NEWS ROUNDUP


Energy/Ag Alliance Fractures Over Eminent Domain For several decades now, the political interests of the energy and agricultural communities have been closely aligned in the Wyoming Legislature -- against federal regulations, but for federal tax breaks and support programs. Oh, and by the way, getting pretty much what they wanted from the state government and along similar lines. For all those years, Big Ag and Big Energy were reliable allies, but perhaps not for much longer. A deep fracture line has appeared between the two groups, and it is called eminent domain. Dustin Bleizeffer of the Casper Star Tribune has a New Year's Day package exploring the issue, including how landowners are objecting to a railroad's use of eminent domain, and a Rock Springs businessman who was forced to relocate his businesses by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Basically, more and more ranchers, landowners and business people are feeling like road kill on the super highway to progress. Energy companies, railroads, government all use eminent domain to achieve their goals, and it has been going on for a long time. When it happened to just a few, the rest tended to shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to the price paid for progress -- a good thing for everyone. What's different now, is the super-heated pace of energy development and growth in Wyoming. The number of people getting run over by eminent domain is growing, and it seems like there's a critical mass of resentment and betrayal building up. We'll have to see how this plays out in the upcoming legislative session, but it could well be that there are enough angry, bitter people out there, that the legislature will listen and even up the playing field between the big boys and the little guys....
Property power struggle Some say the cowboy is nothing more than a romantic image of an ideal that simply doesn't exist today in the West. So is the notion that owning property means you can keep people out and conduct your own business on your own terms. Growing numbers of property owners in Wyoming are demanding reform of the state's eminent domain laws to protect what they say might be a dying Western value. Rancher Eric Barlow recently toured his neighbor's ranch in Powder River Breaks country between Gillette and Buffalo and noted a property line dividing the flat-bottom valley pasture between two brothers' ranches. On one side a coal-bed methane company had cut a long ditch carefully meandering to one side of the bottomland so it didn't disturb much of the pasture. On the other side of the property line, the man-made ditch was ripped zigzag from one side to the other, as if it were purposely cut to damage as much of the bottomland pasture as possible. This, said Barlow, was no mistake. He believes it was meant to punish the one rancher for not agreeing to the company's terms. The company initiated eminent domain proceedings to cut the zigzagging ditch and force coal-bed methane water onto the ranch where it isn't wanted. "A coal-bed methane company will not pass up an opportunity to make an example of a rancher, just to show the rest what they are capable of," Barlow said. What coal-bed methane companies are capable of is taking private property for their own economic gain. They're not the only ones....
Editorial - Charges against fire boss heap travesty atop tragedy Firefighter bosses may start feeling the heat like never before. Federal prosecutors in Spokane charged a Forest Service crew boss with manslaughter Dec. 23 in connection with the deaths of four firefighters in a 2001 wildfire in northcentral Washington. This first-of-its-kind criminal case is a gross miscarriage of justice on its face. But even if the charges don't stand up in court, prosecutors have sent an unmistakable - and unfortunate - message to men and women up and down the chain of command: Avoid all risks and cover your rear. The ultimate effect could be less-effective firefighting leading to bigger, more dangerous fires and, perversely, even greater risk of fire fatalities in the future. Prosecutors say 46-year-old Ellreese Daniels committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to prevent his crew from being overrun by the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Wash., July 10, 2001. The criminal complaint says he and others committed a variety of mistakes, among them: underestimating the fire's potential, failing to anticipate extreme fire behavior, inadequately communicating among themselves and failing to ensure the crew's proper deployment of emergency fire shelters in the face of advancing flames. Prosecutors also say Daniels lied about some of his actions afterward. Ten firefighters and two campers trapped with the crew survived; four crew members died in their emergency shelters of asphyxia from inhaling superheated gases from the fire raging around them. The fire started as a picnicker's campfire....
