Monday, August 07, 2006

NEWS ROUNDUP


Oregon ranchers, water trust strike deal for fish
A deal between local ranchers and the Oregon Water Trust will mean more water for Spring chinook and summer steelhead in the Middle Fork John Day River. Pat and Hedy Voigt are third-generation ranchers on the Middle Fork John Day River. They own the Austin Ranch, for which this project was named. The river winds through the property and provides habitat for waterfowl and is a critical spawning ground for spring chinook. The Voigts use water from the Middle Fork and surrounding streams to irrigate 640 acres for cattle. The Voigts and the trust made a deal that shortens the Voigt's irrigation season and keeps water in the Middle Fork for fish. The trust paid the Voights an undisclosed sum to stop irrigating on July 20 each year in perpetuity....
Legislative Victory for Land Conservation New land conservation tax benefits for family farmers and ranchers are included in just-passed pension reform legislation, now awaiting the President's signature. The new law will combine an adjusted tax incentive for land conservation with common sense reforms to ensure the public benefit of conservation donations. "This law will help landowners and land trusts protect important lands across America," said Land Trust Alliance President Rand Wentworth. "We want to thank Senators Charles Grassley, Max Baucus and Rick Santorum, who all worked hard to get this through, House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, and the many other leaders who helped make this happen." The new law extends the carry-forward period for tax deductions for voluntary conservation agreements from 5 to 15 years and raises the cap on those deductions from 30 percent of a donor's adjusted gross income to 50 percent -- and to 100 percent for qualifying farmers and ranchers. This allows ranchers, farmers and other modest-income landowners to get a much larger benefit for donating very valuable development rights to their land....
Enviros await Thursday's lease auction Atop an unnamed ridge on the western fringe of the White River National Forest, the twin peaks of Mount Sopris rose to the east, knobby Haystack Mountain to the west. Two national forests, two river valleys and three counties come together here. It's a critical juncture, environmentalists say -- a crossroads for wildlife that joins isolated valleys on this treeless crest. The aspen grove below may be the largest in the country, they say; the spruce and fir make up the White River National Forest's largest old-growth stand. It's a place where energy companies are considering drilling, and where environmentalists hope to block them....
Column: Nighttime limits on anglers may be grizzly mistake Here we go again. To make the Russian River safe for people, federal officials have decided to give it to the grizzly bears. Well, only at night, they say, as if the bears all had clocks. I understand the thinking. If we give the bears the evening hours alone to feed, they'll eat all those salmon carcasses and then go sleep the day away, safely removed from thousands of anglers. Unless, of course, one of the bears who now considers the river home gets a Cheetos craving and decides to go looking for backpacks with tasty treats inside, as happened last week. Or someone's 8-year-old has to make a potty trip into the bushes and steps on the bear. No good can come of this. The last time one of these nighttime closures was imposed was the summer of 2003 after a bear passing through the area grabbed then-25-year-old Daniel Bigley by the face and nearly killed him....
Motor vehicle fans drawing line in the sand around Little Belts Motor vehicle enthusiasts across Montana are revving up efforts to retain the roads and trails on public lands that they've used for years. Those who ride motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and other machines worry that new National Forest travel plans could shut them out of large chunks of the state's forests. They're drawing a line in the sand. And, for now, that line is in the Little Belt Mountains, putting the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the hot seat. "There is no question we are being closed out. If we don't stand up and say 'whoa,' they will shut us out of everything," said Bruce Butler, state representative for the National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation Council....
Burning for information For Jack de Golia, the idea of issuing updates on wildfires by fax seems almost quaint. These days, the Forest Service spokesman prefers using the Web to post maps, fact sheets and anything else he thinks will help explain - as quickly and as often as possible - what a wildfire is doing and how firefighters are responding. "There's been an evolution of information, and you have to keep up," said de Golia, who, from assignments in Montana and Wyoming this summer, has posted frequently to a new, experimental government fire information Web site, www.inciweb.org. "There's a need for people to have ready access to information on fires," he added. "I think it's important, when people are very frightened or concerned, that they have as much information on an event as they need to make decisions. "Once they hear there's a Web site, our phones stop ringing." The demands of today's information-now culture are changing how news about wildfires spreads....
Bend-area fire managers ponder let-it-burn strategy Lightning sparked the Black Crater Fire that spread across more than 9,000 acres this summer, forcing evacuations and threatening houses west of Sisters. But if lightning ignites a fire next summer on a specific parcel of land in Central Oregon, fire managers might let it burn. The U.S. Forest Service’s Deschutes National Forest and the Prineville District of the Bureau of Land Management are developing a wildland fire-use plan that would allow blazes to burn in specific areas east of Bend, saying it could help the ecosystem. Agency staff are now working with landowners to identify which areas within a 400,000-acre parcel of land, on the east side of the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District and west of Glass Buttes, that need to be protected. They are also mapping out areas where the fires could be used to naturally thin trees and bring more diversity to a landscape, as burns have done historically. “We know that all of our ecosystems, forest ecosystems from the shrubs clear up to the top of the Cascades, they’re fire-dependent ecosystems,’’ said Leslie Weldon, Deschutes forest supervisor....
Village would cut off wildlife, critics say Flying over the pass that connects Southwest Colorado to points east, the mountains seem to go on forever, their green expanse interrupted only by U.S. Highway 160 and Forest Service roads. This meadow, site of the proposed Village at Wolf Creek, and Alberta Park Reservoir are seen Friday during a flight over the area with the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project. "Let’s talk about traffic, wetlands and fens - how to make the development the least bad." But the pass, at 10,800 feet, is under stress, according to an environmental group. It is the wildlife link between the Weminuche and the South San Juan wilderness areas. "The (proposed) Village at Wolf Creek sits right in the middle of the wildlife corridor," Monique DiGiorgio, of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, said Friday during an aerial inspection for the news media. "We're trying to restore fragmented areas to help wildlife." Wolf Creek Pass, one of 12 areas statewide surveyed by DiGiorgio's group, is the most important corridor for Canada lynx, which are being reintroduced into the national forest near Creede by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. At least one-third of the radio collar-bearing lynx cross Highway 160, she said. But the Village at Wolf Creek, sitting just east of the Continental Divide on 288 acres, threatens to bring year-round habitation by humans and enormous increases in traffic that would effectively destroy habitat for the lynx and other wildlife, Village critics say. The Village could contain as many as 2,000 individual living units, a hotel and commercial zones....
Endangered cacti threatening off-road terrain For off-roaders, few places are as good as the badlands around Factory Butte, where the terrain seems perfectly suited for a knobby rubber tire. "If ever there was a place God created for off-road recreation, Factory Butte is it," said Michael Swenson, executive director of the Utah Shared Access Alliance. This Wild West of off-road travel may not last long, however. The Bureau of Land Management is moving to impose regulations as early as September, the start of riding season, on some of the baddest of the West's badlands, about 180 miles south of Salt Lake City. The decision chips away at Utah's standing as one of the last Western states where BLM lands are still largely open to cross-country travel. "Times have changed," Cornell Christensen, a bureau field manager, who has been watching all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes crawl over the nearly 200,000-acre Factory Butte district like an army of ants. "We've had open areas for so long, people can just go and go." It wasn't noise, traffic, ruts or erosion that forced BLM, after years of pressure from conservation groups, to take a hard look at drawing boundaries here on off-road travel. Instead, it's two little-known, delicate species of cacti classified years ago as threatened or endangered and only recently discovered around Factory Butte....
BLM making big bucks on leases Not too long ago, the Bureau of Land Management was lucky to get $10 an acre at its Utah lease auctions. Today, against a backdrop of skyrocketing energy prices and the push to drill for more oil and natural gas, those same lands are capturing 10 times more money on average, with some bids commanding as much as $3,000 an acre. In May, the federal agency's Salt Lake City office raised $54.1 million in its quarterly land-lease auction, a more than 300 percent increase from $13.5 million raised during the same quarter in 2005 and nearly 450 percent more than $10 million raised in second quarter 2004. But the rush to develop new energy in Utah is bringing controversy as proposed leases encroach on some of Utah's most scenic landscapes....
Palisade May Accept Offer To Sue BLM Over Drilling Officials in the agricultural community of Palisade, Colorado, said they may go to court to block government oil and gas leases in the city's watershed. Mayor Doug Edwards said several lawyers have offered free representation if the city decides to battle the Bureau of Land Management's ruling. The BLM is approving drilling in the watersheds of Palisades and neighboring Grand Junction on Colorado's Western Slope. The government is suspending the leases to Genesis Gas and Oil for a year, urging the cities and the Kansas City, Missouri, company to work out a compromise. Mayor Edwards said he will meet with residents, Grand Junction officials and state and local leaders before accepting legal representation. A city statement said protecting the area's drinking water is the number one priority....
Will court's ruling slow oil, gas lease? The Bureau of Land Management is uncertain whether a court ruling this week will affect an oil- and gas-lease sale that the agency has scheduled for Aug. 15. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball said that the BLM in Utah violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not considering new information about the wilderness values and characteristics of 16 lease tracts offered in a February 2005 sale. The tracts were not in wilderness areas, and the state and the Department of Interior had agreed in April 2003 that there would be no further BLM wilderness designations in Utah. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Natural Resources Defense Council and The Wilderness Society. Those groups celebrated Kimball's ruling. "This decision is reverberating loudly throughout the West because in Colorado and other states, the BLM also has controversially sold off land that the agency itself had acknowledged was wilderness quality," said Suzanne Jones, director of The Wilderness Society's Four Corners Office in Denver. But Adrienne Babbitt, public-affairs officer for the BLM's state headquarters in Salt Lake City, said Thursday that the agency was considering what recourse it has after the ruling. "We've been reviewing the decision with our solicitors and determining what steps we will take," she said. "We cannot say at this time if this is going to affect the August sale or not."....
Editorial - Sound judgment: BLM must follow law on selling drilling leases The Bureau of Land Management ignored its own research and new information about wilderness-quality lands when it sold 16 leases for oil and gas development on some of Utah's most spectacular public lands. In short, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled emphatically this week, the BLM acted illegally. He rightly remanded the leases and reversed the BLM's decision, ordering the agency to fully comply with federal environmental laws that protect places valued for their archaeology, naturalness and opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation. The judge's decision will immediately stop energy companies from bulldozing roads and erecting noisy and unsightly rigs where such things would destroy the natural beauty of the 16 parcels addressed in the lawsuit. But the decision should have more far-reaching consequences. The unequivocal and uncompromising tone of the 32-page ruling should put the brakes on the BLM's headlong rush to allow drilling on Americans' public lands with little regard for the threat, not only to the pristine nature of the land but also to invaluable watersheds and the industries of tourism, hunting, fishing and non-motorized recreation....
