This article was on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal. A subscription is required and I don't have a link. Below are some excerpts.
Puppy Power: How Humane Society Gets the Vote Out
For the first time in its 50-year history, the Humane Society is trying to elect candidates to Congress who support its animal-welfare agenda. After a series of mergers with other animal-welfare groups, the Humane Society counts 10 million Americans as members, an average of 23,000 in each of the 435 House districts. That's more than twice the membership of the National Rifle Association, which is considered one of the most effective single-issue campaign organizations. More important, the Humane Society's motivating issue -- the promotion of animal welfare -- resonates with the white suburban women who could be the key block of voters who decide this election...Among Republicans the Humane Society is targeting are Montana's Sen. Conrad Burns, who opposed Mr. Sweeney's horse-slaughter bill in the Senate, Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico and Mr. Pombo of California. The Humane Society has endorsed more than 300 candidates for Congress. But it has spent money in just two dozen of the closest races where Mr. Pacelle believes he can swing about 5% of the vote...Mr. Pacelle began creating the Humane Society political operation two years ago when he was named chief of the organization. Since then, he has quietly built a formidable election campaign machine. To comply with tax and election laws, Mr. Pacelle has created two offshoots of the Humane Society to focus on election campaigns. In total, the entities have spent $3.4 million on congressional elections and ballot initiatives, more than Exxon Mobil Corp. They have contributed $150,000 to candidates for Congress, which is more than Halliburton Co. has contributed...The Humane Society first tested the waters in congressional elections in 2004 -- and then, in just one race. In that campaign, the group campaigned against Rep. Chris John in Louisiana when the Democrat ran for an open Senate seat against Republican Rep. David Vitter. Mr. John championed the state's legalized cockfighting industry, and the Humane Society didn't want to see him in the Senate. Polls showed that nine in 10 women in Louisiana opposed cockfighting, so the Humane Society set about to tell 300,000 white female voters that Mr. John supported the practice. The group spent $400,000 on radio ads and mailings to get the message out. When Mr. Vitter won with 51% of the vote, the Humane Society knew it could be a force....
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Court: BLM violated rodent's protection A small rodent that lives in the treetops of old growth forests is blocking two timber sales in southwestern Oregon. A federal appeals court on Monday ruled the U.S. Bureau of Land Management illegally downgraded protections for the red tree vole to make the two sales possible. The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found that the BLM failed to conduct a public review before changing the classification of the red tree vole, whose numbers are dwindling because of clear-cutting and other forestry practices. The public review is mandated under the "survey and manage" provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan. The Northwest Forest Plan reduced timber harvests on federal lands west of the Cascade Range in Oregon, Washington and Northern California by more than 80 percent to protect habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl, salmon and hundreds of other species. The bureau has been much more aggressive than the U.S. Forest Service in trying to reach the timber harvest goals, which have never been met....
U.S. court backs tribe in fight over Calpine plant A U.S. federal appeals court backed an Indian tribe on Monday in a fight in which the bankrupt power producer Calpine Corp (CPNLQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research) had sought to build a geothermal plant in an area Native Americans consider sacred. San Jose, California-based Calpine planned to erect a plant on leased U.S. Forest Service land in the northern Mount Shasta region of California after more than a decade of planning. The Pit River Tribe sued in federal court over the plan in 2002, saying the 66-square-mile Medicine Lake Highlands is sacred ground even if not part of the tribe's reservation. The tribe lost its initial legal fight, but on Monday the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court and ruled against U.S. government agencies, saying they had improperly extended the leases to Calpine for the land. "We conclude that the agencies did not take a 'hard look' at the environmental consequences of the 1998 lease extensions and never adequately considered the no-action alternative," Judge Clifford Wallace wrote for a three-judge panel....
