’s sponsor, Republican Representative Brian Moore of Clayton, says it would have allowed ranchers to protect their livestock by reducing the number of mountain lions in the state. Moore says the idea also would help the deer population. The measure would remove mountain lions or cougars from their status as regulated game animals and would leave them classified, along with coyotes, as vermin with no legal protection....
Five states and Albuquerque will work with EPA on haze analysis In the wake of a federal appeals court decision rejecting a government-approved program to improve air quality and visibility, five western states and Albuquerque, N.M., said Friday they would work with the government to repair problems with the program. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last month that the states' program was based on Environmental Protection Agency methods that the court found inconsistent with the federal Clean Air Act three years ago. The program, in use in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Oregon and the city of Albuquerque, was challenged by the Alexandria, Va.-based Center for Energy and Economic Development, a coalition of coal, utility, rail and other companies....
State may join suit claiming park road The state wants to join with San Juan County in suing the federal government to gain ownership of an overgrown road that runs several miles into Canyonlands National Park. Utah's motion to intervene, filed Thursday, has been anticipated since last summer, when the state quietly informed the Bush administration it planned to sue to reopen 7 1/2 miles of the road to vehicle traffic. The state essentially wants to co-own the road with San Juan County, said Assistant Utah Attorney General Ralph Finlayson. The prospect alarms environmentalists and national park advocates, who fear the courts could set a bad precedent....
Editorial: Roan Plateau plans need a second look Reams of newly released information about the Roan Plateau should send the U.S. Bureau of Land Management back to the drawing board regarding plans to permit oil and gas drilling on the western Colorado landmark. The new data would likely intensify and expand the public debate. The BLM had the data on hand for some time but only recently made much of it available for public review. To give citizens time to study the documents, the BLM extended the public comment period on its Roan Plateau plan from March 4 to April 11. The Roan Plateau rises dramatically 3,000 feet above Interstate 70 near Rifle. The plateau's top, sides and base encompass about 127,000 acres, of which about 54,000 acres are privately owned. Of the 73,000 acres of public land, less than half have been used for drilling or other human development....
Column: False hopes in Arctic Refuge NORTH SLOPE OIL started flowing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1977. A decade later, Alaska claimed the pipeline would shut down by 2000 unless it developed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain. We have debated how much oil might be there and its relevance to our energy needs ever since. To those who would keep the coastal plain wild, it does not matter how much oil is there; it should remain wild. Some places are too important for wild natural values to be developed. The American people support its protection by almost 2 to 1. Important as that debate is, it is irrelevant to the way in which industry actually produces Alaska North Slope oil. Even before The New York Times reported that ''major oil companies are largely uninterested in drilling in the refuge," observation of industry behavior should have confirmed that and more. Three related conclusions follow....
Rockhounds rush opal discovery Would-be opal prospectors and miners lined up 50-deep Friday morning to buy a 12-page report about an opal deposit in the Granite Mountains in Fremont County. At 11 a.m. Friday, the Wyoming Geological Survey in Laramie announced the location of a large opal deposit in central Wyoming. "We had 40 to 50 people lined up at the door before we started selling the report at 11 a.m.," said Nancy Elliott, the survey's sales manager. By mid-afternoon, she had sold at least 25 copies of the report....
Lake Powell exposing canyon sites It looks as if someone scooped a 100-foot dip from a brick of cinnamon ice cream. Steve Carothers aims his speedboat straight for this cavity in the canyon wall. At the last moment, he throttles back, and slowly we motor through its vaulted entrance. I look upward. An oval opening rings the top of this domed depression forming a gaping skylight in the overhead rock. What at first looked like a dimpled cave is actually a natural bridge in the Navajo sandstone. Five years ago, this site would have laid unseen, buried beneath the waters of Lake Powell. Now we float in its grandeur....
Irrigators consider forming public utility district to avoid power rate hike Klamath Reclamation Project irrigators hoping to avoid a steep increase in power rates are considering a number of options, including the possibility of forming a locally controlled public utility district. "The power rate change is not necessarily a done deal," said Lynn Long, chairman of the Klamath Water Users Association power committee. "We have a lot of cards yet to play." Farmers in the Klamath Project enjoy a deeply discounted rate of about half a center per kilowatt hour under a contract signed nearly 50 years ago with Pacific Power's predecessor, Copco....
Column: When bureaucrats control the country The Missouri legislators who approved a water law (HB 1433) in the waning moments of last year's session, no doubt, thought they were creating something to help protect clean water in a nine-county area. That's what they were told by reputable employees of the state agencies and influential lobbyists from environmental organizations. The new law created a nine-county district in which water policy would be developed and enforced by appointed - not elected - officials. None realized that the law they adopted was, in fact, an important step toward the implementation of a plan conceived more than 15 years ago by government officials and environmental organizations convened by, and systematically working through, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland. The plan, generically known as "ecosystem management," is designed to manage natural resources on an "ecosystem" basis, rather than on the basis of arbitrarily drawn state and county political boundaries. Equally important, is the transfer of management authority from elected officials to appointed officials. The "watershed" is the primary building block of every ecosystem....
Law would fund research on cloud seeding Flying rainmakers have jump-started the clouds for nearly a half-century in a technology that melds science with a hefty infusion of luck. Now, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, representing a state still recovering from a decadelong drought, wants to accelerate man's efforts to harvest more moisture from the skies. This week, the Texas Republican introduced the Weather Modification Act to expand research and development of projects designed to wring extra rain and snow from the clouds or suppress devastating hailstorms. Similar to legislation Hutchison introduced in the previous session of Congress, the bill seeks to develop "a comprehensive and coordinated" national weather modification policy that would broaden research at the state and federal levels. It also calls for the creation of an 11-member advisory board to work with Congress....