Ensign, Reid introduce White Pine lands bill Nevada senators have formed a new bill that reshapes the federal government's land holdings in White Pine County, declaring a half million acres of protected wilderness while freeing other land for development and multiple uses. The bill, introduced late Tuesday by Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., is patterned after successful land management bills that Congress approved in recent years for Clark County and Lincoln County. The broad measure would declare 13 new wilderness areas in White Pine County, while expanding two other protected areas set aside in 1989. It would shield certain lands adjacent to Great Basin National Park from most uses, add property to two state parks, convey 1,500 acres for expansion of the Ely airport, and enlarge the county's industrial park. At the same time, the measure would make up to 45,000 acres of land in White Pine County available for controlled development through auction by the Bureau of Land Management, while removing 68,000 acres from wilderness study and made available for multiple uses. Profits from the land auctions would be divided, with 5 percent going to the Nevada education fund, 10 percent for White Pine law enforcement, fire protection and transportation planning, and 85 percent for further wilderness protection in the county....
Senate opposes military hunting plan on Southern California island
The Senate is opposing a House Republican's plan to allow military veterans to hunt nonnative game on an island that is part of a Southern California national park. Senators passed a resolution against the plan by voice vote late Thursday before leaving for their August recess. Private trophy hunts now run on 53,000-acre Santa Rosa Island, part of Channel Islands National Park, are supposed to end in 2011. A federal court settlement over the government's purchase of the island 40 miles off Santa Barbara requires the herds of deer and elk to be removed by that year. Legislation by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., would overturn the settlement and keep the game on the island indefinitely. The National Park Service opposes the plan, saying the hunts restrict public access and interfere with native species....
A chuckwagon adventure offers an Old West dinner, on the range Yellowstone Style Wildlife and geysers get all the attention at the world's first national park, but there is also a human element with a long history at this tri-state wonderland. American Indians known as Sheepeaters eked out a living in what would become Yellowstone more than two centuries ago, and mountain men wandered the park in wonder, much like today's tourists, not long after. But for many current Yellowstone visitors, particularly those who do not live on the left-hand side of the nation, the park epitomizes the lore of the historic West. It is little surprise, then, that one of the most popular, if not the most popular, paying activities at Yellowstone National Park involves cowboys, horses, campfires and beans. Welcome to the Old West dinner cookout held from early June to Labor Day at Roosevelt Lodge in the north-central part of the park and offered by Yellowstone concessionaire Xanterra Parks & Resorts....
Park Service worker may have exploited 11-year-old Prosecutors said yesterday they are probing whether a former National Park Service supervisor already accused of raping and pimping out a teen-age girl from Port Richmond also sexually exploited an 11-year-old girl. "I'm confident that something was in the making," Assistant District Attorney Wanda DeOliveira alleged at Angel Nazario's bail hearing in state Supreme Court, St. George. Nazario, 60, is accused of raping the teen, then 13, in his apartment in Fort Wadsworth more than 90 times over the course of nearly two years. The incidents began in September 2004 and ended in June 2006, prosecutors said. He also allegedly arranged for at least 10 different men to have oral sex with her on separate occasions at the Victory Motor Inn, a Willowbrook motel, and the Swan Motel in Linden, N.J....
Woodpecker mapping gets chain saws buzzing The sharp chirps of the endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and the whine of chain saws sound discordantly in this coastal community of old pine forests. Since word got around this spring that owners could face problems selling land or building houses where the birds lived, people have been rushing to clear undeveloped lots of pine trees and yanking the woodpecker welcome mat. More than anywhere else in North Carolina, Boiling Spring Lakes is a place where the coastal development boom and the federal Endangered Species Act have collided. "People are just afraid a bird might fly in and make a nest and their property is worth nothing," said Joan Kinney, mayor of Boiling Spring Lakes in Brunswick County. "It is causing a tremendous amount of clear-cutting."....
Enviros in green lawsuits In recent years, the environmental activist community in the U.S. has developed and perfected a very productive tactic of suing the federal government and settling their claims for substantial attorneys' fees and litigation costs. Nowhere has this been more successful than the recent settlement of the Washington Toxics Coalition vs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This complaint filed in January 2001 in Washington state charged that EPA had not complied with provisions of the Endangered Species Act by failing to carry out consultations with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Services. Such consultations are triggered whenever a federal government entity like the EPA undertakes a "final action." In this case, the court found EPA had not fully consulted when registering certain pesticides and decided in favor of the plaintiffs. Then, matters get interesting. After other legal issues were dispensed with, the WTC played their trump card... they filed for an award of the costs of litigation and attorneys' fees, in the amount of -- get this -- $728,142.16. As an intervenor in this case, I can attest that our legal fees for this action aren't anywhere close to this amount. Amazingly, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to settle with WTC in the amount of $625,602.40, roughly 86 percent of the amount claimed, well above the average award percentage. The full amount of $625,600 and change was sent by electronic transfer to Earthjustice, an environmental activist group based in Seattle. Obviously, these monies used to settle the claim came from the U.S. Treasury, provided from tax dollars from you and me. Of course, we had no voice in the award decision....
Major Alaskan Oil Field Shutting Down In a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line. BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel. Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take days, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The shutdown comes at an already worrisome time for the oil industry, with supply concerns stemming both from the hurricane season and instability in the Middle East....
‘Dead Zone’ Reappears Off the Oregon Coast
For the fifth year in a row, unusual wind patterns off the coast of Oregon have produced a large “dead zone,” an area so low in oxygen that fish and crabs suffocate. This dead zone is unlike those in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, which result from fertilizer, sewage or runoff from hog or poultry operations carried by rivers. The Oregon zone appears when the wind generates strong currents carrying nutrient-rich but oxygen-poor water from the deep sea to the surface near shore, a process called upwelling. The nutrients encourage the growth of plankton, which eventually dies and falls to the ocean floor. Bacteria there consume the plankton, using up oxygen. Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University, said the phenomenon did not appear to be linked to recurring El Niño or La Niña currents or to long-term cycles of ocean movements. That made Dr. Lubchenco wonder if climate change might be a factor, she said, adding, “There is no other cause, as far as we can determine.” The dead zone, which appears in late spring and lasts a matter of weeks, has quadrupled in size since it first appeared in 2002 and this year covers about 1,235 square miles, an area about as large as Rhode Island, Dr. Lubchenco said....
Angler speared by a giant fish When he saw a companion on his boat hook a giant fish during a sea angling contest, Ian Card was delighted. Next second, the scene of triumph turned to horror - as the 14ft blue marlin leapt out of the water across the vessel and speared Mr Card through the chest with its spiked bill. The impact of the 800lb fish knocked him overboard into the Atlantic off Bermuda. Then, with a thrash of its tail and with the 32-year-old still impaled and bleeding profusely, it dragged him underwater. Terribly injured, he somehow stayed conscious as he struggled to pull himself free of the marlin's 3ft razor-sharp spike before he drowned. Finally, he wrenched himself away and was rescued by his companions on the boat - who included his 58-year-old father Alan....
Selling their livelihood Herman Schumacher, owner and operator of Herried Livestock Market, can't escape the heartbreak as cattlemen unload trailer after trailer of cattle to be sold at auction. "I tell people to put on their grimmest face and watch these people having to sell all their cattle. They're selling their livelihood," said Schumacher, "We knew there was a problem with the drought back in May when people started selling off a lot of their cow-calf pairs." This summer he has seen cattle sales rise 90 percent. Closer to home, Dennis Hanson of the Ft. Pierre Livestock Auction stated that he normally has a couple hundred cows at his weekly auctions, but this summer he has seen up to 4,000 cows come through the auction weekly. Because of the severity of this drought, and because it comes just four years after the drought of 2002, Gov. Mike Rounds recently requested that the head of the U.S. Treasury consider granting a two-year extension to the time period for purchasing replacement livestock. Currently a four-year deferment is allowed for claiming revenue from cattle sold in 2002. And with that deferment, revenue claimed from cattle sold in 2002 would need to be claimed this year....
Get along, buckeye dogies
The Dickinson Cattle Co. ranch just off I-70 in Belmont County bears a striking resemblance to certain parts of Texas. The ranch — with rolling hills, scrubby meadows and, not least, hundreds of longhorn cattle — is almost a double for the Texas hill country just west of Austin. Don’t brag about it in the Lone Star State (unless you’re itchin’ for a fight), but some of the world’s most impressive Texas longhorn cattle are actually from the Buckeye State. Dickinson Cattle is one of the world’s leading suppliers of high-quality registered Texas longhorns. "We tell people we’re the major exporter of Texas longhorns — to Texas," said Darol Dickinson, who, with his wife and adult children, owns and runs the operation....
From Maley to Willcox It is said that when cattlemen first arrived in the Sulphur Springs Valley — “Sufferin’ Springs” to local wags — in the 1870s, the lush grasses were hip high. It was considered by many to be the finest cattle country in the West. But by the turn of the century, drought conditions and overgrazing rendered the valley a bleak desert. Nevertheless, the cattlemen stayed on, and by the mid 1930s, upwards of 50,000 heads of cattle were shipped annually from Willcox. On July 30, 1880, the Arizona Daily Star reported that the “next terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad will be called Sulphur Valley, 39.9 miles from Benson, and will be open to business some time next month.” Three weeks later, a follow-up report announced that “a new city is started 40 miles east of Benson which is to be called Maley. In a few days they will have a post office.” In fact, for a brief time the town was called Maley, in recognition of an early rancher. But when the first locomotive roared across the newly laid track, Gen. Orlando B. Willcox, commander of the Department of Arizona, was onboard. He so charmed the handful of early Maley residents that the town’s name was immediately changed to Willcox....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Llamas lead to unexpected lessons Tom never intended to become a llama raiser. Otherwise he'd have built higher fences. They were a gift - like someone leaving a box of kittens on your porch while yer out. First thing the two llamas did was to determine the boundaries of Tom's small Wisconsin farm. Turns out the west boundary was down the road, around the corner and up the valley on the other side of the neighbor's place! Tom was a cowboy at heart and had bought a used rope at the feed store. It came with lessons from a 6-year-old girl who kept shouting "Jerk yer slack!" every time he roped a post. For reasons known only to himself, Tom decided to rope his llamas and lead them into the pen. He convinced his daughter to haze the young stud llama down the fence as he raced alongside afoot swinging his loop. The third try was magic!....