Army eyes 1 million acres for warfare training The U.S. Army is eyeing another million acres of southeastern Colorado ranch and croplands for additional training grounds for its modernized Army, and landowners who don't want to lose their homesteads could be facing condemnation proceedings. The Army, through spokeswoman Karen Edge at Fort Carson Army Base, said nothing has happened so far, and technically, the base doesn't even have permission to acquire any more land. But landowners around the present Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site are preparing their arguments against what they see as an evitable land grab, just like the condemnation proceedings during the 1970s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used legal proceedings to get about half of the 235,000 acres in the current site. Susan Savoia of the Williams Land & Cattle Co. in nearby Walsenburg told WND that it is about the "biggest 'land grab' since the Indians lost their land to the government." On the agenda is an expansion by about 418,000 acres, although the areas of interest including about a million acres. "After promises of never expanding or allowing live fire to occur at the maneuver site, under a BRAC (Base Realignment and Closing) recommendation the Army has AGAIN decided that productive ranch and farm land is insignificant to the world's economy and is planning another 'theft' of land to expand the maneuver site," she wrote. Opponents of the plan have organized in a group at PinonCanyon.com, and are attending public hearings, writing representatives and lobbying for the land that, sometimes, has been passed down from generation to generation since the Spanish Land Grants....
In vitro work raises hopes for wood bison Wood bison have had their habitat destroyed, been hunted to the edge of extinction and been infected with debilitating diseases. Now Canadian researchers are hoping to use modern-day reproductive technologies to create test-tube bison in an attempt to turn back the clock for the country's largest land mammal. In a groundbreaking experiment, scientists recently salvaged testes and ovaries from bison in the Northwest Territories, which were sent to slaughter. The animals were sick, but their genetic material is disease-free and a boon to scientists desperate to maintain diversity in dwindling bison bloodlines. Eggs were extracted in an Alberta laboratory and fertilized with sperm in a culture dish. Now, 27 bison embryos and 780 sperm samples (including some taken from live animals) are frozen in liquid nitrogen, waiting to be implanted in surrogate bison cows. A male wood bison can grow to 3.8 metres in length, stand 1.8 metres at the shoulder and tip the scale at one tonne. Wood bison, notable for a massive hump at the shoulder, are not to be confused with the smaller and more numerous plains bison, but interbreeding on habitats that overlap has added to the confusion....
Yosemite makeover put on hold over concerns for scenic river Ambitious plans to remodel lodging, move a road and expand campsites in Yosemite National Park are on hold until officials prepare a better plan to protect the Merced River, which runs through the heart of the park, a judge ruled. Two conservation groups celebrated Friday's ruling, which effectively halts about $60 million in construction projects for at least two years, as a major environmental victory. Yosemite officials, still reeling from the decision, said it could have "huge negative impacts" on the park's efforts to accommodate the 3 million visitors who travel there each year. "The fact that now we can't repave a road, with winter coming on, is just devastating," said Scott Gediman, a park spokesman. "Sure you can argue about campgrounds or building the lodge, but what about when you've got paving on a road that's literally falling apart?" The order, issued in a U.S. District Court in Fresno, directs the park service to immediately stop nine projects included in the Yosemite Valley Plan, a grand scheme to develop the park's amenities that has been the subject of a lengthy legal battle....
Female Leader Would Be First for Navajos One candidate in Tuesday's Navajo Nation presidential election promises accountability and staunch protection of tribal land. The other vows to build on the reservation's economic progress in the past four years. But in the race between incumbent Joe Shirley Jr. and challenger Lynda Lovejoy, the overriding issue is sex. A win would make Lovejoy the first female leader on the largest Indian reservation in the United States, which extends into New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. "She is a woman, and that is going to be an issue no matter what her stance on policy," said Dale Mason, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Mexico at Gallup. "She represents something entirely new." Lovejoy, a former New Mexico state lawmaker and current member of the Public Regulation Commission, hopes to unseat Shirley, 58, a former tribal council delegate who has been leading the tribe for four years....