Experts sure of 1 thing: It's dry here "It's been an astonishing winter," says Belgrade native Kelly Redmond, a climate scientist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev. Not since the winter of 1940-41 has the West's weather been so sharply divided. The Southwest has been lashed by storm after storm, with flooding in Las Vegas, lush fields of wild flowers in Death Valley and pieces of California falling into the ocean. Meanwhile, south-central Montana and north-central Wyoming settled in as the driest area of the continental United States....
EPA Insider Nominated to Lead Agency President Bush reached into the ranks of the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday and nominated its acting administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, to head the office where he has worked for 24 years. Johnson, 53, a biologist and pathologist, would be the first scientist and first career EPA employee to head the agency, which was established in 1970 as the environmental movement took hold across the U.S. Johnson must be confirmed by the Senate and his selection drew initial support from some senators with strong environmental records, as well as others who closely follow such issues. But skeptics questioned whether Johnson would stand up to White House officials, who critics say favor industries' needs over protection of the nation's air, water and land....
Bill protects resident hunting preference U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has joined a group of lawmakers seeking to ensure the right of Wyoming and other states to limit nonresident hunting and fishing licenses. Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials called the bill an important measure to preserve the state's right to regulate hunting within its borders. Enzi said Thursday he is cosponsoring the measure in the Senate along with Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Max Baucus, D-Mont.; Ted Stevens, R-Alaska; John Ensign, R-Nev.; and Ben Nelson, D-Neb. Enzi said in a press statement the bill was introduced in direct response to a recent court ruling in Arizona by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals....
Column: The tyranny of eminent domain On February 22nd, the future of property rights in America will be at stake, as the Supreme Court begins oral arguments in the case of Kelo v. New London. The central question at issue is: "should the government be able to use its power of eminent domain to seize property from one private party and transfer it to another?" The seven property owners on the side of Kelo are the last remaining of more than 70 families whose homes and businesses were targeted for demolition several years ago, by the city of New London, Connecticut, to make room for a 90-acre private development. The story of one of the owners, Susette Kelo, is representative. Kelo, a nurse, bought, and painstakingly restored a home, that initially was so run-down that she needed to cut her way to the front door with a hatchet. After she had achieved her dream home, she was informed in November 2000, by the local government that her home was condemned, and ordered to vacate within 90 days. She and the other owners remain in their homes only by the grace of a court order, which prevents eviction and demolition, until their appeals are exhausted. What justifies this treatment of Kelo and the other owners, who simply want to be free to live on their own property?....

Friday, March 04, 2005

NEWS ROUNDUP

Lockyer Suit Seeks to Save Sequoias State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to block a U.S. Forest Service plan to permit commercial logging in the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The suit, which follows a similar one filed in January by conservation groups, alleges that the Forest Service is violating protections granted in 2000 by President Clinton, when he established the 328,000-acre monument in the southern Sierra northeast of Bakersfield. Clinton's declaration barred timber production, saying that trees could be removed in the monument "only if clearly needed for ecological restoration and maintenance or public safety."....
Forest Service management under fire Angeles National Forest users criticized the U.S. Forest Service's management of the 650,000-acre wilderness at a lively and crowded public meeting Wednesday. More than 100 people turned out for a question-and-answer session with Forest Supervisor Jody Noiron. Over the past several years, a number of local Forest Service decisions have ruffled feathers. Closed roads, evacuation of cabin owners during the fire season and environmental damage in Rubio Canyon have brought a litany of complaints from hikers, cabin owners and environmental watchdogs....
Forest fires huge culprit in creating greenhouse gases Even if every Canadian met the government's "one-tonne challenge" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the whole effort could be wiped out by a few big forest fires, researchers say. In a bad year, forest fires in Canada can produce pollution equal to that generated by industry. The National Forest Strategy Coalition says such fires across the country can produce 150 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in a single year -- five times what the one-tonne challenge program would save. Just three fires that raged in British Columbia two summers ago pumped out 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide....
Enviros using fat argument in appeal Americans are getting fat. That's why we should close more roads on the Flathead National Forest, a local environmental group is claiming in its appeal of the West Side Reservoir salvage plan. This may be the first time the waistlines of Americans have ever entered into the discussion of a Forest Service appeal. "The Forest Service has missed a golden opportunity here to demonstrate that what is good for the bear is also good for human health," Keith Hammer, chairman of the Swan View Coalition, said. "While the South Fork bear population is declining, the American waistline is increasing. Implementing Amendment 19 would not only help secure grizzly bear habitat by limiting motorized vehicles, it would increase opportunities near Kalispell for folks to get the quiet exercise needed to lose weight and reduce stress."....
Federal officials to explain changes to lynx, water plans Federal forestry and agriculture officials have agreed to visit Colorado to explain their decision to change protections for water and the Canadian lynx in the White River National Forest management plan. The officials also have promised a further explanation to U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who requested a meeting with the officials Wednesday to state his concerns about the Bush administration's December decision. Salazar said that at the meeting, Deputy Undersecretary of Agriculture David Tenny and regional forester Rick Cables explained that they are trying to develop a regionwide "Rocky Mountain approach" to dealing with the lynx....