Editorial - At last, justice may prevail in Thirtymile Fire Four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. Ellreese Daniels is accused of allowing his 14-member squad to be trapped by the Thirtymile Fire in July 2001. The four involuntary manslaughter charges filed against him earlier this month are widely believed to be the first homicide charges ever brought against a firefighter whose crew was overtaken by flames. Daniels also faces seven counts of lying to investigators about his role in fighting the 9,300-acre fire, which grew from an unattended campfire...The documents repeatedly blamed the tragedy on numerous mistakes by more than one unnamed supervisor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hopkins said federal rules prevent him from saying whether charges against other Thirtymile Fire bosses are expected. That possibility, both in the Thirtymile disaster and in subsequent fires that have left firefighters dead, is reportedly sending a chill through the professional firefighting ranks. They fear that they, too, may be held responsible if people under their command die. They should fear that -- and they should be held criminally responsible, but only when their actions allow the ever-present dangers inherent in firefighting to escalate through negligence and disregard for human safety....
Frontier family fights to return home Since 1878, four generations of Vadis and Howard Stratton's family lived as homesteaders on this mountain, much like TV's "The Waltons," the clan says. The family made electricity with an 1893 waterwheel, powered by a creek shooting downhill through a homemade pipe. Vadis Stratton and her late husband, Howard, who both didn't drink, smoke or cuss, raised seven kids here. Their home was a 1912 log cabin with a wood-burning stove near the original shed-sized 1878 dwelling. They cut timber for nearby Butte's mines and even prospected for gold. Right through last year, Vadis used a wringer washer. It all made for a 19th Century homestead working until the present day. Chester Arthur was president when the government invited covered-wagon pioneers like the Strattons' ancestors to settle the summits and valleys on the Continental Divide. Now the government has ordered the Strattons to leave, evicting the last of the frontier families that had populated this mountain and its namesake hamlet of Highland City, a nearly vanished ghost town founded in the 1860s gold rush. After winning a court ruling in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service declared 81-year-old Vadis Stratton and her son David, 42, illegal squatters in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and forced the matriarch in August to move into a senior citizen home in Butte, an hour's drive away....
Blown-down trees windfall for streams Wind, fire, floods . . . the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife finds a silver lining in everything nature can throw at the state. Especially trees. The agency, with help from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State Parks and a $28,750 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, is collecting as many 20-inch (diameter) trees as possible from a veritable forest that blew down along the central Oregon Coast during December windstorms. Downed trees 40 to 50 feet long are destined to be placed in several streams to provide rearing habitat for small salmon and steelhead, capture gravel and create side channels for both juvenile and adult fish. Four log-truckloads of conifer logs have been collected so far, and as many as 10 more might be collected from the December windfall. Jason Kirchner, a department fish habitat biologist, said he has planned seven to 10 projects next summer to improve 12 to 15 miles of streams. He'll use 10 to 200 logs per project....
Blackfeet claim entitlement to 'substantial allocation' of water Leaders of the Blackfeet Tribe told state and federal officials here that their reservation deserves much more water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers than it is getting now. The tribe is in water-rights talks with the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to determine how much water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers, along with other drainages, will be allocated to the tribe - and how much will be left over for other users. A public negotiation session was held Dec. 20 in Great Falls. Water from the two rivers, which form in the mountains west of the reservation and flow through it, currently is being diverted to thousands of farmers and residents along the Montana Hi-Line. Tribal officials aren't proposing to stop the distribution. But they argue they deserve more - what one called a ''substantial allocation'' - than they're getting. ''It's our water,'' Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person said. The outcome of the negotiations will affect thousands of residents on the reservation and those living downstream across north-central Montana....
Column - Balancing the needs of winter recreationists Utah boasts the “greatest snow on Earth” and for decades local residents and visitors have ventured into the Tony Grove/Franklin Basin area to ski, snowmobile and simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and mountains that Logan Canyon has to offer. Over time, conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists have developed. Ultimately, a fair distribution of recreation experiences within a limited area means both sides have to give a little. The issues are not about acres. You'll read many articles on who has the most acres available to use and what is fair and what isn't. But that's misleading. Not every acre is equal. Instead, the issues center on quality of snow, family tradition, available terrain, existing parking, proximity to the community of Logan, and the list goes on. The Tony Grove/Franklin Basin has it all; it's the hotspot, the gem for winter recreation. The conflict has a long history. Local newspaper articles describing the issues date back to 1975. The Forest Service responded to these growing conflicts and concerns in the Logan Ranger District in the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and its accompanying environmental impact statement. Still the conflict continued....