Buffalo ranches won’t receive drought aid The buffalo on the Limpert ranch are nearly out of grass. The stock dams on the ranch south of Harding County’s Slim Buttes are bone dry. Buffalo are hardy animals, able to stand up to weather extremes, but they still need to eat and drink. This year’s drought has been tough on the buffalo and even tougher on buffalo ranchers such as Sandy and Jacki Limpert. With stunted pastures and virtually no hay crop, buffalo ranchers in this region, like cattle ranchers, are spending tens of thousands of dollars to feed their herds. Others have sold off animals. The Limperts are among buffalo ranchers miffed that they were left out of the recent federal drought aid for livestock producers. State ag officials said the meager amount of money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture would have been spread too thin if they had extended it to other livestock besides breeding herds of cattle and sheep....
Ranches work as retreats for rich Wealthy absentee owners are converting more of the West's ranches and farms into personal hunting and fishing playgrounds, including areas near scenic Yellowstone National Park. Well-heeled outsiders, dubbed "amenity ranchers," are not a new phenomenon, but their growing appetite for these retreats is. Even as housing prices slump in cities and suburbs, the market flourishes for getaways with hundreds or thousands of acres of mountain, forest or prairie. Two retailers of hunting and fishing gear, Cabela's and Orvis, have even launched operations to sell dream properties. "Since we already offer everything that sportsmen and women need to succeed in the field, why not make the field itself more accessible?" says David Nelson, manager of Cabela's Trophy Properties. A study published last month by researchers at the University of Colorado, Oregon State University and New Zealand's University of Otago details the growth of trophy ranches. It analyzed ranch sales around Yellowstone in 10 Montana and Wyoming counties from 1990 to 2001. Just 26% of those who bought parcels 400 acres or larger were traditional ranchers. Nearly 40% were "amenity" buyers — millionaire out-of-towners who don't rely on the ranch to make a living, the report said. The rest were investors, part-time ranchers, developers and others....
Stockmen don’t cotton to livestock registration The government’s drive to register places that house livestock to guard against disease and bioterrorism is meeting resistance from stockmen. The Department of Agriculture is pushing everyone from farmers to veterinarians to register. Officials say the information would help them slow or halt the spread of mad cow disease, avian flu or another killer infection. For Rob Alexander, a cow-calf rancher in Elbert County, the program could be just another drain on his already wafer-thin profit margin. “I have to buy this new tool to put a tag in the ear, and then I have to buy new software to scan the tags,” he said. “Will it make my life more complicated? Yes. Am I excited about that? No. To the producer who’s on the short end of the stick, this smells like a rat, because most of the burden is going to be on us.” Alexander, who hasn’t registered his ranch, is a Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Foundation board member and wonders how the program will affect rodeos and the contractors that provide rodeo stock. He’s also curious about its impact on county and state fairs; his daughter shows 4-H calves. Joel Franz of Burlington, a cattle rancher for 50 years, is like many of his friends. He hasn’t signed up his ranch and takes issue with a voluntary program he said pushes registration through 4-Hers and with bribes. Some states offer cash to register, he said. “There is no law that says it has to be done,” he said. “Not by anybody.”....
Creekstone answers USDA in court over mad cow testing Creekstone Farms Premium Beef has answered the U.S. Department of Agriculture's court documents opposing the company's motion for summary judgment in its lawsuit againstUSDA. Creekstone sued the USDA in March for refusing to allow the Arkansas City beef processor to voluntarily test all the cattle it slaughters for BSE, commonly called mad cow disease. USDA officials have told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that Creekstone's case is now largely moot because Japan and Korea have re-opened their borders to U.S. imports. Several countries had banned imports of U.S. beef because of concerns over mad cow. The USDA maintains that it has the right to regulate private testing for BSE on the basis of a 100-year-old law intended to stop the sale of bogus hog cholera serums to Midwest farmers. In its filing, Creekstone maintains that the USDA is using the law in a way it was never intended, not to protect ranchers from suppliers of bogus serums but to regulate competition among beef processors. Creekstone's filing also maintains that the company is seeking to test 100 percent of its beef for BSE to enhance its brand reputation and to make it possible to sell beef for higher prices in both domestic and foreign markets....