Coyote sightings in eastern U.S. The wily coyote, denizen of the West and bane of ranchers, has come to downtown Washington D.C. and the government wants to know where they are and what they're doing. "Don't leave out pet food at night," said National Park Service ranger Ken Ferebee. "And, you know, don't leave your pets out at night either." Coyotes were first seen late last year at the outer edges of Rock Creek Park, a natural hardwood forest of valleys and hillsides that runs in a narrow band through northwest Washington and its suburbs and borders Georgetown, Washington's most famous neighborhood, known for its historic elegance. But Ferebee spotted one recently near the embassy district, a stone's throw from Georgetown and about a 10-minute drive from the White House. The Park Service has received reports of four other sightings near the same spot....
Man Will Serve Time For Shooting Sea Lions A charter boat captain who shot at sea lions off Catalina Island last fall was sentenced Thursday to federal prison for two months. John Gary Woodrum, a 38-year-old Harbor City resident, was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and perform 250 hours of community service at a marine mammal rescue center in San Pedro. Woodrum pleaded guilty in January to a pair of misdemeanor counts of attempting to kill a marine mammal -- a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act....
State urged to close up to 8 elk feeding sites Environmentalists are asking Gov. Dave Freudenthal to consider phasing out as many as eight of Wyoming's 23 elk feedgrounds to help control diseases like brucellosis. The list submitted by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and Wyoming Outdoor Council includes three feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre River drainage east of the National Elk Refuge near Jackson. Lloyd Dorsey, of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, said those three could be closed first under a pilot program. "We want to make sure the private livestock and private lands are taken care of," Dorsey said. A Brucellosis Task Force appointed by Freudenthal submitted recommendations including a controversial test-and-slaughter program at one feedground. Elk would be corralled and tested and the ones testing positive would be slaughtered....
Panther killed in fight after relocation Environmentalists are saying "I told you so" in the death of a young male Florida panther killed by another big cat after he was relocated. The Miccosukkee Indian Tribe had asked last May to move the 11-month-old panther after it began getting too close to Florida Everglades residents without showing any fear of humans. Conservationists warned tranquilizing the cat and moving it would place its life in danger from older bigger males. Male panthers are known to be territorial and will kill other panthers trying to invade their turf....
Wolf study relying on donations Yellowstone National Park is relying more heavily on private donations this year to keep its wolf program running without having to make cuts elsewhere. In the past, the high-profile wolf program has received most of its funding from federal dollars and rounded out its budget with donations from the nonprofit Yellowstone Park Foundation, according to park figures. But in 2004 and 2005, private money has paid for a majority of the work, which includes long-term wolf research, collaring and other studies looking for changes in the Yellowstone ecosystem since the reintroduction of wolves 10 years ago. The shift to reliance on private dollars is part of an effort to keep the wolf program viable and pay for other cultural and natural resource programs, said Tom Olliff, chief of Yellowstone's branch of natural resources....
Lawmakers back checkoff for parks Federal lawmakers reached across the political aisle this week to help fund national parks, introducing legislation that would let citizens earmark tax dollars for the cause. "This bill allows Americans to show their pride in America,'' said Tom Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association. The proposal, sponsored for the GOP by Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., and for Democrats by Rep. Brian Baird, R-Wash., is called the National Park Centennial Act of 2005. It aims to deliver money for maintaining and preserving the parks through 2016, the 100th birthday of the National Park Service. While states have in the past funded special projects through voluntary checkoffs on tax forms, the bill would mark the first time such an option was offered on federal tax returns. The money is needed, Kiernan said, to bolster financing for both backlogged maintenance and annual operation of parks....
Washoe residents question possible sale of federal land If there was a single question about a proposed federal bill to sell off public lands in Washoe County, local residents wanted to know where the water would come from to support private development. And conservationist Tina Nappe said residents already are paying steep water bills — and don’t need any more competition for water that could raise bills even higher. More than 200 people attended a town hall meeting Thursday night in Washoe County Commission chambers regarding a federal bill that could be similar to the Southern Nevada Public Land Act of 1998, which allows the federal government to auction public lands to private developers....
Limits on drilling called Utah bane Utah is losing the game when it comes to making money off vast natural gas reserves locked deep underground in the Uinta Basin, according to one Denver-based company. On Thursday, representatives of Bill Barrett Corp., an oil and natural gas exploration company, renewed their charge that restrictive federal land use policies and bureaucratic strangleholds are slowing drilling in Utah. The company's message comes as it prepares to file an application with the Bureau of Land Management to expand drilling operations in Nine Mile Canyon, an archaeological treasure trove of prehistoric rock art formations. Don Banks, a BLM Utah spokesman, said the bureau is expecting a full-field development proposal from Bill Barrett Corp., as early as today. The proposal will seek expanded drilling operations and removal of winter drilling restrictions. An environmental impact study of the proposal could take two years or longer to complete before a decision is made....
Water Fight in the Mojave quarrel over waterholes in the Mojave is pitting hunters against naturalists, the needs of game animals against those of federally protected wildlife, and is resurrecting decade-old differences over the purpose of a national preserve. Until recently, the dispute has been limited to mule deer and bighorn sheep hunters who favor the creation of more desert water sources and conservationists who argue that man-made waterholes draw predators that prey on the threatened California desert tortoise. Now, a high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of the Interior has intervened on behalf of hunters and demanded the uncapping of 12 plugged wells, an action that would reverse a long-standing water policy in the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve. That, in turn, prompted a lawsuit this week by two environmental groups that say the order is illegal. Ever since the preserve was created 11 years ago, the National Park Service, which manages it, has been working to buy out a handful of cattle ranches scattered through the preserve and cap wells that supplied water to livestock. Some of the buyout agreements, which were financed by the nonprofit National Park Foundation, called for the permanent capping of all ranch wells....