Sunday, August 06, 2006

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Uh huh, sure he did. I believe you.

By Julie Carter

I offer a caveat for the following story by saying "as it was told to me" simply because, while the source is quite reliable, the story itself is so wild your first instinct will be "that's a lie."

This is one of those "you gotta hear this one" stories.

Greg and Nancy headed out, stock trailer in tow, to get a neighbor's pink-eyed yearling (that's a young calf with a bacterial eye affliction that can eventually cause blindness) out of their pasture.

They didn't have a real plan of any kind but they also didn't take a horse. The calf was so blind they figured they could sneak up on him and "coax" him into the trailer.

The neighbor the critter belonged to didn't know how to rope and Greg was still nursing his $27,000 and counting shoulder surgery. So Nancy was the designated roper.

Her plan was a simple one. Just rope the calf and let the rope go. No problem.

She eased up on him and surprisingly, even to her, caught him with the first loop. He was blind enough he didn't go very far; at least until the young overly-enthusiastic neighbor ran to pick up the rope and spooked the calf.

The blind calf, now wearing Nancy's rope and towing the neighbor, ran off with the rest of the cows to the other end of the pasture. Reaching warp speed rather quickly, the neighbor finally had to turn loose of the rope.

The calf, still on the run, made a big circle through the cows. Running and stumbling, he was more afraid of the rope than anything else. It was a monster he couldn't see but knew it was following him.

The calf appeared to be headed home to his proper pasture but then he circled and headed back toward the cowboy crew standing at the trailer watching all this unfold.

Nancy made what at the time seemed like a smart-alecky comment, "Let's just open the trailer gate and maybe he'll load up on his own. He looks like he's heading right for it."

Still in joking mode, she moved to the end of the trailer and unlatched the trailer gate. The calf was still coming and at a pretty fast clip. She threw the gate back just in time for the calf to jump into the trailer.

They were all laughing very hard at that point. Nancy began claiming "Top Hand" honors when they realized someone probably ought to close the trailer gate.

That done, they were still in shock at the sight they had witnessed and were glad there were three of them to attest to it. Of course, then the discussion of where the credit was due began. Greg was sure he should have all the honors because he positioned the trailer just right on the road.

The neighbor claimed accolades for running the calf fast enough and far enough for him to circle back to the trailer and get in it with considerable momentum.

This exciting adventure took about half an hour and nobody had to unsaddle horses when they got home. It seems like if a day was going that well, they should have gone on to town and bought up some lottery tickets.

Telling that story to some poor west Texas winter wheat pasture puncher who is wearing an entire dry goods store on his back could elicit a violent reaction.

It's been my experience that any complaining done about the difficulty of loading sick cattle in a trailer brought, not ever, the highly unlikely moment of a critter loading by himself.

It did get me a new trailer ball welded to the top rail of the trailer to dally a rope around for leverage.

Not everybody can be a "top hand." I'm glad I at least know a few.

© Julie Carter 2006


Farewell to Summer

I am especially looking forward to this year's State Fair and Labor Day celebration, because that is how we say farewell to summer in South Dakota.

I am tired of drought, wildfires and triple digit temperatures. Those are important (critical in some cases) events we must deal with. However, we don't have to live them every single day. It's time for a break.

If the ag economy is a little pinched this year, the State Fair (Aug. 31st – Sept. 4th) is the perfect place to take that break with the family, meet some old and new friends and check out the best agricultural products the state produces.

Fairs are many different things to many different people. For some, it is the last family camping trip of the season. For some, it is an annual binge on carnival rides. For some, it is serious 4-H or FFA or open class competition. For others, it is a chance to show "agriculture and farming" to their children raised in a city. For some, it is the almost non-stop stream of entertainment, crowds and foods.

Some people come each year just for their favorite event or specialty food. I don't know if I would drive a hundred miles for a "smoothie", but I would for some those hot-off-the-grill BBQ meats sold at the fair each year.

In addition to all the usual attractions and events, we are going to kick the fair off with nationally televised bull riding championships on Aug. 30th, followed by three nights of professional entertainment and ending with Labor Day auto races Monday evening.

Whatever the attraction might be for you, we hope it will provide you with a break from the troubles and toils of this drought dominated summer.

They say Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894 when President Grover Cleveland signed it into law to appease the labor forces and workers he had offended. If that's true, it didn't work. They voted him out.

The official web page for the United States Department of Labor says nobody knows for sure who first proposed the idea of a national holiday for workers, but it was first "celebrated" by strikers on parade in New York City on the first Tuesday in September. Before Congress acted in 1894, 23 states made Labor Day a legal holiday for workers.

In any case, most seem to agree that Labor Day has become a celebration of the unofficial end to summer. What better way to celebrate Labor Day than to provide a break for the farmers and ranchers who work 15 hours (or more) a day during the summer to provide America with the food and fiber we need?

We will survive this drought, the wildfires and anything else that needs surviving, and during the next "little ice age" that inevitably follows spells of global warming, future fairgoers will meet and debate whether Labor Day is just too cold for a good State Fair.

Won't that be fun?
OPINION/COMMENTARY

Senate Takes Baby Steps To Strengthen U.S. Energy Security

Stopping far short of a previously passed House bill, the U.S. Senate voted 71-25 this week to direct the Interior Department to begin selling leases for oil and gas development in 8.3 million acres of the east-central Gulf of Mexico - about 100 miles from the nearest land and 125 to 310 miles from Florida beaches. According to an energy policy expert with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), prospects are dim for a more extensive effort at allowing increased domestic energy production. "The Senate's effort is better than nothing, but not by much," said NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett. "This is best described as a stumbling baby step towards decreasing U.S. reliance on foreign oil and gas." According to reports, any bill that goes beyond the 8.3 million acres would run into a filibuster in the Senate, requiring an unlikely 60 votes to overcome. Senate Democrats say they will block any attempt by the House to widen the bill's scope to include some 350 million acres on the Outer Continental Shelf previously passed by the House that are not addressed in the Senate bill. Lease Sale 181 off Florida collectively holds about 1.26 billion barrels of oil and 5.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. However, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) has estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf contains more than 85 billion barrels of oil, quadruple current U.S. reserves and more than 419 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Of these reserves, between 21 and 41 billion barrels of oil and between 94 and 164 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie under the East and West Coasts, and in portions of the Gulf of Mexico where production is currently banned. According to Burnett, these moratoria were put in place due to environmental concerns. Yet technology has improved greatly since the earliest platforms were built....

Supreme Court wetland ruling a heads-up to lawmakers

Last month the United States Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision on a pair of cases involving the authority of the federal government to regulate wetlands. Some see the decision as an assault on the Clean Water Act but others regard it as a necessary check on expanding federal reach. In the June 19 split decision on Rapanos v. United States and Carabell v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, four justices voted in favor of a broad interpretation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ regulatory jurisdiction over wetland areas. Five justices explained a need to rein in the extent to which the Corps could assert its regulatory authority, but provided little additional guidance to the Corps as to what should constitute a regulated wetland. Wetlands themselves provide numerous valuable “ecosystem services.” They can act like sponges to mitigate and store flood flows, filter sediments and pollutants which might otherwise impair downstream waters, and provide habitat for a number of species. But not all wetlands are of equal value. Some wetland areas, hydrologically far removed from larger bodies of water, have a minimal effect on downstream waters. Others are small enough that their impact on larger bodies of water downstream is negligible. One might argue that the Corps should be able to regulate all of these waters but allow development on wetlands determined to be minimally influential. As Justice Scalia noted in his majority opinion, “the average applicant for an individual permit spends 788 days and $271,596 in completing the process.” The excessive expense and lost time in the evaluation, and sometimes litigation over every patch of mucky ground, is far from a trivial concern. The minority opinion, from Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg and Breyer, contended that the governments’ regulatory authority extended to “all identifiable tributaries that ultimately drain into large bodies of water.” This would have far overreached reasonable regulation....

California AG Puts Climate Skeptics on Trial

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is apparently trying to position California as a leader in the movement to silence scientific debate. The State of California has filed a request in federal court to force auto makers to disclose all documents and communications between the companies and the so-called “climate skeptics.” California accuses the climate skeptics of playing a “major role in spreading disinformation about global warming.” The underlying litigation is a lawsuit by General Motors, DaimlerChrysler Corp., and the Association of Automobile Manufacturers against the state of California challenging the state’s greenhouse gas emissions limits for new cars, light-duty trucks and sports utility vehicles (Central Valley Chrysler-Jeep Inc. v. Catherine Witherspoon, No. 04-6663). California has been joined in the lawsuit by environmental activist groups including, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense...First, California and the global warming lobby doesn’t like what the skeptics have to say and, by virtue of this sort of intimidation, is apparently out not only to silence the skeptics but to make sure that no one dare support the skeptics lest supporters be implicated as aiding and abetting thought-crimes against California-approved, politically-correct global warming science. Next, I wonder whether Attorney General Lockyer disclosed to the judge that Gelbspan is a rather dubious character – for example, he misrepresented himself as a Pulitizer Prize winner on the jacket of his book, entitled “The Heat Is On.” Gelbspan never won a Pulitzer, nor was he ever even nominated. Finally, AG Lockyer has a track record of trying to silence scientific debate. In 2001, for example, the pro-gun control Lockyer gagged California state experts who opposed Lockyer’s dubious plans for pre-sale ballistics fingerprinting. The so-called “climate skeptics” are all that stand between junk science-based global warming alarmism and higher energy prices, reduced economic growth and increased Green political power....

Eminent Domain and Other Corporate Welfare

Driving south on I-65 through Alabaster, Alabama, last week, I noticed a sprawling new shopping center on my left. Wal-Mart stood out prominently, but I also saw Belk and Old Navy stores. Ross and Pier One were there too. J.C. Penney and Target will open next year. This was of interest to me because people's homes once stood where those stores now stand. Most of the homeowners had no choice but to leave because the Alabaster city council used its power of eminent domain to seize their properties and transfer them to a shopping-center developer. (Two homeowners managed to beat the city.) In America, as elsewhere, government is the ultimate de facto owner of the land. The apparent owners use it at the government's pleasure, and sometimes -- alarmingly often these days -- the government decides it would rather have someone else use a particular parcel. The direction of transfers is predominantly from the working class to Big Business. Is it any wonder that people can't always see the connection between capitalism and freedom? As everyone knows, local governments and their development authorities may legally compel people to sell their property to make way for projects that are expected to produce greater tax revenues. This is said to serve the social good, though I thought that being able to live peacefully in our homes is one big advantage to living in a society. Funny how means can become ends, which then justify other means. My melancholy at seeing the Alabaster center was lifted somewhat by the news that the Ohio Supreme Court refused to let the city of Norwood, near Cincinnati, and its business-accomplices get away with the same kind of land grab in that state. Three homeowners in a working/middle-class neighborhood resisted the intimidating alliance of a municipal government and a well-connected land developer. After losing in lower courts the plaintiffs finally prevailed when the state Supreme Court ruled that Ohio cities may not take land strictly for economic development. The developer, Jeffrey R. Anderson Real Estate, will now have to find a consensual method of building his $125 million shopping center and office complex. But the plaintiffs are not unscathed by the ordeal. The homes they once lived in are all that are left of their former high-density neighborhood, the others having been demolished after their owners sold under duress. In fact, the plaintiffs don't own the houses anymore because the city went ahead with the transfer to the developer while the court case was pending. If the former owners and the developer can't agree on what happens next, a judge can give the properties back to the plaintiffs. No one is sure how this will actually play out....