Plan to create human-cow embryos UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs. Researchers from Newcastle University and Kings College, London, have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a three-year licence. The hybrid human-bovine embryos would be used for stem cell research and would not be allowed to develop for more than a few days. But critics say it is unethical and potentially dangerous....
Court: BLM violated rodent's protection A small rodent that lives in the treetops of old growth forests is blocking two timber sales in southwestern Oregon. A federal appeals court on Monday ruled the U.S. Bureau of Land Management illegally downgraded protections for the red tree vole to make the two sales possible. The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found that the BLM failed to conduct a public review before changing the classification of the red tree vole, whose numbers are dwindling because of clear-cutting and other forestry practices. The public review is mandated under the "survey and manage" provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan. The Northwest Forest Plan reduced timber harvests on federal lands west of the Cascade Range in Oregon, Washington and Northern California by more than 80 percent to protect habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl, salmon and hundreds of other species. The bureau has been much more aggressive than the U.S. Forest Service in trying to reach the timber harvest goals, which have never been met....
U.S. court backs tribe in fight over Calpine plant A U.S. federal appeals court backed an Indian tribe on Monday in a fight in which the bankrupt power producer Calpine Corp (CPNLQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research) had sought to build a geothermal plant in an area Native Americans consider sacred. San Jose, California-based Calpine planned to erect a plant on leased U.S. Forest Service land in the northern Mount Shasta region of California after more than a decade of planning. The Pit River Tribe sued in federal court over the plan in 2002, saying the 66-square-mile Medicine Lake Highlands is sacred ground even if not part of the tribe's reservation. The tribe lost its initial legal fight, but on Monday the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court and ruled against U.S. government agencies, saying they had improperly extended the leases to Calpine for the land. "We conclude that the agencies did not take a 'hard look' at the environmental consequences of the 1998 lease extensions and never adequately considered the no-action alternative," Judge Clifford Wallace wrote for a three-judge panel....
Army eyes 1 million acres for warfare training The U.S. Army is eyeing another million acres of southeastern Colorado ranch and croplands for additional training grounds for its modernized Army, and landowners who don't want to lose their homesteads could be facing condemnation proceedings. The Army, through spokeswoman Karen Edge at Fort Carson Army Base, said nothing has happened so far, and technically, the base doesn't even have permission to acquire any more land. But landowners around the present Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site are preparing their arguments against what they see as an evitable land grab, just like the condemnation proceedings during the 1970s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used legal proceedings to get about half of the 235,000 acres in the current site. Susan Savoia of the Williams Land & Cattle Co. in nearby Walsenburg told WND that it is about the "biggest 'land grab' since the Indians lost their land to the government." On the agenda is an expansion by about 418,000 acres, although the areas of interest including about a million acres. "After promises of never expanding or allowing live fire to occur at the maneuver site, under a BRAC (Base Realignment and Closing) recommendation the Army has AGAIN decided that productive ranch and farm land is insignificant to the world's economy and is planning another 'theft' of land to expand the maneuver site," she wrote. Opponents of the plan have organized in a group at PinonCanyon.com, and are attending public hearings, writing representatives and lobbying for the land that, sometimes, has been passed down from generation to generation since the Spanish Land Grants....
In vitro work raises hopes for wood bison Wood bison have had their habitat destroyed, been hunted to the edge of extinction and been infected with debilitating diseases. Now Canadian researchers are hoping to use modern-day reproductive technologies to create test-tube bison in an attempt to turn back the clock for the country's largest land mammal. In a groundbreaking experiment, scientists recently salvaged testes and ovaries from bison in the Northwest Territories, which were sent to slaughter. The animals were sick, but their genetic material is disease-free and a boon to scientists desperate to maintain diversity in dwindling bison bloodlines. Eggs were extracted in an Alberta laboratory and fertilized with sperm in a culture dish. Now, 27 bison embryos and 780 sperm samples (including some taken from live animals) are frozen in liquid nitrogen, waiting to be implanted in surrogate bison cows. A male wood bison can grow to 3.8 metres in length, stand 1.8 metres at the shoulder and tip the scale at one tonne. Wood bison, notable for a massive hump at the shoulder, are not to be confused with the smaller and more numerous plains bison, but interbreeding on habitats that overlap has added to the confusion....