Column: Water Contracts Declare War on Fish The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced its decision to perpetuate California's fish and water problems for decades by beginning to sign contracts with about 200 water districts and water contractors in the Central Valley Project last week. Rather than heeding the pleas of fishermen, Indian tribes and environmental organizations to slow down the process so that the environmental impacts of these contracts could be properly reviewed with full public input, the Bush administration decided to proceed with a process that serves the Westlands Water District and other corporate water kings rather than the public trust. On February 25, The Bureau began signing contracts for 25 or 40 years, depending upon the contract type. The contracts will provide water for 3.7 million acres of farmland in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, including vast tracts of corporate farms on the San Joaquin's west side that never should have been farmed because of the damage caused to fish, wildlife and the environment....
House passes Nez Perce bill The Idaho House has passed three bills Wednesday supporting one of the largest water rights agreements in the West. House bills 152, 153 and 154 -- all supporting the proposed multimillion dollar agreement between the Nez Perce Tribe, the state and federal government -- passed with strong support after Rep. Dell Raybould told lawmakers that much of the opposition surrounding the agreement was based on wrong information. The bills now move to the Idaho Senate. "This is good for the state of Idaho. It's good for the citizens of the state of Idaho. And I believe this body has an obligation to uphold this agreement," Raybould said....
Column: Clear Skies, Healthy Forests If you don't trust the environmentalists, you may want to listen to the doctors. Mount Sinai Medical School has just released a study that, in its scientific way, indicts the Bush administration's mercury policy as not only harming children but (conservatives take note) damages the economy. The report calculates that the U.S. loses $8.7 billion annually in productivity, of which $1.3 billion is directly attributable to mercury emissions from U.S. power plants. The Mt. Sinai study was based not on wild conjecture but on mercury exposure data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It reports that from 300,000 to 600,000 American children are born every year with mercury levels associated with IQ loss. According to the report, "The resulting loss of intelligence causes diminished economic productivity that persists over the entire lifetime of these children. This lost productivity is the major cost of methylmercury toxicity…"....
Sun Storms Deplete Ozone Turns out the sun itself zaps the ozone that protects us from the sun. LiveScience is reporting that the record-setting string of solar storms around Halloween in 2003 (including an X28 flare) set off a cascade of events that depleted the ozone layer over the Arctic in early 2004. In a nutshell, more nitrogen was created, and an unusually strong vortex of high-speed winds aloft brought the nitrogen down, where it contributed to cutting ozone by 60 percent over the polar region. In January, the a European scientist warned residents of the far north to basically stay out of the sun. While chlorofluorocarbons are still blamed for ozone depletion, scientists said this study shows they don't properly account for the sun's impact.
Feds probe GOP team's link to lobbyist Interior Department officials are investigating whether the outgrowth of a Republican environmental group founded by Gale Norton before she became secretary of the Interior has been using its influence to help a Washington lobbyist sway the agency's decisions. The inquiry into the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy's activities comes in the wake of reports linking it to political donations solicited from Indian tribes by Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist now under criminal investigation and the subject of Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings. The Arizona Republic reported Sunday that CREA was sent $175,000 by two Indian tribes at the urging of Abramoff. No accounting for the tribal donations has been found in public records required of advocacy groups, and CREA President Italia Federici would not comment on the whereabouts of the money. The Interior Department's Office of Inspector General is reviewing all dealings, communications and connections between department officials and members of CREA, a spokesman for Norton said Wednesday....
Column: Let's teach our kids the way of the land This month the United Nations officially begins the "Decade of Education for Sustainable Development." Most students would respond no, skeptical about the topic's relevance to their lives. Young people are educated to believe they are separate from and superior to the natural world. Yet this attitude is the root cause of our environmental problems. To change this attitude, the heart and spirit of each young person must be touched and become part of the education process. Engaging the heart and spirit is essential for students to feel their connection to nature, which creates the passion to live more sustainable lives. These ideas need to inform our educational mission. Among our primary tasks as citizens, teachers and students is constructing a new narrative for ourselves with a new set of dreams. Understanding and healing our separation from nature is the most critical part of this process....
Another blow to cotton subsidies Thursday the other shoe dropped on US cotton subsidies when a World Trade Organization (WTO) appeals panel upheld most of a ruling made last September that finds some cotton subsidies and export subsidies in violation of WTO rules. The WTO's Appellate Body upheld the September ruling that marketing loan payments and counter-cyclical payments to producers caused "significant price suppression" in the world market for upland cotton. It also found that the WTO panel, which issued the September ruling, did not use the wrong burden of proof when it found that "the United States' export credit guarantee programs are prohibited export subsidies." Technically, the new ruling applies mainly to cotton, but the subsidies it affects, marketing loan gains, loan deficiency payments and counter cyclical payments, apply to other farm program commodities such as corn and soybeans....
Hick-hop country? You're kidding, right? This year, Troy Coleman is 34, goes by the name ''Cowboy Troy'' and is attempting to become the first African-American superstar in country music since Charley Pride. Oh yes, and he's also trying to make it onto the country airwaves by rapping rather than singing. With country instruments backing his raps, Troy calls his style ''hick-hop.'' ''It made perfect sense to me,'' the Texas-bred Troy said of his genre-bending fusion. ''When you go into country bars, you'll see a band play 45 minutes of country music and then at the break the DJ will put on whatever rap or hip-hop is popular at the time. Cowboys and cowgirls pack the floor. It's not like I'm the only guy wearing a cowboy hat who likes rap music as much as I like country music.''....