Agenda 21 and the United Nations

Agenda 21 is a 300-page, 40-chapter, "soft-law" policy document adopted by the delegates to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The document is not legally binding; it is a set of policy recommendations designed to reorganize global society around the principles of environmental protection, social equity, and what is called "sustainable" economic development. At the heart of the concept of sustainable development, is the assumption that government must manage society to ensure that human activity conforms to these principles. The idea that government is inherently empowered to manage the affairs of society is diametrically opposed to the idea that the just power of government is derived from the consent of the governed. As these conflicting principles collide in the arena of public policy, the people who are governed are losing the ability to limit the power of government. Consequently, government power over people is expanding. Nowhere is this transformation more dramatic than in the policies governing private property rights and the use of land and its resources. Historically, the right to own and use private property in America has been considered to be a sacred right. This right is being usurped by government, which now dictates to private property owners how their land may - and may not - be used. This paradigm shift from sacred private property rights to government-managed land use, is a perfect example of how sustainable development is transforming America into a government-managed society....

Evangelical Group Offers Conservative Global Warming Perspective

An evangelical group is presenting an alternative view on global warming. Just months after another evangelical group called for Christians to help combat what it sees as the crisis of human-caused climate change and its effects, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance is casting doubt on the theory of catastrophic global warming. Recently, 86 evangelical clergy, college presidents, mission and ministry heads, and other leaders signed a document called "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action," which called on the U.S. government to pass federal legislation requiring significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming. This group argued that such changes are necessary to protect the poor from the much touted harmful effects of an "unprecedented" environmental warming trend. In response to that document, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance issued one of its own, titled "A Call to Truth, Prudence, and the Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming." In that report, the Alliance presents evidence arguing against the extent and significance -- and possibly even the existence -- of the purported "scientific consensus" on catastrophic, human-induced global warming. More than 100 scholars and religious leaders have endorsed the Alliance's report. Among these is Professor Calvin Beisner of Knox Theological Seminary, who contends that human efforts to stop global warming are largely futile and would likely do more harm that good. "Mandatory carbon emissions reductions would have almost no significant effect on global warming," Beisner says. But requiring the international community to make such changes "would be very damaging to the global economy," he asserts, "especially to the poorest of the world's poor."....

NUCLEAR POWER BACK IN FAVOR

Fossil fuel prices -- and particularly the price of natural gas, which fuels most recently-constructed power plants -- have soared in recent years, reigniting interest in nuclear power with economists, legislators, and the general public, says James Taylor, managing editor of Environment & Climate News.

In response, General Electric and Hitachi have recently announced a joint venture to build two nuclear power plants in Texas, which would be the first commissioned in the United States since 1978. The plants, scheduled to be built in Matagorda County, about 70 miles southwest of Houston, will bring economic benefits to the region:

* Construction of the plants will cost $2.6 billion each, but they will thereafter produce power for a fraction of the cost of traditional power plants.
* Officials expect the new plants will create 6,000 new construction jobs and 1,000 permanent operator jobs.

Nuclear power has also been gaining acceptance for reasons other than economic:

* New technology has made nuclear power safer than ever.
* Nuclear plants produce energy without greenhouse gas emissions.

"Quite simply, nuclear power offers the only large-scale, feasible alternative to fossil fuels," says H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. "Wind and solar power are intermittent, and solar power in particular is prohibitively expensive. It is not surprising that to the extent people buy into global warming theory, nuclear power is becoming the power source of choice."

Source: James M. Taylor "Texas Will Host First New U.S. Nuclear Plants Since 1970s," Environment and Climate News, Heartland Institute, August 1, 2006

For text:

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19473

Friday, August 04, 2006

NEWS ROUNDUP

Blast Rites James Bowe, a lifelong resident of Whitesville, W.Va., knows the mountains around his home better than he knows himself. He's seen friends and family buried there, and has devoted countless hours to protecting his loved ones' resting places and the Indian burial grounds that stand alongside them. So when Bowe pulled up on his four-wheeler in early April and spotted a coal company drilling in the middle of what he says was a known, if unnamed, cemetery on White Oak Mountain, he was livid -- and determined to stop them. Knowing how quickly surface-mining operations can scrape away any trace of a mountain's natural landscape, Bowe immediately filed a formal complaint with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. For the next three days, he waited anxiously for intervention. On the fourth day, a DEP officer arrived, but it was too late: There was nothing left of the headstones that had been there, and only a small section of border fence remained. The investigator's report said he believed "a cemetery did exist at this site," but concluded that the cemetery "was unknown to the core drilling company ... and the West Virginia DEP when this permit was issued." Bowe was, and remains, incredulous. "I don't see how the company wouldn't have known -- there was a tombstone sitting there," he said later. "You can't miss that. When you see crosses on top of something and sandstone markers, what do you usually associate that with?"....
Hunter calls it quits after wolves kill dogs Both men headed down a hill as fast as they could. Richards said he stopped in his tracks when he saw a dark colored wolf attacking his dog Blackey. “I was screaming louder than I ever screamed in my life,” said Richards, but the wolf ignored him. “Every time Blackey tried to run the wolf would sink his teeth into Blackey’s hindquarters.” Richards closed to within 12 feet and picked up a stick and struck a tree. At the sound of the broken limb, Richards said the wolf turned and lunged at him. He turned and ran to his truck. “When that wolf lunged at me I believed I would have been seriously hurt or dead if not for Blackey…what I heard was my dog giving his life to save me,” said Richards. When he reached the truck he found Bryon digging for a gun. Armed, the men returned to the scene to save their dogs. “I wanted to hear a bell dingle or a bark but nothing.” In the melee, Bryon was able to fight off three wolves and save two dogs. Equipment in hand, they found Halley alive, whose stomach had been ripped open and her entrails hanging out. She had more than 60 bite marks and deep gashes. Bryon wrapped his shirt around her stomach and they took her to the vet. She miraculously survived, recently fighting off a battle with infection. Richards said they found Blackey in a pool of blood, ripped to pieces. “He was bit and torn so full of holes I just fell to the ground bawling and crying,” said Richards....
Wildlife board nearly triples bison hunt The number of licenses to hunt bison that wander into Montana from Yellowstone National Park this winter will almost triple from last season, state wildlife commissioners decided Thursday. In June, the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission endorsed a tentative plan to authorize 100 licenses, double last season's number. On Thursday they added another 40. The increase will focus on bison cows, making the hunt more of a herd management tool "rather than just tipping them over for trophies," Commissioner Shane Colton said. Activists opposed to any hunting of Yellowstone bison said the commission's decision to boost the number of licenses simply worsens a bad idea. "If you want a public relations nightmare, I think you're moving in the right direction," said Dan Brister of the Buffalo Field Campaign. The state considers the hunt part of a plan to manage bison that migrate from Yellowstone and may carry the cattle disease brucellosis, which is present in Yellowstone's bison herds....
Owyhee Initiative Implementation Act Five years of hard work is finally paying off. On Thursday, Senator Mike Crapo introduced wide-ranging legislation that could set a standard for future public lands management. The Owyhee Initiative Implementation Act will end decades of public lands conflict in southwestern Idaho, and establish a path for future management of that area. All agencies involve believe this compromise is a win-win for everyone. "This can't be called a ranching bill, or a wilderness bill, or an Air Force bill, or a tribal bill, it's a comprehensive land management bill," said Sen. Mike Crapo, (R) Idaho. On Thursday, Crapo introduced the Owyhee Initiative Implementation Act. It's a bill that resolves decades of land-use conflict in Idaho's Owyhee Canyonlands, by agreeing on how to manage those areas. "The Owyhee Initiative transforms conflict and uncertainty into conflict resolution and assurance of future activity," said Sen. Crapo. The act would create more than half-a-million acres of protected wilderness, preserve access to an air force training range, prevent damage to prehistoric artifacts and insure that ranchers can continue their livestock operations....
Montana senator blasted after verbal attack on firefighters Sen. Conrad Burns' recent verbal attack on a firefighting team for its work on a Montana blaze angered some firefighters, drew harsh criticism in state newspapers and has left the three-term Republican scrambling to repair the political damage. Burns, one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the fall elections, confronted members of a firefighting team at the Billings airport on July 23 and told them they had done a "piss-poor job," according to an official state report and the U.S. Forest Service. Burns, a third-term lawmaker already facing questions about his ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is trying to turn back a challenge from Democrat Jon Tester. The Missoulian newspaper said in an editorial that "Burns' remarks were characteristic of the kind of know-nothing blather you sometimes hear from the local malcontent in a bar or coffee shop." The Montana Standard of Butte wrote, "The way things are going for Montana's Conrad Burns, all challenger Jon Tester may have to do is to stay quiet until November to win the hotly contested seat."....
Motorcycle enthusiasts, Native Americans clash in South Dakota When folks around here say the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally doubles the population of South Dakota, it's only a slight exaggeration. More than 500,000 bikers invade the Black Hills each August; 776,000 people live in the state. As the influx revs up this week, so does the tension that has been mounting for several years between the party-hearty biker culture and Native Americans trying to preserve their religious traditions. It came to a boil this year when Arizona entrepreneur Jay Allen started building what he proudly calls the world's biggest biker bar just two miles from Bear Butte, one of the most sacred sites of the Plains tribes. "Imagine sitting in a church or sitting in a synagogue, trying to have a ... prayer service, and you have half a million bikes running by every minute of the day and night for three weeks," said Debra White Plume, a Lakota Sioux from the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. "That's what the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally does to this environment." White Plume is one of the organizers of a monthlong prayer vigil at Bear Butte, a volcanic formation just a few miles east of Sturgis. Since July 4, several hundred Native Americans have been camped at the foot of the hill they revere as the North American equivalent of Mt. Sinai....
Settlement reached in grizzly country logging suit The federal government has agreed to evaluate the effect of helicopter logging on grizzly bears to settle a conservation group's lawsuit over a timber sale in the Selkirk Mountains, spokesmen said Thursday. If the proposed settlement is approved by U.S. District Judge Edward Shea, the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agree to avoid helicopter logging in a large portion of the Boundary Timber sale area, considered key habitat for the endangered grizzly, pending completion of that review. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed suit here July 5, seeking to stop the sale, involving 15 million board feet of timber on 1,242 acres in the Panhandle National Forests of northern Idaho and northeastern Washington state. It's been estimated that no more than 40 grizzly bears live in the Selkirks....
Performing high-altitude research on global warming Stately corpses of bristlecone pine trees, some dead for 2,000 years but still refusing to lie down, stood watch as botanist Ann Dennis and a crew of naturalists stepped off plots on the shoulders of 14,246-foot White Mountain Peak near the Nevada-California border. Working more than 10,000 feet above the sunbaked floor of the Owens Valley, the scientists were transforming one of California's highest mountaintops into a living laboratory of climate change. Dennis and her colleagues are part of a global network of mountain-climbing researchers, all using precisely the same methods to observe the impact of global warming at high altitudes on five continents simultaneously. "This is an international effort to deal with an international problem," Dennis said. High mountain environments may be uniquely suited to the globe-spanning, cookie-cutter approach. They support many of the same types of species, forced to eke out a meager existence in the most punishing conditions imaginable. And because of those difficult conditions, above-tree-line and sub-alpine environments are for the most part free of obvious human impacts that can mask evidence of global warming's impact on the ground....
Company agrees to sale of front leases Conservationists consider the deal with Startech Energy Corp. a key step in their efforts to protect the Front from new oil and gas drilling. The buyout, announced Thursday by the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front, seeks to prevent federal minerals leased by Startech from ever being offered for sale again. But for that to happen, Congress must pass legislation, still pending, that would put federal lands on the Front off-limits to new oil and gas leasing. The deal with Startech is contingent on the measure's passage, said Kel Johnston, president of Startech's parent company, Alberta Clipper Energy Inc. "I think of it as a great development," Chuck Blixrud, a coalition member with a guest ranch on the Front, said of the agreement. But he added, "I'm holding my breath now." Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The coalition said the agreement affects 23,310 acres, a portion of which -- 8,460 acres -- involves federal leases....
Senate to take up salvage logging Key Senate Republicans said Wednesday they will move to take up a House bill to speed up the logging of burned forests and planting of new trees after storms and wildfires, in hopes of moving legislation through Congress quickly. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, chairman of a Senate forestry subcommittee, said he wants a vote on the Senate floor before the end of the year. “This legislation is about more than forest fires,” Crapo said. “It is about what happens after a tornado. ... It is about what happens after hurricanes tear through vast stretches of forest land. It is about what happens after insects infest forests, threatening neighboring communities.” Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., introduced a similar bill in the Senate last fall. But Smith and Crapo say it makes more sense to press the House bill since it already has passed one chamber....
Judge rejects second effort to block Bitterroot project
For the second time in less than a month, a federal judge here has dismissed efforts by two environmental groups to halt a fuels-reduction project in the Bitterroot National Forest. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy declined to issue an emergency injunction requested by the WildWest Institute and the Friends of the Bitterroot. The decision allows the Bitterroot National Forest to accept bids for the project. Bids are due Aug. 21. The case involves the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project, Montana's first hazardous materials reduction project under the Bush administration's Healthy Forests initiative. The proposal in the Bitterroot National Forest consists of logging on about 6,000 acres. The Forest Service contends the project would help protect area homes from massive wildfires like those that swept through the Bitterroot Valley in 2000....
Endangered Canyon fish appears to be rebounding The population of an endangered fish that makes its home in the Grand Canyon area of the Colorado River may be stabilizing, according to biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey. The number of adult humpback chub between 2001 and 2005 now appears to have stabilized at about 5,000 fish, according to research by federal biologists announced Thursday. "The possible stabilization of adult fish numbers is exciting news for the recovery effort because it means that conditions exist in Grand Canyon that allow adult fish to reach reproductive age," USGS biologist Matthew Anderson said in a statement. Until recently, the chub population in the Canyon was steadily declining because adult fish were dying at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent a year, and young fish were not surviving in large enough numbers to replace them....
Casino Attempting to Save Endangered Pupfish Wildlife experts in Nevada are trying to rescue one of the world's most endangered species by breeding them in, of all places, a Las Vegas casino. For decades a fence has protected the unique habitat of one of the world's rarest animals. It's Devil's Hole, a cave near Death Valley. The water goes hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet deep. The tiny Devil's Hole Pupfish lives it's whole life there. It depends on a reliable water level; it spawns only on a small rock shelf just inches below the surface. Terry Baldino, Death Valley National Park: "When you think of an animal living in the world today whose entire existence survives on something that small, and has done so for thousands of years quite successfully, that makes for a pretty amazing little critter." But now there's a crisis. Pupfish numbers are mysteriously dropping; there are only 38 left in the latest count....
Success of stream restoration projects go largely unknown Dollars spent on restoring America's rivers are increasing exponentially, but does anyone know how effective river restoration projects really are? Finding the answer to that question prompted Duke University Assistant Professor Emily Bernhardt to participate in a survey study. The results of that study were presented July 27 in a lecture titled "Measuring, managing and restoring freshwater ecosystem services" as part of the University of Montana Biological Station Summer Seminar series Thursday evenings at Yellow Bay. Despite the fact that river systems represent just one percent of all freshwater on earth, Bernhardt said 90 percent of U.S. rivers have been strongly impacted by channel manipulation and fragmentation, dams, reservoirs, diversions or irrigation. In addition, 20 percent of freshwater fishes are threatened or extinct and freshwater species represent 47 percent of all endangered species in the U.S....
Director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Plans to Illegally Deny Protection for 152 Imperiled Species The Center for Biological Diversity obtained a July 21, 2006 email from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Director Dale Hall that states that the agency will actively work to avoid providing Endangered Species Act protection to 152 of the 281 species currently recognized as candidates for listing as threatened or endangered. On average, these species have been waiting for protection for 15 years, and research by the Center shows that at least 24 candidate species have gone extinct before they received the protections of the Act. Candidate species by definition warrant protection as threatened or endangered species. Under the Endangered Species Act, FWS can delay protection of these species only if their listing is delayed by actions to protect other higher priority species and if the agency is making expeditious progress to protect them. In the email, Director Hall stated that the agency will “use all Service resources to find conservation strategies for lesser priority candidate species to preclude the need to list,” identifying 152 of the candidate species as being the target of these efforts. The statement responds to a lawsuit that charges the agency with failing to make expeditious progress towards protecting candidate species, which the Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations filed last year....
GOP Also-Rans Rally Around Pombo’s Democratic Foe It is unusual for candidates who lose to an incumbent in a primary to then bolt and endorse the nominee of the other major party. So Gerald M. “Jerry” McNerney — a wind turbine company executive who is the Democratic House nominee in California’s 11th District for the second consecutive election — was pleased to accept the backing of the former Republican contenders who held seven-term incumbent Richard W. Pombo to a subpar 62 percent of the vote in the June 6 GOP primary: former Rep. Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey Jr. and local businessman Tom Benigno. At a news conference July 26, McCloskey pursued a theme he used during the primary and which is the Democrats’ main justification for declaring the conservative-leaning 11th as a serious takeover target: that Pombo is too cozy with business interests in his role as chairman of the House Resources Committee, and that he was a recipient of campaign donations from now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates who mainly included American Indian tribes with casino gambling interests. But Pombo has strongly denied unethical behavior. He says his actions as Resources chairman, which include efforts to overhaul the Endangered Species Act, conform with a goal he has pursued throughout a House career that dates back to 1993: the loosening of federal land use regulations that he contends are economically damaging and deprive landowners of property rights. He also says he had no close ties to Abramoff and never did official favors in exchange for campaign donations....
Senate Vote to Fund 370 Miles of Border Triple Wall Will Destroy Endangered Species and Ecosystems The Center for Biological Diversity blasted Wednesday’s U.S. Senate vote to fund the construction of a massive triple wall over 370 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, calling the plan a colossal environmental disaster and declaring that it will not stem the tide of illegal immigration. More border walls, militarization, low-level aircraft and roads would further damage already-stressed wildlife and places, such as the Cactus Pygmy Owl and Sonoran Pronghorn in Arizona, Flat-Tailed Horned Lizard and Peninsular Ranges Bighorn Sheep in California, Jaguar and Mexican Gray Wolves in New Mexico, and the Rio Grande River, Ocelot, and Big Bend National Park in Texas. Triple walls are harmful to wildlife blocking critical migration corridors and destroying valuable habitat. The distance of the triple wall – 370 miles – is approximately the distance of the entire border in Arizona. “It’s a sad day for America. In 1987, President Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall and stated, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,’ but less than 20 years later, the Senate votes to build a new Berlin Wall on the U.S.-Mexico border," said Michael Finkelstein, Executive Director with the Center for Biological Diversity.....
Border rancher more concerned about disease from illegal crossers Back in the 1970s, it was a major event when a Mexican cow would wander on to the Palominas border-front ranch of Jack Ladd and his son, John. But after tightened border security in San Diego and El Paso began to funnel illegal immigration through Arizona in the early 1990s, holes began to appear more regularly along the 10 miles of barbed-wire fence separating the ranch from Mexico. The holes, cut by individual migrants or blasted out by fence-crashing vehicles, also created an easy passageway for cattle. So, in an effort to keep Mexican cows out and their own cows in, the Ladds would devote an entire day each week to repairing the breaches. About three years ago, they gave up. “We'd start down in Naco and work west, but by the time we'd get to the end of the fence, the stuff we'd fixed would already be cut again,” John Ladd said. Federal authorities told him barbed wire was useless in stopping human traffic, and so the government was not interested in replacing it. During the past 2½ years, Ladd said he has returned 468 cows to Mexico....
Ranchers Putting Cattle Out to Pasture Fred Nick has always served his cows a pretty bland menu: grass, grass and more grass. Then, a few years ago, he learned that meat from exclusively grass-fed animals was gaining popularity among consumers for its reported health benefits. Now his steaks and burgers are showing up for sale at a health food store near his 1,300-acre ranch along California's central coast. "We didn't even know we had a health product," the 72-year-old Nick said. Nick is one of a small but growing number of ranchers who are bucking convention, letting their animals graze on grassy pastures until slaughter. About 45,000 grass-fed head of cattle were produced in the United States in 2005, livestock marketing consultant Allen Williams said. That's a pittance next to the roughly 30 million animals that spend their final months in feedlots, getting big and juicy on a diet of grain. Still, the current number of grass-fed cattle represents a huge increase over the roughly 5,000 produced 10 years ago, Williams said. He expects the nation's yield of grass-fed beef to more than double, to about 100,000 head, in 2006....
Wendell Robie: The man who started it all Twenty-two years after his death and 51 years removed from leading his first, monumental 100-mile ride from high in the Sierra, Wendell Robie continues to cast a long shadow over Auburn. Robie was the penultimate mover and shaker in Auburn and its environs for much of the 20th century. His work to get the Tevis Cup ride off the ground in the mid-1950s led to an event that continues to attract a field of riders from around the nation and several foreign countries. In 1955, Robie and four other men set out from Tahoe City on a ride to Auburn that would be the first of what now is called the granddaddy of ultra-endurance horse rides. The object was to travel 100 miles in under 24 hours -- a challenge Robie was finding other people thought to be insurmountable. Robie's legendary reply was: "By God, I'll show you that it can be done." The first ride started at 4 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1955, and ended in Auburn 22 hours and 45 minutes later. Robie had proved his detractors wrong. After delivering a ceremonial packet of mail he'd brought with him from Tahoe City, he reined his horse around and rode another mile home to his Robie Point house....