Yosemite makeover put on hold over concerns for scenic river Ambitious plans to remodel lodging, move a road and expand campsites in Yosemite National Park are on hold until officials prepare a better plan to protect the Merced River, which runs through the heart of the park, a judge ruled. Two conservation groups celebrated Friday's ruling, which effectively halts about $60 million in construction projects for at least two years, as a major environmental victory. Yosemite officials, still reeling from the decision, said it could have "huge negative impacts" on the park's efforts to accommodate the 3 million visitors who travel there each year. "The fact that now we can't repave a road, with winter coming on, is just devastating," said Scott Gediman, a park spokesman. "Sure you can argue about campgrounds or building the lodge, but what about when you've got paving on a road that's literally falling apart?" The order, issued in a U.S. District Court in Fresno, directs the park service to immediately stop nine projects included in the Yosemite Valley Plan, a grand scheme to develop the park's amenities that has been the subject of a lengthy legal battle....
Female Leader Would Be First for Navajos One candidate in Tuesday's Navajo Nation presidential election promises accountability and staunch protection of tribal land. The other vows to build on the reservation's economic progress in the past four years. But in the race between incumbent Joe Shirley Jr. and challenger Lynda Lovejoy, the overriding issue is sex. A win would make Lovejoy the first female leader on the largest Indian reservation in the United States, which extends into New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. "She is a woman, and that is going to be an issue no matter what her stance on policy," said Dale Mason, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Mexico at Gallup. "She represents something entirely new." Lovejoy, a former New Mexico state lawmaker and current member of the Public Regulation Commission, hopes to unseat Shirley, 58, a former tribal council delegate who has been leading the tribe for four years....
Buffalo ranches won’t receive drought aid The buffalo on the Limpert ranch are nearly out of grass. The stock dams on the ranch south of Harding County’s Slim Buttes are bone dry. Buffalo are hardy animals, able to stand up to weather extremes, but they still need to eat and drink. This year’s drought has been tough on the buffalo and even tougher on buffalo ranchers such as Sandy and Jacki Limpert. With stunted pastures and virtually no hay crop, buffalo ranchers in this region, like cattle ranchers, are spending tens of thousands of dollars to feed their herds. Others have sold off animals. The Limperts are among buffalo ranchers miffed that they were left out of the recent federal drought aid for livestock producers. State ag officials said the meager amount of money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture would have been spread too thin if they had extended it to other livestock besides breeding herds of cattle and sheep....
Ranches work as retreats for rich Wealthy absentee owners are converting more of the West's ranches and farms into personal hunting and fishing playgrounds, including areas near scenic Yellowstone National Park. Well-heeled outsiders, dubbed "amenity ranchers," are not a new phenomenon, but their growing appetite for these retreats is. Even as housing prices slump in cities and suburbs, the market flourishes for getaways with hundreds or thousands of acres of mountain, forest or prairie. Two retailers of hunting and fishing gear, Cabela's and Orvis, have even launched operations to sell dream properties. "Since we already offer everything that sportsmen and women need to succeed in the field, why not make the field itself more accessible?" says David Nelson, manager of Cabela's Trophy Properties. A study published last month by researchers at the University of Colorado, Oregon State University and New Zealand's University of Otago details the growth of trophy ranches. It analyzed ranch sales around Yellowstone in 10 Montana and Wyoming counties from 1990 to 2001. Just 26% of those who bought parcels 400 acres or larger were traditional ranchers. Nearly 40% were "amenity" buyers — millionaire out-of-towners who don't rely on the ranch to make a living, the report said. The rest were investors, part-time ranchers, developers and others....