Campfire CafĂ© Saddles Up with American Cowboy Magazine American Cowboy Magazine will feature articles, recipes and open fire tips and techniques from Johnny Nix during 2005-2006. The most widely read Western lifestyle magazine, featuring entertainment, the Arts, history, travel, cooking, music, fashion and rodeo – American Cowboy is the number one source for outstanding content that captures the spirit of the West. “The alliance with American Cowboy Magazine is a natural”, says executive producer, Pamela Alford. “There’s a little cowboy spirit in all of us and open fire cooking fits right in with the lifestyle American Cowboy represents.” Nix has inspired viewers to give this traditional cowboy way of cooking a try by introducing gourmet recipes and step-by-step instruction in weekly television programming for almost three years. His weekly demonstrations of this method of cooking as a recreational, family-oriented activity is catching the eye of organizations that promote healthy, outdoor pursuits. “We’d like to remind folks that are too busy to spend quality time with their kids that we all have to eat”, says Nix. “Might as well stoke up a campfire and cook some good food – never met a kid that didn’t like to poke in the fire.”....
Flickacat Wins Cutting's Top Prize Over 500 cutting horse enthusiasts made their way to Amarillo, Texas, last month for the 2004 National Cutting Horse Association's (NCHA) World Championship Finals. After 10 days of competition, 11 new World Champions were crowned. In the NCHA, riders compete throughout the year, hauling to cutting competitions across the country. Each top placing earns the contestant money, and the top 50 money earners are invited to the World Championship Finals. Whoever wins the most money in each division is crowned World Champion. In the Open competition, Chubby Turner of Weatherford, Texas, entered the Finals with a lock on the World Championship title. Riding Flickacat, who is owned by Dave and Georgia Husby, Turner had more than $75,000 in earnings in 2004 - $40,000 more than the second place horse. Turner traveled more than 35,000 miles last year to claim his title....

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Hage decision clarified

There has been much speculation and misunderstanding surrounding the Hage decision since it was issued and published by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, January 2002. Wayne Hage of Tonopah, Nevada filed his suit for a temporary takings in 1991 after the U.S. Forest Service confiscated his cattle in a paramilitary action, sold his cattle and kept the proceeds from the sale. The temporary taking affords Hage the ability to keep the ranch, but also to be paid for the period of time (11 years) the United States prevented him from making a living on his ranch.

The January, 2002 Final Decision and Finding of Fact was the third major decision published just in the property phase of the case. The dispute was, in part, over who actually owned the property rights within the allotments, (those lands the government called "public lands"). The Court first decided what property rights existed on the allotments and who owned them, before it would decide whether the government had temporarily taken the Hage's ranch operations, and what compensation was due him.

Recent published articles have indicated the only property rights awarded Hage in this ruling were vested water rights and forage, confined to within 50 feet on each side of his 1866 irrigation ditches.

To end this controversy and confusion among the Hage supporters, I offer this challenge: I'm willing to pay anyone $1,000.00 if they can show me where Judge Smith ruled that Hage's forage rights were confined to 50 feet on each side of his irrigation ditches. In addition, and with all due respect and affection, I'm willing to go anywhere and appear in any setting, to openly discuss and debate these decisions with those who've published conflicting opinions. If one should doubt my offer, those who know me, know I keep my promises. This is a promise.

The fact is that the 1866 ditches on the Hage ranch comprise only .001 percent of the water sources of the ranch. If the interpretation that Hage was awarded the minuscule amount of forage were correct, Hage would have, long ago, folded his tent and left Pine Creek Ranch to the government. Instead, the reality is that, based on the proper interpretation of the ruling, Hage's cattle are now grazing on the allotments, previously forbidden by the U.S. Government, without a grazing permit.

How could this happen in this climate of strict regulatory controls?....
MAD COW DISEASE

U.S. Senate votes to keep Canadian cattle out of United States The Senate voted Thursday to overturn the Bush administration's decision to allow Canadian cattle into the country again nearly two years after they were banned because of mad cow disease. The White House said Bush would veto the measure if it ever reaches his desk, warning that continuing to refuse Canadian beef would damage efforts to persuade other countries to buy U.S. beef. The Senate's 52-46 vote was to reject the Agriculture Department's decision to begin resuming imports of Canadian cows under 30 months of age beginning next week. A similar measure has been introduced in the House, but leaders there have scheduled no vote on it. "They've got mad-cow disease," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. "Now the question is, should we run the risk of opening our border to livestock imports from Canada, when the evidence demonstrates clearly they're not enforcing their regulations to reduce the risk to them and to us?"....
Johann’s To Lobby House To Allow Canada Cattle Imports Johanns said he was "disappointed" with the Senate vote and warned that it "undermines the U.S. efforts to promote science-based regulations, complicates U.S. negotiations to reopen foreign markets to U.S. beef and would perpetuate the economic disruption of the beef and cattle industry." The resolution, a means by which Congress can reject regulatory rules made by federal agencies as provided for in the 1996 Congressional Review Act, must also be approved by the House of Representatives and signed by U.S. President George W. Bush to go into effect and cancel the USDA rule. The White House confirmed Bush would veto the measure, and warned that continuing to refuse Canadian beef would damage efforts to persuade other countries to buy U.S. beef, The Associated Press reported Thursday. U.S. industry groups such as the Food Products Association and the American Meat Institute have denounced the Senate action....
Canadian Ranchers See Politics in Ruling Some ranchers in Western Canada believe the decision by a U.S. federal judge to block indefinitely the resumption of their cattle crossing into the United States is another example of American protectionism as well as botched politics by their own leaders. Their anger was compounded Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted to overturn the Bush administration's decision to lift a ban next Monday. The ban was imposed on Canadian cattle nearly two years ago because of fears over mad cow disease. Danny Rosehill of the Olds Auction Mart in Calgary said U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull's ruling Wednesday was not only biased in favor of cattlemen in Montana, but indicative of the increasingly testy relations between the world's largest trading partners....