Thursday, August 03, 2006

NEWS ROUNDUP

Scientists believe a disease they haven’t identified is killing the area’s aspen trees While mountain pine beetles continue to ravage large swaths of forests in the West, the region’s aspen groves are falling prey to an unknown disease that could wipe out 10 percent or more of the iconic trees. Dale Bartos, an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Logan, Utah, said it’s not clear what’s causing the problem with the aspens, although unlike the beetles killing the pines, the aspens are likely being attacked by some kind of disease. “It’s something we don’t understand,” Bartos said. “I could speculate, but I’d probably be wrong. It’s something we need to address.” Unlike many trees and plants, aspens don’t reproduce sexually but, rather, through cloning from new shoots — called “suckers” — emerging from within their interconnected root systems. Bartos said researchers are seeing the trees’ clones dying off completely so that stands can’t regenerate themselves....
Environmental coalition recommends drilling changes A coalition of environmental organizations and sportsmen's groups are urging federal land managers to step up protections for wildlife in the face of an unprecedented boom in natural gas drilling in western Colorado they fear could have a devastating effect on wildlife habitat. "We're now talking about drilling wells from horizon to horizon -- literally as far as you can see," said Bob Elderkin, with the Colorado Mule Deer Foundation. "All of a sudden, the habitat fragmentation is going to become bigger than anything we've ever dreamt of in the past." Some 25 groups have signed on to a list of recommendations they plan to take to state and federal regulators and legislators, urging less dense, more careful development in areas where drilling rigs and wildlife may collide. It's part of a growing alliance between outdoor interests that have at times been at odds. Recently, conservationists have found allies among hunters, anglers and others in the outdoor industry as they find common ground in what they perceive as threats to wildlife and wild places....
Unexpected environmentalists Child doesn’t look like an environmentalist. He doesn’t wear Birkenstocks, tie-dye shirts or a peace sign tied around his neck with a length of hemp rope. He looks and talks more like a rancher, with a cowboy hat and a weathered face. Child doesn’t really act like an environmentalist either. Instead of ambushing mink coats with cans of spray paint, Child makes a living leading hunters into the woods to kill elk, deer, moose, antelope and mountain lions. It’s July 27, five days before the BLM will lease roughly 12,000 acres of land on the Wyoming Range for energy development including Child’s camp and most of the land where he takes his clients to hunt. Child represents a recent addition to the environmental movement. Ever since the Forest Service earmarked Child’s hunting grounds for oil and gas development, the owner of Trophy Mountain Outfitters has joined a growing coalition of sportsmen working to preserve the wild lands where they work and play....
Oil, gas leases take a blow The Bush administration's attempts to override federal environmental laws to speed oil and gas development in the West took a hit Wednesday when a Utah federal judge ruled 16 U.S. Bureau of Land Management leases on wilderness-quality public lands in Utah were sold illegally. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled in favor of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Wilderness Society, who claimed the BLM ignored federal law and its own wilderness-related findings when it used outdated land-use plans to sidestep federal law to sell the leases. The ruling calls into question many more oil and gas lease sales, said Steve Bloch, SUWA staff attorney. The leases were the first sold after the 2003 "No More Wilderness" settlement that then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then-Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt struck to end a lawsuit the state brought against the federal government over wilderness inventories conducted during the Clinton administration. The BLM also relied on land plans so old they didn't include analyses of the potential effects of oil and gas development on the lease parcels, a violation of NEPA's fundamental objective to make sure "an agency will not act on information only to regret its decision after it is too late to correct," Kimball wrote....
Grand Junction residents push to regulate drilling A movement to strictly regulate energy development in Grand Junction’s watershed picked up steam Tuesday when activists turned in double the signatures they need to get proposed rules on the November ballot. The group Concerned Citizens Alliance submitted petitions with 4,150 signatures to the city clerk, who will determine if there are enough valid signatures from registered voters. At least 1,580 signatures are needed to qualify for the city ballot. The alliance, a chapter of Western Colorado Congress, a conservation group, launched the initiative drive after federal oil and gas leases were sold on thousands of acres in the watersheds of Grand Junction and neighboring Palisade. Both communities have protested the leases, which are on hold while the Bureau of Land Management considers the protests. Alliance members said the “overwhelming response” by Grand Junction residents to the petition drive sends a strong message across Colorado that some areas should be off-limits as more and more natural gas wells are drilled in the state....
Hunters and anglers turn GOP "greener" Hunters and anglers are increasingly joining environmentalists in efforts to block oil and natural- gas drilling and other development on wildlife-rich lands in the Rocky Mountain West. Traditionally a Republican constituency, hunters and anglers have won over GOP lawmakers and land administrators in Washington who often view environmentalists as radicals aligned with the Democratic Party. "We're beginning to see hunters and anglers weighing in in ways we haven't seen (in recent years)," said Chris Wood of Trout Unlimited. In the past few weeks, pressure brought by hunting and fishing groups has helped drive a spate of measures blocking drilling in three areas of the Rocky Mountain West: Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., reversed his stance on drilling Montana's scenic Rocky Mountain Front. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., often a supporter of oil and gas development, came out against a drilling plan in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest, adding that there shouldn't be drilling in most national forests. The Republican-controlled House passed a bill blocking drilling in the 101,000-acre Valle Vidal section of New Mexico's Carson National Forest....
Congress looks to speed up salvage logging With fire season underway in the West, Congress is looking at speeding up salvage logging in burned stands of timber on public lands by limiting environmental reviews. The timber industry and the Bush administration say too many acres of fire-damaged trees have been left to rot while the U.S. Forest Service does environmental reviews or fights off lawsuits by conservation groups. "In many cases, active management can restore a forest faster than letting nature take its course," said Mark Rey, an agriculture undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service. "The alternative is to simply let the trees go to waste, which is not a very conservationist point of view." So, the administration is backing the concept behind a bill by Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Brian Baird, D-Wash., that streamlines environmental procedures to get chainsaws into burned or storm-damaged forests faster. But some caution against the rush to log burned forests, saying fire is a natural part of the landscape, and foresters should be more willing to let burned forests regenerate on their own....
Forest-plan delay spurs critics U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar has joined environmental and conservation groups in questioning an unexpected delay in the release of a management plan for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests. The plan was scheduled to be released July 21, and 16,000 copies of the summary, and an undisclosed number of weighty full drafts and CDs, had been printed when the release was delayed by a review in the office of Mark Rey, undersecretary for natural resources and environment in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A spokesman for Rey's office insists the review is routine. Initially, spokesman Dan Jiron said the review would delay the release only a few days. He said a week later that the draft plan was under scrutiny to make sure it complies with the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Environmental and conservation groups have expressed concerns that energy companies pressured Rey to make the plan, which governs activities in the forests, more energy friendly....
Former Aztec superintendent thought to be nation's oldest living park ranger Few people ever get to see their 100th birthday. Evidently, fewer people still get to see their 100th birthday if they once worked as National Park Service ranger. Irving Townsend, formerly of Aztec, who celebrated his 100th birthday Wednesday, is thought to be the oldest living former park ranger. Only a few others, including former U.S. President Gerald Ford who, at 93, once worked as a park ranger for a summer in his youth, are known to come close, according to the National Park Service. "The park service is interested in (my father) since he could be the oldest living park ranger in the U.S.," said Townsend's son, who also is named Irving Townsend. "They seem to think he is." Townsend worked as the first superintendent at Aztec Ruins National Monument in 1944. He moved to the San Juan County area after working as a park ranger at Yosemite National Park in California beginning in 1929. While on patrol, he was known for doing his rounds on a motorcycle, horseback or skis, depending on his mood and the weather. When Townsend moved to Aztec to take charge of the Ruins, he was immediately confronted with a slew of troubles....
Tribes Call for Removal of Dams That Block Journey of Salmon Indian tribes along the Klamath River rallied in Portland on Wednesday for the removal of four hydroelectric dams that block salmon from spawning in their historic habitat upriver, and they said they intended to pressure the governors of Oregon and California to help push for removing the dams. The Yurok and Karuk tribes in California and the Klamath tribes of Oregon also said public comments by Bill Fehrman, the new president of PacifiCorp, the power company that owns the dams on the Klamath, reflected new potential for a settlement in one of the most enduring disputes at the nexus of fishing, farming and power supply in the Northwest. Mr. Fehrman, in a statement released Wednesday, said: “We have heard the tribes’ concerns. We are not opposed to dam removal or other settlement opportunities as long as our customers are not harmed and our property rights are respected.”....
More Than 100 Conservation Organizations Call for Withdrawal of Proposed Rules Expanding Aerial Gunning and Trapping in Wilderness Areas A coalition of more than 100 conservation organizations today submitted comments opposing controversial new rules proposed by the U.S. Forest Service that would permit the use of motorized vehicles in wilderness areas to trap and kill predators like bears, coyotes, wolves, bobcats and mountain lions. “The Bush administration is famous for its disdain for public resources,” said Erik Ryberg, Staff Attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “But these rules are the worst of the worst. They bring motorized vehicles into wilderness areas and permit aerial gunning of animals that aren’t even implicated in livestock depredation. They could give ranchers complete freedom in wilderness areas, permitting them to kill anything they want.” The new rules would also permit the use of controversial “M-44” sodium-cyanide traps, which are a danger to domestic pets and children. When triggered, the buried traps explode in a cloud of lethal sodium-cyanide crystals. The Center for Biological Diversity has spearheaded the campaign to get the proposed rules withdrawn, and was the author of the opposition letter that has been endorsed by more than 100 other conservation organizations from Arizona to Maine....
14 states, including N.M., petition for hazardous labeling Attorneys general from 14 states, including New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to require the listing of all hazardous ingredients in pesticides on product labels. Herbicides and pesticides are sprayed or dripped onto land, houses and pets to control insects and weeds. Some are designed to kill only a specific insect, fungus or plant. Others are broad-based, killing all organisms in a certain area for a time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires companies to list a product's active ingredients used to kill a pest or weed. But the EPA doesn't require companies to list inert or "other ingredients" used to preserve or improve the effectiveness of active ingredients in a pesticide, according to the New Mexico Attorney General's Office. "Although almost 400 chemicals used for this purpose have been found by EPA or other federal agencies to be hazardous to human health and the environment, EPA does not require them to be identified on pesticide labels," according to a joint statement from the attorneys general....
Horse Genome Sequence in the Works "It puts a whole new set of tools in play...it's as if you are farmers that are used to relying on plows pulled by a draft animal, and all the sudden you have tractors," says Jamie MacLeod, VMD, PhD, professor of veterinary science and Knight Chair for Musculoskeletal Sciences at the University of Kentucky's Gluck Equine Research Center, of the news that the horse genome will be sequenced. A Thoroughbred mare will soon join the human, mouse, dog, and other species on the list of mammals whose genomes have been sequenced and mapped. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is currently working on a high-level equine genome sequence, which is a major breakthrough for equine genetic researchers who want to better understand and solve common health conditions in the horse. Additionally, the horse genome map will assist human researchers in unlocking human health mysteries. Scientists at the Broad Institute, a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are churning out segments of the horse genome sequence daily and posting them on a web site, where they are available for immediate use by equine researchers. Before this development, if an individual began a project on a particular DNA region, he or she first would have to obtain a DNA sequence for that region. This preliminary work would take six to eight months and cost up to $80,000. Now the process is akin to pulling a reference book out of a library. The high density sequencing of the horse should cost roughly $30 million....
Western States Horse Expo Draws Top Talent, Thousands of Attendees Thousands of horse enthusiasts poured through the main gate at the Cal Expo fairgrounds in Sacramento, Calif., during the three-day expo in June. They funneled through four huge buildings that housed over 500 retail exhibitors, then spilled out onto the concourse of 11 acres of trailers, six arenas hopping with demonstrations, breed exhibits, horse sales, full-size barns, the Magnificent 7 stock horse competition, acres of tractors and trucks, and the Extreme Cowboy Race. A diversity of headliners captivated audiences with their skills. Cutting horse legend Leon Harrel convinced the audience that everyone--without exception--could achieve cutting horse success. He even had his ten-year-old grandson, Peyton, demonstrate the art of cutting while riding bareback and bridleless!....
Barbaro's Right Hind Leg Healing Well By now, Barbaro should have been close to casting aside any doubts that he could make a full recovery from the devastating right hind leg injuries he suffered at the Preakness Stakes. Instead, the winner of the Kentucky Derby still has a tedious, long recovery ahead because of the often-fatal disease that's stricken his left hind leg. Dean Richardson, DVM, Dipl. ACVS, said Tuesday that the painful hoof disease the colt has is preventing the cast on his right hind from being removed because the colt could not protect himself by bearing more weight on the left hind. Barbaro suffered life-threatening injuries when he broke three bones above and below his right rear ankle at the start of the May 20 Preakness. "If he hadn't had the founder (laminitis) on his left hind, he'd probably be out of the cast and he'd probably be in a splinted bandage on the shoe," Richardson said in a telephone interview. "That's where we'd likely be. I can't do that because his left hind is the more sore of the two legs right now." Barbaro's left hind hoof, which was stricken with a severe case of laminitis, is improving and started to show slight signs of re-growing after 80% of it was removed. Barbaro needs to regrow the hoof if he is to have any shot of walking -- albeit with a hitch in his gait....