Stockmen don’t cotton to livestock registration The government’s drive to register places that house livestock to guard against disease and bioterrorism is meeting resistance from stockmen. The Department of Agriculture is pushing everyone from farmers to veterinarians to register. Officials say the information would help them slow or halt the spread of mad cow disease, avian flu or another killer infection. For Rob Alexander, a cow-calf rancher in Elbert County, the program could be just another drain on his already wafer-thin profit margin. “I have to buy this new tool to put a tag in the ear, and then I have to buy new software to scan the tags,” he said. “Will it make my life more complicated? Yes. Am I excited about that? No. To the producer who’s on the short end of the stick, this smells like a rat, because most of the burden is going to be on us.” Alexander, who hasn’t registered his ranch, is a Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Foundation board member and wonders how the program will affect rodeos and the contractors that provide rodeo stock. He’s also curious about its impact on county and state fairs; his daughter shows 4-H calves. Joel Franz of Burlington, a cattle rancher for 50 years, is like many of his friends. He hasn’t signed up his ranch and takes issue with a voluntary program he said pushes registration through 4-Hers and with bribes. Some states offer cash to register, he said. “There is no law that says it has to be done,” he said. “Not by anybody.”....
Creekstone answers USDA in court over mad cow testing Creekstone Farms Premium Beef has answered the U.S. Department of Agriculture's court documents opposing the company's motion for summary judgment in its lawsuit againstUSDA. Creekstone sued the USDA in March for refusing to allow the Arkansas City beef processor to voluntarily test all the cattle it slaughters for BSE, commonly called mad cow disease. USDA officials have told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that Creekstone's case is now largely moot because Japan and Korea have re-opened their borders to U.S. imports. Several countries had banned imports of U.S. beef because of concerns over mad cow. The USDA maintains that it has the right to regulate private testing for BSE on the basis of a 100-year-old law intended to stop the sale of bogus hog cholera serums to Midwest farmers. In its filing, Creekstone maintains that the USDA is using the law in a way it was never intended, not to protect ranchers from suppliers of bogus serums but to regulate competition among beef processors. Creekstone's filing also maintains that the company is seeking to test 100 percent of its beef for BSE to enhance its brand reputation and to make it possible to sell beef for higher prices in both domestic and foreign markets....
Plan to create human-cow embryos UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs. Researchers from Newcastle University and Kings College, London, have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a three-year licence. The hybrid human-bovine embryos would be used for stem cell research and would not be allowed to develop for more than a few days. But critics say it is unethical and potentially dangerous....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Nevada’s Family Ranches Go the Way of the Old West In Nevada, the fastest-growing state in the country, family ranches — veritable symbols of the Old West — are disappearing. “We are losing our culture,” said Devere Dressler, 55, a fifth-generation rancher whose family has sold off all but 150 acres here in the Carson Valley in northern Nevada, home to some of the state’s oldest ranches and some of the newest mansions. Once, the Dresslers owned 20,000 acres, but economic realities clashed with romantic ideals, and family members have sold most of the land, including large chunks for a housing development called, with a bit of paradox, Gardnerville Ranchos. Steve White, hanging on to a nearly 100-year-old 150-acre dairy farm in sight of trophy homes sprouting in the surrounding fields, scoffs at the changing valley. They are nice people, Mr. White concludes of the newcomers, many of them retirees, commuters from Carson City and Reno, and casino workers and ski enthusiasts from Lake Tahoe, just over the other side of the Sierra Nevada that loom above the landscape. These “ranchettes,” he said as if describing a new weed, “are all around us now.” All over the West, city and suburb have seeped into farmland and desert, answering a demand for housing, jobs and business in settings befitting a Bierstadt painting while also raising qualms about taming the roughness that makes the region so attractive. Those same dynamics are playing out here in the Carson Valley, only more so. Aside from losing a way of life, the loss of ranching has raised questions statewide, particularly in the northern reaches where the working ranches predominate, over the pace of development and whether there will be enough water and other resources to sustain it....