Length of CAN border delay unclear A federal judge in Montana temporarily blocked the Bush administration's plan to reopen the border to young Canadian cattle on Monday. The length of the delay isn't clear. U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings, Mont., granted the request for a preliminary injunction brought by a ranchers group that argued the reopening would expose their cattle -- and U.S. consumers -- to mad-cow disease, the fatal brain wasting ailment diagnosed in four Canadian-born cattle over the past 22 months. Judge Cebull, who tangled with the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year over its plan to allow certain cuts of Canadian beef back into the U.S., ordered federal lawyers and the ranchers' group -- R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America -- to agree within 10 days on a date for a hearing on whether he should issue a permanent injunction against the plan for importing live animals. Judge Cebull's ruling is a blow to the Bush administration's attempt to create a new international standard for doing business with countries that have a low incidence of mad-cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Until recently, the U.S., like most nations, simply shut its borders to infected countries. The Bush administration's attitude changed when the December 2003 discovery of an infected Holstein dairy cow in Washington state prompted scores of countries to ban U.S. beef , extinguishing a $3 billion annual export market for U.S. meatpackers. By accepting cattle under the age of 30 months from Canada, the U.S. government is trying to show countries such as Japan and South Korea that it is safe for them to import U.S. beef again. Mad-cow disease, which primarily afflicts cattle that are several years old, is hard to detect in cattle under the age of 30 months....
Canada May Boost Cattle-Rancher Aid After U.S. Ruling Canada may boost subsidies for the country's struggling cattle ranchers after a U.S. court decided against lifting restrictions on cattle exports, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said. The government ``will need to assess'' whether the C$1.5 billion ($1.2 billion) paid to ranchers since the May 2003 discovery of an Alberta animal infected with mad cow disease is enough, Goodale told reporters in Halifax, Nova Scotia, today, according to his spokesman, John Embury....
Canadian cattle pose no new health risk to American beef consumers: experts Keeping Canadian cows from crossing the 49th parallel won't safeguard U.S. beef consumers from the human form of mad cow disease, experts on prion diseases say. ``I do not feel that there is a rational health reason to prohibit the import of Canadian cattle to the U.S.,'' Canadian prion expert Dr. Neil Cashman said Thursday as hurdles continued to mount to the reopening of the American border. ``The movement of the U.S. and Canadian herds across the border and the similarities in feeding practices of the two countries prior to and after 1997 make the risk of BSE the same in both countries _ which is extremely low, but not zero.'' Dr. Jean-Philippe Deslys, a prion expert from France, shares Cashman's view that the risk associated with Canadian beef is indistinguishable from that of American beef. ``The two countries are considered at the same level of risk,'' said Deslys, a research scientist and expert adviser to the World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. ``It's logical to open the frontier.''....
'Keep U.S. Beef Safe!' The Ranchers-Cattlemen's Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) urged consumers today to tell their grocery store managers, butchers, mayors, governors, members of Congress and local health officials: `Keep U.S. Beef Safe.' This call-for-action is part of a nationwide campaign to stop federal officials from dropping crucial food safety protections for imported beef, specifically from Canada. Four cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, a deadly disease also known as mad cow, have been identified in Canadian cattle since May 2003. "The United States has the safest beef in the world, and we want to keep it that way. Even with increased testing we have yet to find one single native case of BSE in U.S. born and raised cattle. For this reason, we are urging consumers to speak out: `Keep U.S. Beef Safe,'" wrote Leo McDonnell, Jr., President of R-CALF USA, in a letter to every Member of Congress, Governor, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities....
Financiers sell Creekstone The majority financial owner of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef has sold its interest to a private investment company that will help Creekstone grow and position itself better in the marketplace, the two companies said. The sale occurs as Creekstone continues a year-long battle with the Agriculture Department to allow the company to test all the animals it slaughters for mad-cow disease. Creekstone officials contend that if the company were allowed to test, it would regain business with Japan, which has imposed a ban on American beef imports since December 2003, when a case of mad -cow disease was discovered in Washington state. "We will continue to aggressively pursue to BSE test (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow)," Pentz said, "regardless of whether overseas markets are open or shut."....
NEWS ROUNDUP

3 environmental laws targeted The Bush administration is asking Congress to amend three environmental laws to reduce their impact on military ranges after failing to win the changes last year. Administration officials circulated among federal agencies their proposed language for changing the laws in a Jan. 6 document obtained by The Associated Press. The language calls for the same changes that stalled in Congress last year. Defense Department officials want the Clean Air Act amended so that any additional air pollution from training exercises wouldn't have to be counted for three years in the state plans for meeting federal air quality standards. The document says that under the current law "it is becoming increasingly difficult to base military aircraft near developed areas." Other changes sought are in the Superfund and the Solid Waste Disposal Act. The Pentagon opposes having to remove unexploded ordnance from its operational ranges. It also wants to delay cleanups until after contamination spreads beyond military boundaries....
Column: The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle When it comes to civil liberties, most people will remember 9/11 and the Patriot Act. But if you are a treehugger, you will probably remember when the federal government, and some states, started taking the gloves off back in the mid-eighties. The commencement was a series of laws passed to target a perceived eco-terrorist threat, following the widely publicized sawmill accident in Sonoma County where a young mill worker was injured. A spike in a tree caused a saw blade to snap and hit the worker. It was no matter that the spike was placed by an enraged local landowner and not by any of the activists trying to protect the last old-growth Redwoods on the Pacific Coast. The national news media cranked up the story that eco-terrorists were everywhere planning violence and a series of new laws were passed to deter them from wreaking havoc on the beleaguered timber industry. Most of these new laws didn't distinguish much between property destruction, peaceful protest and acts of civil disobedience. Within a decade, every western state would have laws making it an offense, subject to imprisonment, to halt, impede, hinder, obstruct or delay a timber sale....