Editorial - BLM's landscape system is in danger Three weeks after he took office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stopped the worst parts of a proposed overhaul of national parks management policies. Now he needs to do the same with a proposed overhaul of the Bureau of Land Management, announced to employees Nov. 30. The BLM manages three times as much public land as the National Park Service. The resignation of BLM Director Kathleen Clarke last Thursday gives Kempthorne the opportunity to show that the BLM remains committed to its conservation mission. The BLM is the steward of many of the great landscapes of the American West. In particular, the lands and waters of the National Landscape Conservation System have been called "hidden treasures of the American West." They include national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas (and wilderness study areas), historic trails and wild and scenic rivers. These great Western landscapes are the sister system to our national parks, but more rugged. They are highly visited. The proposed reorganization would dump a variety of unrelated programs into the National Landscape Conservation System, thus diluting resources that would be devoted to managing the system, which is already strained for resources. Worse, this latest reorganization plan was hatched in secret with no public review and no congressional oversight. No details have been publicly released, although recommendations were presented to employees Nov. 30 by live satellite broadcast. U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and 25 other House members called in a Dec. 20 letter for the BLM to halt the proposed reorganization until Congress examines the implications for the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System....
Eagle suit could affect Big Chino pumping A lawsuit that is expected to be filed within the next few weeks will, if successful, make things a bit more challenging for the Prescott area communities to pump the Big Chino aquifer. On Nov. 2 the Arizona-based environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove all bald eagles from the endangered species list. The CBD contends in its notice that the Arizona born and raised desert nesting bald eagle is a separate and distinct species that, unlike it relatives to the north, has not recovered and requires continued protection...Of the 47 known breeding sites in Arizona, more than one third of them are on the Verde River. Several are located in the upper reaches of the Verde River, along a stretch of riparian habitat that critics contend will be most impacted by plans to pump the Big Chino. The US Geological Survey has determined that approximately 80 percent of the flow of the upper reaches of the Verde River comes from the Big Chino aquifer. Under the protection of the endangered species act, it is against the law to degrade the habitat of a listed species without the consultation and approval of the federal government first....
Endangered Idaho Snail Losing Habitat After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler spied some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announced, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs 70 miles southeast of Boise. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. The level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping....
NYT Editorial - Environmental Harmony The long history of Congressional bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues dating back to Richard Nixon has been seriously challenged only twice. The first time was in 1995, when the Gingrich Republicans swept into Washington determined to roll back environmental laws, a threat averted by President Bill Clinton’s veto pen and the exertions of a group of moderate Republicans. The second challenge occurred during the Congress that has now thankfully drawn to a close. The Democrats’ return to power in both houses has raised hopes that some of the old cooperative spirit can be restored and progress made on vital matters like global warming, oil dependency, national parks and threatened wetlands. Environmentalists in the House will certainly have more time to work on positive legislation, since they will no longer have to play defense against Richard Pombo, the California Republican who produced a stream of destructive schemes to open up protected public lands for commercial exploitation, rescind a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling and undermine the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Pombo has been ushered into well-deserved retirement by California voters. On the Senate side, there have been striking changes in leadership. Barbara Boxer, who cares about global warming, replaces James Inhofe, who doesn’t, as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeff Bingaman, who emphasizes conservation as the appropriate response to oil dependency, replaces Pete Domenici, who tends to favor greater production of America’s dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he’ll need Mr. Domenici’s help, Mr. Bingaman will almost certainly make a major push for new energy legislation, based on proposals that already have broad bipartisan support and would offer a menu of loans, direct subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars as well as alternatives to gasoline....
Studies: Lynx habitat may be at risk Some conservationists believe development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain, as currently designed, will destroy potential lynx habitat and areas the animals might travel through. Colorado Wild conservationists based in Durango and others evaluated the Ginn Co.'s development south of Minturn and submitted their findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency is conducting an environmental study of the development and what may have to be done to lessen the effect on wildlife. Ginn Co. officials hope to build 1,700 homes, a golf course and 1,100 acres of ski terrain on and around Battle Mountain. Whether lynx roam Battle Mountain is debatable. The Ginn Co. found no traces of lynx in the area, although the Colorado Division of Wildlife has tracked lynx moving across the property....