Pombo race is the fight of his career Only a few months ago, most savvy political analysts had concluded that beating seven-term Republican Congressman Richard Pombo in his comfortable Northern California district was Jerry McNerney's impossible dream. The little-known Democrat McNerney, they said, may as well have been tilting at the wind turbines in Altamont Pass, which separates the solidly liberal San Francisco Bay Area from the largely conservative exurban ranchland that is Pombo's stronghold. But charges of political corruption and environmental mismanagement against Pombo, the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee, would not go away. Hundreds of political volunteers and environmental activists poured into the district from the Bay Area to work for McNerney, 55, a soft-spoken mathematics PhD and expert on alternative energy. As Tuesday's election approaches, California's 11th Congressional District is highly competitive, the most likely of the state's 53 congressional seats to change hands Tuesday....
First lady defends Pombo's record The Republican chairman of the House Resources Committee, who has faced of wave of attack ads from national conservation groups, is an "enthusiastic steward" of the environment and a friend of wildlife, first lady Laura Bush told GOP supporters Friday. The first lady defended the environmental record of seven-term U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, seeking to give him a boost in his unexpectedly tight re-election campaign. Environmental groups have spent heavily to defeat the California congressman, angered by what they say are anti-environmental policies he has championed as the committee's chairman. Appearing with Pombo at a campaign rally, Bush told supporters that the congressman has led efforts to promote alternative fuels and reform the Endangered Species Act. She said the act has created barriers to repairing the aging levees that crisscross Pombo's district, which stretches from the agricultural plains of the Central Valley to eastern San Francisco Bay area suburbs. "Congressman Pombo is an enthusiastic steward of our country's natural resources," Bush said in Pleasanton, about 40 miles east of San Francisco. "Because of his leadership, wildlife, property and people will be protected from dangerous flooding."....
'Alias' actress Jennifer Garner joins campaign to oust Pombo The fiercely competitive race for the 11th Congressional District seat got a jolt of star power Saturday as actress Jennifer Garner headlined an environmental rally dedicated to ousting Republican Rep. Richard Pombo. Garner said the battle between Pombo and Democrat Jerry McNerney was "a fight bigger than the 11th district." "This is a fight for our land and natural heritage," the "Alias" star told a crowd of about 300 gathered in a downtown park, many of them waving "McNerney for Congress" signs. The rally in Pleasanton, about 45 miles east of San Francisco, was organized by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. It is one of several national environmental groups that spent more than $1 million combined to run television ads attacking Pombo's record....
State officially added to mountain lion expansion map In August 2006, the nationally recognized Cougar Network announced that it was, for the first time, including the North Dakota Badlands region into its “big picture” map of the known mountain lion range in the United States. The decision was made based on North Dakota Game and Fish Department data confirming that breeding mountain lions have recolonized that area of the state. The Cougar Network is a nonprofit research organization whose board of directors includes some of the most-experienced research biologists in the United States. According to the Network’s mission statement, “.....we are especially interested in the phenomenon of expanding cougar populations into their former habitat.” For the past 100 years, the known mountain lion range in the United States has been west of the prairie states. In recent years, however, biologists differ as to the reasons why mountain lions have been making a fairly rapid comeback. Many knowledgeable mountain lion researchers believe that recolonization of the lions’ former range is well under way....