Ranchers want wolves recaptured Local ranchers, fearful that their livestock are in danger, are looking to the Socorro County Commission for support in removing a pair of Mexican wolves from the San Mateo and Magdalena Mountain area back to the designated recovery area. Arch "Buck" Wilson, who owns a cattle ranch in western Socorro County, near Magdalena, asked the commission Tuesday to consider the possibilities of helping area ranchers in getting the pair of wolves, dubbed the San Mateo pact, removed from the area. Colleen Buchanan, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service involved with the Mexican wolf reintroduction program, said the San Mateo pact, a male and female, had found their way to that area in Socorro and Catron counties on their own. "They showed up in January 2004 and we recaptured them in August 2004 because they were outside the recovery area," Buchanan said. "We returned them to the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, Apache Stigrevas and the Gila National Forest in Arizona and New Mexico, but the pact has found their way back," she said....
Suit filed over list excluding rare flies A wildlife group has sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over failing to list 12 species of Hawaiian picture-wing flies as endangered, saying the agency should have placed the insects on the list more than three years ago. The service first proposed protection of the Hawaiian picture-wings on Jan. 17, 2001. Under the Endangered Species Act, the government had one year to place them on the Endangered Species List and to designate critical habitat for the Hawaiian picture-wings, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. In the lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., the center says the service violated the act by failing to list the 12 species of Hawaiian picture-wings....
State's top forester downplays Bush influence in White River The top U.S. Forest Service official in Colorado is downplaying controversial changes that the Bush administration made to the White River National Forest Plan. Regional Forester Rick Cables claimed the changes won't weaken protections for lynx and water quality as some critics contend. Instead, the changes ordered by U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary David Tenny bring the White River National Forest's management practices into compliance with broader federal policies, Cables said during a recent visit to the Roaring Fork Valley. Tenny's decisions - called a "discretionary review" in federal bureaucracy parlance - weren't unprecedented. Other officials in his post have made changes to forest plans, according to Cables....
Caviar scheme leads to three arrests Charges have been filed against three people accused of running an illegal caviar-manufacturing operation, authorities said today. The three, all immigrants from former Soviet-bloc countries, were indicted on charges of felony racketeering and unlawfully possessing and selling white sturgeon, said Sgt. Jeff Samuels, who heads the special investigations unit of the state police Fish and Wildlife Division. The Usoltseffs are accused of illegally buying sturgeon from tribal fishermen in the Columbia River and turning the roe into caviar. The trade was brokered by Grigoryan, who is a limousine driver in the Portland metropolitan area, Samuels said....
Domenici: Delay protection of bird Sometimes, the circle of life will make you dizzy. Sen. Pete Domenici fears federal action to protect the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher will snag efforts to rid New Mexico of two invasive species of plants that drain millions of gallons of water from the environment. So the Albuquerque Republican is asking the Bush administration to delay habitat protections for the flycatcher, which nests in the salt cedar and Russian olive trees that have taken over the bosque along the middle Rio Grande. At a meeting of his Energy Committee on Tuesday, Domenici urged Interior Secretary Gale Norton to seek a delay in a looming regulation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that could limit federal cleanup actions along most of the middle Rio Grande....
Column: Non-Profit or Big Business Why, then, is the National Conservation Resource Service (NCRS), a division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), giving $10.7 million dollars out of farm bill funds to a multi-billion dollar "non-profit" agency to make swampland out of rich farmland. This land has been farmed for the past 80 years. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) bought 7,775 acres from Wilder Corporation in 2000 for $18.45 million. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife has since purchased 712 of those acres from the conservancy. The Fish and Wildlife Service owns 2,200 acres adjacent to the conservancy's holdings. This purchase known as "Emiquon" is one of the largest wetland restoration projects in the United States. TNC is often called the "real estate agent for the government."....
BLM seeks emergency ban on Vermillion vehicle traffic Off-highway vehicle damage in the Vermillion Cliffs and Trail Canyon areas on the Utah-Arizona border is prompting the Bureau of Land Management to put emergency OHV restrictions into place - perhaps as soon as next month. Rex Smart, manager of the BLM's Kanab Field Office, said Wednesday that because of documented damage in Trail Canyon and adjacent Hogs Canyon, a combination of route designations and area closures will be put into effect as soon as a final order is drafted and can be sent off to Washington for publication in the Federal Register. That process could take anywhere from three to eight weeks....
BLM scraps plans for expanded enforcement powers in Nevada The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will not seek expanded authority for its rangers to enforce some state laws on federal land in Nevada, a bureau official said. Instead, the agency will work with individual counties to establish law enforcement agreements. "As we meet with each one, we'll decide what works best for that county," said Jo Simpson, a BLM spokeswoman in Reno. Increased visitation and law enforcement problems at areas like Sand Mountain outside Fallon and Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas prompted the BLM last spring to seek expanded authority....
Richardson Addresses Environmental Concern New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that governors should be allowed to protect environmentally sensitive federal land in their states against oil and gas drilling. Richardson, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said the Bush administration already has a precedent for such a move: a proposed forest protection plan that would leave it to governors to designate what federal forests should remain roadless. Under Richardson's proposal, a final decision on a governor's petition still would be up to the Interior Department....