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

NEWS ROUNDUP

Senate Approves More Offshore Drilling The Senate wants to expand oil and gas drilling to a large chunk of the Gulf of Mexico that has been off limits to energy companies. But the House has a more ambitious plan: Open coastal waters to drilling everywhere unless a state objects. Opening the Outer Continental Shelf to oil and gas rigs has moved to the center of the energy debate in Congress where lawmakers for months have struggled to respond to growing anger among voters over high energy prices — a particular problem in an election year. By a vote of 71-25 Tuesday, the Senate passed a bill directing the Interior Department to begin selling leases for oil and gas development in 8.3 million acres of the east-central Gulf of Mexico — about 100 miles from the nearest land and 125 to 310 miles from Florida beaches....
Tragedy looms over wildland debate Nearly 15 months after the manager of the Carrizo Plain National Monument killed herself after months of frustration on the job, the federal Bureau of Land Management is reviving the process of creating a management plan for the 250,000-acre grasslands preserve that will be forever associated with Marlene Braun's tragic death. Braun committed suicide on May 2, 2005, capping a months-long dispute with her BLM bosses over how the preserve should be managed, and in the process earning reprimands and suspensions for what her superiors concluded were intemperate acts of insubordination. The backdrop for the battles was more political than personal. Created by presidential proclamation just hours before President Clinton left office in 2001, the Carrizo Plain had become a battleground over cattle grazing on public lands -- an issue on which the BLM typically found itself siding with cattlemen. It just so happened that these public lands, on the border between Kern and San Luis Obispo counties, are the last big patch of wild grasslands left in California and the home of the largest concentration of endangered species in the state. Some, like the giant kangaroo rat, are in direct competition with cattle. Braun had openly complained that she felt efforts to curtail grazing were being resisted at higher pay grades in the agency, and that she was suffering the fallout....
Editorial: Verbal attack on fire crew scorches Burns Exactly what did the junior senator from Montana say to a group of 20 highly trained front-line Virginia firefighters as they waited for a plane at Billings Logan Airport on July 23? The public may never know the whole conversation. The Augusta Hot Shots from the U.S. Forest Service had been fighting a 92,000-acre wildfire in Yellowstone County and were awaiting transportation to their next assignment when they were accosted by Sen. Conrad Burns. From reporting by The Gazette State Bureau and Associated Press, it is known that Burns said enough to cause these professional firefighters to call for help. A Montana Department of Natural Resources employee who had been serving as information officer on the fire was dispatched to the airport to hear what Burns had to say. He had plenty to say, none of it constructive, none of it recognizing the heroic efforts of firefighters in this fiery summer. Burns pointed to a firefighter and told the DNRC employee: "See that guy over there? He hasn't done a goddamned thing. They sit around. I saw it up on the Wedge fire and in northwestern Montana some years ago. It's wasteful. You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around. It's gotta change." The quote reveals the senator's approach to dealing with what his apology described as "frustration" after talking to landowners "critical of the way the fire was handled."....
Sen. Burns' comments detailed in reports The Forest Service report included criticisms that Burns made to Paula Rosenthal, a public information officer from the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, about how the Bundy Railroad fire was fought. Rosenthal was called to the airport by Forest Service officials to talk to Burns after he criticized some members of the Augusta, Va., Hotshots. Her separate state report was made public last Thursday. Burns, she wrote, had these comments: “This command/control doesn't work.” “Managing these fires from Boise does not work.” “Ranchers complaining firefighters/engines driving right by while their land is burning.” The Forest Service documents also included a firsthand account of the airport incident by Gabe Templeton, one of the Augusta Hotshots, describing what happened to him and fellow team members Jeff Cleek and Jude Waerig. It said the three men were sitting in the Billings airport waiting for their flight when Burns approached them with an outstretched hand and asked if they were firefighters. “I shook his hand and replied yes,” Templeton wrote. “He shook my hand, introduced himself and then replied, ‘What a piss poor job' we were doing. I replied, ‘Have a nice day.' The senator mentioned that we were ‘wasting a lot of money and creating a cottage industry.' He also told us that we needed to listen more to the ranchers. I replied that ‘we are pretty low on the totem pole.' Then he walked off.”....
Wolves eating more livestock Early planners also thought that wolves wouldn’t eat livestock as long as they lived near an abundance of natural prey. “Wrong, wrong, wrong,” Kaminski said. Wolf predations on livestock have increased dramatically since 2003 despite early predictions and control efforts. In the Greater Yellowstone Area, 20 of 27 packs that overlapped grazing lands killed livestock in 2004. Wolf control officials killed seven packs that year. By 2005, 32 packs killed livestock and officials had to kill 10 packs. But even removing the wolves, either by killing the animals or relocating them, rarely solves the problem. Relocated packs will most likely return to the site or find new livestock to depredate. On the other hand, killing a pack often leaves survivors that infiltrate or start other packs. Eventually, the packs that absorb these survivors usually start to kill livestock as well. Biologists have learned that a wolf that develops a taste for beef or lamb keeps coming back. “Once they start, it’s difficult to stop them,” he said. “Many of these packs depredate consistently.”....
4 wolves killed after livestock deaths; more killings authorized Federal Wildlife Services agents have shoot-to-kill orders for as many as six more wolves in central Idaho, after killing four wolves in the last two weeks. The targeted wolves were suspected of killing or harassing cattle and sheep in the mountainous region. The latest killings bring the number of federally protected wolves shot by Wildlife Services officers in 2006 to 14, with another nine killed by ranchers through Tuesday. The ranchers have been allowed to shoot the animals under relaxed rules of engagement in place since early 2005, said Steve Nadeau, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game's wolf specialist. In all of 2005, 27 wolves were killed legally by officers and ranchers. Nadeau expects the number of wolf control actions this year to rise, as wolf numbers in the state have grown to 600 since the reintroduction of 35 animals in 1995 and 1996. Idaho and Montana want the animals cleared from Endangered Species Act protections, but the effort has been stymied because neighboring Wyoming's plan to manage wolves hasn't won federal approval. "We're finding wolves in new areas now, where we haven't had them previously. They're taking sheep or cattle, so we're having to address that," Nadeau said....
Woman escapes after wolf pounces The wolf saw Becky Wanamaker first. She was strolling through a campground just off the Dalton Highway, along the Arctic Circle, waiting for her four traveling companions to wake up. A long day in the car ahead, she decided to stretch her legs. Then she saw the wolf. Its eyes fixed on her. The animal was mostly gray and bigger than a husky, Wanamaker said Wednesday, now safely home in Anchorage after Friday's attack. And it had long, long legs. "And I don't remember if it was moving toward me or if it was stopped when I first saw it," she said. "But I just freaked and I bolted and ran toward the (campground) outhouses. That's what was in my head -- run faster, get inside. I kept running -- just thinking, don't fall. If you fall, you're done." But wolves run faster than schoolteachers....
Pinon Canyon expansion measure pending before Senate Pushing through a list of bills before going on its August recess, the Senate may take up the Pentagon's 2007 budget bill this week - including an amendment to force the Army to give lawmakers extensive information about any future expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., attached the amendment to the Defense Department's 2007 appropriation bill last month and it requires the Army to provide Congress with a list of information about its need to expand the 240,000-acre training site. Whether the Senate will get to the budget bill before recessing until after the Labor Day weekend is uncertain, according to Allard's spokeswoman, Laura Condeluci. The Senate intends to recess on Friday until September. The House has completed its version of the defense budget bill and is already in recess, but that version of the bill does not contain any restrictions on the proposed Pinon Canyon project. When the Senate finishes its version, a final bill will be worked out in a conference between House and Senate members....
Legality of Forest Service road plan questioned A federal judge said Tuesday that the Bush administration had the right to overturn a ban on road construction in untouched parts of the national forests but questioned whether it could do so without weighing the possible environmental effects. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte said the Forest Service appeared to be ''on solid ground'' last year when it reversed a Clinton administration rule banning new roads on nearly a third of federal forests. But she questioned whether the agency violated federal law by skipping environmental studies -- the heart of two lawsuits brought by 20 environmental groups and the states of California, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington. The cases have since been consolidated, and all parties presented arguments Tuesday in Laporte's courtroom. Laporte said she did not know when she would make a final decision in the case. ''The court's role is not to endorse one approach over the other,'' Laporte said, referring to Forest Service management plans. Rather, she said, the question is whether federal procedures were violated when Bush overturned the ban on road building that President Clinton ordered in January 2001, eight days before he left office. If so, that could prompt Laporte to invalidate a new state-by-state management strategy endorsed by the Bush administration and restore the road-building ban....
Logjam blasting prompts debate Last week's dynamiting of a logjam on the Salmon River in central Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness has prompted criticism from groups who say federally protected reserves are no place for high-explosive intrusions on nature. The logjam, the result of a washout from a sudden storm last Sunday, forced 250 whitewater rafters on guided trips to camp upstream for three days until Forest Service officials removed the obstruction. Agency officials analyzed several options, including waiting for spring floods to wash out the logs jammed into the tight Pistol Creek Rapids. They also considered evacuating boaters. While guides and outfitters who earn millions from rafting trips annually say blasting was a "common sense" solution, George Nickas, the Missoula, Mont.-based director of Wilderness Watch, said letting human schedules dictate wilderness management goes against the whole idea of what wilderness is about: protecting an area where man is a visitor, but doesn't remain....
Scientists concerned over forest legislation On the eve of a hearing on a controversial forestry bill, a letter signed by 546 scientists was released Tuesday warning about the negative impacts of logging after wildfires. The Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act is slated for discussion by the Senate Agriculture Committee's forest subcommittee on Wednesday. The legislation's sponsors say it would help the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management fund restoration, reforestation and research. Environmental groups are worried the legislation (HR 4200) would fast-track logging by suspending environmental safeguards and reducing the public's ability to give input on how national forests are managed. “We are concerned that HR 4200 will bind us to land management practices that, perhaps logical in the past, are no longer tenable in the light of recent scientific understanding,” the scientists' letter said. “Neither ecological benefits nor economic efficiency result from post-disturbance logging.”....