In California, wild pigs hunted in defense of nature Save the flowers. Save the birds. Kill the pigs. This was Ted Champagne's mission deep in a maze of tule-covered islands and twisting sloughs where he steered his shallow hunting boat and waited for his Catahoula hounds to catch a whiff of wild pigs. The dogs, Butch and Porter, held their bodies taut and sniffed furiously. Champagne kept his 12-gauge shotgun close. He kept his 10-inch-long knife closer, strapped to his side and ready for use in case he found a pig in thick grass and reeds where it could be hard to tell if he was shooting a pig or his dogs. "Once the dogs smell something and jump out of the boat, things move fast," Champagne said. "You want to get in and finish it fast." Champagne is no ordinary hunter in this big marsh, but rather a guardian of endangered flowers and plants. He hunts to protect nature. Champagne volunteers his hunting services for a conservation group, the Solano Land Trust, one of a growing number of California public and nonprofit landowners who kill wild pigs to prevent them from damaging or killing native plants and wildlife....
Why voters rejected Santa Clara County open space measure It is one of the most vexing questions about last month's elections in Silicon Valley. Urban and suburban voters outnumber rural voters by a 15-1 ratio in Santa Clara County. The region has far more registered Democrats than Republicans, and a steady track record of supporting environmental issues. Yet those voters rejected Measure A, an initiative backed by every major local environmental group and many prominent Democratic politicians that would have placed landmark restrictions on development on hillsides and ranch lands. How? A Mercury News computer mapping analysis of all 1,244 precincts in Santa Clara County provides clues. As expected, Measure A won biggest in Palo Alto and Mountain View -- urban areas with lots of liberal voters and environmentalists. It lost biggest in Gilroy and Morgan Hill -- rural areas with more conservative voters, farmers and private-property-rights advocates. But a color-coded county map of the precinct results shows that the race was decided along the Highway 85 corridor....
Column - The Risks of Too Much City The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats....
Berry: Corporate economy is enemy For more than 40 years, author and poet Wendell Berry has advocated for local agriculture, good land stewardship and less corporate control of economies. He's walked the talk on his Kentucky farm 50 miles east of Louisville, plowing his fields with horse teams, producing most of his family's food and writing prolifically, without a computer, on a changing American culture. He believes now, more than ever, that conservationists and local land users such as farmers and loggers need to come together. "The split between people who produce from the land, like ranchers, and conservationists has been a tragic loss and a tragic waste of time," Berry said recently from his Kentucky farm. "The two sides have a common enemy they should recognize. The global corporate economy is the enemy." Berry, 72, will be a special speaker at the Quivira Coalition conference at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 in Albuquerque. He said he supports the coalition's efforts to bridge the gap between agriculture, land managers and environmentalists....
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply...This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading. Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before. The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out....
Cows Engineered to Lack Mad Cow Disease Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease. An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said. Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The surviving cows are now being injected directly with mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to make certain the cattle are immune to it....
It's All Trew: Resourcefulness, greed make for salty brew The transformation from open-range to farming settlements brewed up some strange happenings in the Texas Panhandle. Add a mixture of nationalities, stir in every vocation you can think of then add a generous helping of man's natural greed - and the resulting brew sometimes became explosive. This was especially true in areas where the railroads chose to build. In 1876, the new State of Texas was financially broke but rich in land. The quickest way to turn land into money was by selling it. The fastest way to accomplish such sales was to build a railroad into virgin territory and open it for settlement. To encourage the building of railroads, the state offered to give 16 sections of land, or 10,240 acres, for each mile of new track laid. The railroad companies built the track, took the land, waited for the price to rise then sold it for money to build more track. Occasionally, a choice site on a side-track was created and private railroad investors took over, establishing a town and began selling lots and business opportunities to the public, creating big profits for the stockholders. The town of Salisbury, in what would become Hall County, was one of those choice sites....