GOP sets push to drill for oil in refuge A Senate showdown over an Alaska wildlife refuge is expected within weeks as Republicans plan to use a budget measure to overcome strong opposition to allowing oil drilling in the protected area. It will be the first big environmental issue facing the new Congress. Republican leaders indicated Tuesday that they plan to press the issue of drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of a so-called budget reconciliation process, which cannot be subject to a Democratic filibuster - a tactic that has blocked the refuge's development in the past. Given the wider GOP majority in the Senate, Republicans said they think they have the best chance yet to open the presumably oil-rich but environmentally sensitive Alaska refuge to oil drilling, which has been one of President Bush's top energy priorities....
Column: You don’t need a motor to experience Yellowstone While I disagree with Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s agenda for Yellowstone National Park, I have to admire her political smarts. She showed great form during her recent snowmobile and snow coach tour of the park this winter. Secretary Norton charmed reporters with her grit, gamely bouncing through sub-zero temperatures on a three-hour snowmobile excursion, and her wit, as she pointed to rising steam from one of the park’s many geysers and quipped, "It’s not all that different from Washington. I mean, look at all the hot air around here." But the best example of her political savvy came in the way she stacked the deck in her framing of the debate over snowmobiles in the park. In addition to her snowmobile tour, Norton took a short ride in a snow coach, the other motorized option for getting inside the park. Afterwards, she said to an Associated Press reporter, "This is a much more ordinary kind of experience." Then, with an unenthusiastic shrug, she added, "It’s not as special as a snowmobile."....
Water leasing sparks worries: Farmers say environ pact targets them And it's largely for that reason some farmers are upset. They say they've become targeted as the responsible party for Rio Grande water conservation efforts. Environmental groups - including the Sierra Club and Forest Guardians - and the city of Albuquerque last week announced an agreement that, among other things, provides money to compensate anybody who leases his or her water rights for environmental uses. Those with water rights encompass cities, developers and farmers. But it's the farmers who fear their water is in the cross hairs. "If you're going to lease water today, you're going to get it from agriculture," said John Carangelo, who farms 60 acres just north of Socorro. "All of the water in the state of New Mexico is fully appropriated. The people using the water are using it - using it for very, very good purposes: to feed you."....
Kennedy blasts Bush on environment, applauds Schwarzenegger While conservationist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used a legislative hearing to label the Bush administration the worst in U.S. history on environmental issues, he also praised the record of his cousin's husband, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Accusing the White House of rolling back more than 400 regulations and policies that he believes has damaged the environment, Kennedy praised California lawmakers Wednesday for stepping into the void and holding the line on pollution controls....
Judge keeps border closed A federal judge ordered that the U.S. northern border remain closed to Canadian cattle imports Wednesday, after a lawyer for a livestock group said it would be insane to resume imports with so many unanswered questions about mad-cow disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had planned to open the border to fuller trade beginning Monday. U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull granted a temporary court order preventing that. R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America had asked Cebull to keep the USDA from implementing a plan to allow some live cattle and expanded beef imports from Canada until the merits of its lawsuit against the government are heard. Cebull ordered attorneys for both sides Wednesday to prepare for a trial in that case. Canadian Trade Minister Jim Peterson said he was disappointed, and "we'll do everything we can to fight it out."....
States moving to keep mad cow investigations secret When rumor of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak among Kansas cattle hit the commodities trading floor in Chicago three years ago, prices plummeted. The rumor was proved false the following day, but it was too late: The beef industry lost an estimated $50 million as skittish investors looked to other commodities, and agriculture officials spent weeks assuring consumers the food supply was safe. With that in mind - and with recent concerns over mad-cow disease at home and in Canada - lawmakers around the country are working on ways to keep livestock disease investigations secret until absolutely necessary....
Western Writers of America joins the National Festival of the West Western Writers of America joins the National Festival of the West at Rawhide, March 17-20, in celebration of the literature of the American West. More than 25 WWA members who write history, novels, short stories, screenplays, children’s books, poetry and music will be on hand to talk about their craft and sign books. "The Western is America’s epic," says Rita Cleary, president of Western Writers of America and author of novels such as "River Walk" and "Charbonneau’s Gold." Cleary will give a presentation about the Lewis & Clark expedition. Other WWA members will talk about issues such as Western justice, Women of the West, American Heroes and Western films and documentaries. They will also present workshops on a variety of writing topics including screenplays, novels, developing characters, and getting your book published....
Prairie Coal Great Plains travelers learned very quickly to gather wood for fuel when they found it. Leather and canvas hammocks, called coosies, were often fastened to the undersides of wagons, and into these firewood was placed and transported. During stops near water courses which had trees, wood was harvested for the next few days of travel. What little wood was located was quickly used up by the first few waves of migrants. With no wood the newcomers quickly resorted to adopting alternative sources of fuels, including corn cobs, braided grasses (called “cats”), and even the woody stalks of sunflowers. For the most part, these had severe limitations--they were inefficient since they burned quickly and gave off little heat, and were considered stopgap measures until something better came along. In time, the use of cobs and grass and stalks faded away and the settlers and travelers moved on to yet another source of fuel, one that was relatively efficient, one that existed in abundance, and one that was to sustain them in their time of need for many years--dried buffalo dung. As with the previous methods, the dung burned somewhat more rapidly than wood, but unlike grass, stalks, and corn cobs it burned hot, evenly, and clean. To the surprise and amazement of many housewives, there was no odor associated with the dried dung. Gradually, the other choices were discarded and buffalo dung became the fuel of choice for the plains settlers for many years....