Caring for a wounded waterway Every day, saltwater floods the marsh surrounding Highway 101 just south of the popular Cascade Head hiking trail. It is a natural process in a place that looks like it has been a tidal marsh for centuries. The grasses grow higher than humans here, the air is salty and fresh and fish feed and hide from predators. But this area isn't as pristine as it first seems. It used to be a pasture for cows -- cut off with dikes and dams from the flow of ocean water up the Salmon River. Remnants of the past are hidden between the clumps of grasses. A team of graduate students has spent the past several weeks exploring the history of the Salmon River estuary, an area where seawater and freshwater mix....
BLM land-lease sale plan draws protests Environmental groups and outfitters have filed protests involving nearly three dozen parcels that have been proposed by the Bureau of Land Management for its upcoming gas and oil lease sale. The Utah BLM office plans to offer leases on 334,000 acres - the second-largest total in state history - in its regular quarterly sale on Aug. 15. Protests received by Monday's deadline total just over 41,000 acres, including parcels near Arches National Park, along the San Juan River, the Green River in Labyrinth Canyon and around the railroad grade in the Golden Spike National Historic Site. But the focus of the protests this time center on the parcels around Arches. The National Park Service requested a deferment on 20 parcels near the park - including some within sight of the landmark Delicate Arch - because of viewshed, water quality, water quantity and nighttime illumination issues. "Visual analysis of parcels generally closer than 5 miles to the park shows that all or portions of these parcels are visible from multiple vista points in the park," wrote Arches National Park Superintendent Laura Joss in a May 31 letter to the BLM. "Potential impacts include light pollution from flaring and lighting drill rigs or production facilities which dilutes the night skies, an important park value."....
Court in Nevada case rules BLM must widen look at mining effects A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday ordered a lower court to review the environmental effects of operations at two gold mines in northern Nevada in a ruling that advocates said could force closer scrutiny of the use of federal lands in the West. Newmont Mining Corp., which owns the mines, downplayed the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which instructed the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management to consider cumulative effects of mining at two sites northwest of Carlin. "Operations continue as normal," said Mary Korpi, a spokeswoman in Reno for Denver-based Newmont. Basically, we're very pleased with the ruling. We're not impacted." Korpi noted that the court upheld most BLM and Interior findings on air quality, public water reserves, bonding to ensure reclamation of mined lands, a requirement for separate environmental studies on the two mines, and cumulative impacts for water. However, the three-judge panel, quoting arguments by the environmental group Great Basin Mine Watch, also said the BLM "'cannot simply offer conclusions.'" "'Rather, it must identify and discuss the impacts that will be caused by each successive (project),'" the court said in San Francisco, "'including how the combination of those various impacts is expected to affect the environment.'"....
Idaho tribe, BPA at odds over new Oregon chinook hatchery The Bonneville Power Administration says it won’t spend $16.4 million to build a fish hatchery in northeast Oregon unless it gets confirmation that, in light of a recent court ruling, the hatchery will help threatened chinook salmon. The Nez Perce Tribe, which wants to start construction on the hatchery this winter, says the BPA is holding the money hostage. “From the tribe’s perspective, it appears BPA is holding Northeast Oregon Hatchery ‘hostage’ in order to meet its own desire to receive some specific ‘ESA credit’ from NOAA Fisheries,’’ wrote tribal Chairwoman Rebecca Miles in a June 13 letter to BPA Administrator Steven Wright. The proposed hatchery was listed in biological opinions covering federal dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers as one of the measures that would help chinook salmon recover. However, U.S. District Judge James Redden in Portland recently ruled against management plans for dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, saying they would not prevent chinook salmon from going extinct. A new biological opinion is being written by federal agencies and plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to Redden’s decision. The BPA wants to make sure the new hatchery will be considered a help to recovering salmon runs and not be ruled as detrimental after it is built....
How (Not) to Protect the Environment For the FBI, environmental activism — with its arson, vandalism and more — has become synonymous with “domestic terrorism.” But in the forests of southern Oregon, there’s been another way. Check out a photo gallery from Chris LaMarca, a photojournalist who spent four years with a diverse group — from college kids to ranchers — working to stop old-growth logging through civil disobedience and legal action. “We can all learn a lot from these people,” he says. It’s unbelievable how smart they are, how organized they are. They’re not a bunch of homeless kids being idiots running around the forest. They’re a collective of strong-willed people who believe in protecting what’s wild and raw....
Unions Say E.P.A. Bends to Political Pressure Unions representing thousands of staff scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency say the agency is bending to political pressure and ignoring sound science in allowing a group of toxic chemicals to be used in agricultural pesticides. Leaders of several federal employee unions say the chemicals pose serious risks for fetuses, pregnant women, young children and the elderly through food and exposure and should not be approved by Thursday, the Congressional deadline for completing an agency review of thousands of substances in pesticides. “We are concerned that the agency has not, consistent with its principles of scientific integrity and sound science, adequately summarized or drawn conclusions” about the chemicals, union leaders told the agency administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, in a newly disclosed letter sent May 25. The leaders also wrote that they believed that under priorities of E.P.A. management, “the concerns of agriculture and the pesticide industry come before our responsibility to protect the health of our nation’s citizens.” Nine union leaders representing 9,000 agency scientists and other personnel around the country signed the letter....
Where rural life, city growth clash
When horse trainer and rancher Jack Teague ambles into the desert that surrounds his north Scottsdale home, he sees power lines, rooftops and construction trucks dotting the once-barren landscape. It frustrates him because he knows what's coming. Teague's 5-acre ranch is adjacent to nearly 10 square miles of state trust land in northeast Phoenix. In the coming years, the rocks and hiking trails, cactuses and coyotes that surround his property will give way to thousands of houses plus restaurants and shopping centers. And there is nothing he can do to stop the onslaught of growth. More and more Valley residents are finding themselves in Teague's position these days, as the State Land Department continues to sell off parcels of pristine desert to keep up with the state's booming population. Last year, the agency sold a record $515 million in land. Later this year, it will sell its largest parcel to date: a 275-square mile swath of terrain in the East Valley known as Superstition Vistas....
Oklahoma Cattleman Defends Property Rights to Senate Subcommittee The government should not be regulating wetlands or ditches on farmers' and ranchers' private property under the Clean Water Act, according to Keith Kisling, a cattle rancher and wheat farmer from Burlington, Oklahoma. Kisling says recent decisions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court limit the waters subject to regulation under the Act, and the government needs to act accordingly. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water called the hearing to discuss the impact of the Supreme Court's decisions in the joint cases of Rapanos v. United States and Carabell v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on "The Waters of the United States." Kisling testified today on behalf of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) and National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG). "The challenge for society in using private lands is to strike a sensible balance between the demands of food production and conservation of natural resources," said Kisling. "Regulation has been allowed to proceed unlawfully and directly at odds with teachings from the leading Supreme Court cases." Cattlemen cite examples of government officials trying to use the Clean Water Act to regulate prairie potholes, ponds, irrigation ditches, and intermittent streams on private lands. "Not only does this create an unstable working environment for farmers and ranchers, but it's legally unfounded," says Jeff Eisenberg, NCBA's director of federal lands....
Western governors push for federal disaster assistance Gov. John Hoeven and his counterparts in Western states are urging Congress to pass drought aid legislation. Hoeven drafted a letter signed by 17 members of the Western Governors' Association, including South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, the chairman. "Current forecasts in some areas are predicting more dry weather, with little promise of relief," the letter said. "These weather conditions in combination with increased production costs, are taking a terrible toll on our farmers and ranchers, and their livestock and crops." The letter was delivered to congressional leaders on Tuesday. In addition to Hoeven and Rounds, the letter was signed by the governors of Wyoming, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah and Washington....
Grassfed cows may yield healthier meat "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser, in examining how to restore the disconnect between farm and table, wasted no time getting to the point as he spoke to the third annual American Grassfed Association conference held in Colorado Springs late last month. "It should come as no surprise that American beef can't be sold in Japan, Korea and the European Union," he said. "A recent report showed that 75 percent of Japanese consumers didn't want to eat American beef because the USDA has succeeded in giving American meat a bad name. This room is the solution." While praising the assembled ranchers for their commitment to open-pasture grazing, he reiterated the importance of connecting food producers with consumers. In doing so, Schlosser reaffirmed his disdain for factory farms that produce much of the nation's meat. Ranchers from as close by as Utah and Wyoming, and as far away as Texas, Georgia and Missouri gathered in Colorado Springs to explore a range of eco-friendly, sustainable ranching and marketing techniques at the conference, "Grazing America." Schlosser's book has been hailed by environmentalists and dietitians as a well-researched critique of so-called "factory farms." Written in 2001, it also raised hackles among large-scale cattle growers and the lobbyists who represent them. A film based on the book is due to be released in October, and his most recent book, "Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food," is directed toward a younger audience....
It’s The Pitts: All Hat/No Cattle Like everyone in the auction business I often get asked to volunteer my time to serve as auctioneer at charity auctions for groups like private schools, the local Chamber of Commerce and even the occasional garden club. I got roped into this year’s charity auction at the local Garden Club by an ex-friend of mine. He’s a pig farmer who did the auction last year and afterwards came down with a ghastly allergic reaction to flowers. The idea of a pig farmer who can't stand the sweet smell of flowers should have tipped me off right there. Anyway, he volunteered my services as auctioneer for the Garden Club's Annual Charity Auction and Potted Plant Sale. I must say that the buying crowd was different than those at cattle sales....