Operation Indian Country Editors' note: During the World War II era, the federal government condemned and leased hundreds of thousands of Indian acres for military use, much of it never returned to Indian hands. In this series, Indian Country Today spoke with Native people affected by the takings, many of whom served their country in wartime, lost their land to the government, and still harbor strong feelings on the matter. Indian time is slow. But in Washington they have a well-kept secret: the father of Indian time is ''government time.'' Today, much of the Indian estate taken when World War II veterans were still in their teens remains unsafe, unusable, unreturned or simply unremembered. The Navajo have fared better with lands at Fort Wingate depot, albeit 70 years down the road. Soon to be divided between the Navajo and Zuni, some 20,000 acres are at stake. ''We're not going backwards, so there's no need for opening these areas for range land use,'' said Charlie Davis, a Navajo rancher in the Wingate area. He'd like to see a veterans' hospital and nursing home on depot land. ''It shouldn't be something we fight on,'' he urged. ''It's something we should all have access to,'' including veterans of all colors and creeds. ''It's about more than who owns what.'' Annie Yazzie, who herded sheep on Wingate land long ago, agreed. ''Who am I to say I want that land returned to me where we're a growing community here, and we're crowded? How is that going to help the larger population by stating, 'This is where I was born. This is where I lived?''' Uranium mining north of Church Rock has contaminated land with high radon levels, including a flat where the Navajo wanted to build a large housing project. As a result, the Church Rock chapter covets former depot land for housing, provided it can be fully decontaminated. Yazzie is worried by relatives who want portions of her family's old land once the depot is handed over, a sentiment echoed by other families concerned that the rush for land may sabotage larger tribal efforts....
Hole in the dike? When a reservoir containing coal-bed methane water leaked in Sheridan County, it caused contaminated water to resurface on a hillside below. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality issued a notice of violation to the company responsible because it was considered an illegal, or unpermitted discharge of water. But when that same leak traveled down to another reservoir which in turn leaked and saturated an alfalfa field below it, the DEQ could do nothing about the damage. The water didn't resurface this time, but remained in the subsurface. Technically, it was not an illegal surface discharge in the eyes of DEQ. In another well-known case, rancher Kenny Claybaugh has watched the culmination of multiple upstream coal-bed methane water discharges transform a productive bottomland meadow on his property into a lake. This continues to happen year after year as DEQ and the state engineer continue to explain that neither is legally responsible for either preventing or rectifying the situation. "We just permitted another discharge that is showing up on Claybaugh's property because we could only look at water quality. ... But that's not the problem. It's the water quantity," DEQ water quality administrator John Wagner told members of a special legislative task force on Thursday. Several members of the Coalbed Natural Gas Water Use Task Force agreed that it may take a change in the law to fill this apparent regulatory hole that exists between DEQ and the state engineer's office....
California officials propose California Endangered Species Act Exemption for Klamath River In the Klamath River Basin these days environmental news is dominated by talk about dam removal and, occasionally, new restrictions on fishing. But now another issue is poised to compete for the headlines. The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) announced late last month that it plans to give a hundred or so farmers and alfalfa ranchers in Siskiyou County just south of the Oregon border an exemption from the California Endangered Species Act. Released without fanfare, the announcement caused barely a ripple in the regional media. But below the surface a virtual tsunami may be forming. Ever since Klamath River Coho were listed as “threatened”, Fish and Game officials have been meeting behind closed doors with Scott and Shasta River irrigation interests. The irrigators are concerned because their dams, diversions and irrigation pumps have regularly killed thousands of salmon and steelhead. They want to be protected from prosecution for killing Coho while continuing irrigation practices which virtually dry up Scott and Shasta rivers and streams in drought years. Klamath River Basin Tribes, conservation and fishing groups have been nervous about the closed door meetings. As downstream interests, they asked to be included in the talks only to be rebuffed by CDFG and the irrigators. Now the reasons for the secret meetings are beginning to come to light. While the actual Endangered Species Act exemption – technical known as an “Take Permit” - has not been released pending review by irrigator and state lawyers, preliminary environmental documents indicate that, while ranchers and growers will exclude fish from irrigation ditches, they will be allowed to continue dewatering the Scott and Shasta Rivers. If fish need water, the environmental documents indicate, the irrigators will consider renting water to CDFG on an annual basis. In return the CDFG will continue to have access to river sections that pass through private ranches and alfalfa fields – something that some ranchers have denied to CDFG since the Coho were listed as threatened....
Elk preserves elicit criticism from hunters, wildlife managers A self-described "mountain man" with a beauty queen daughter has no problem with hunters shooting trophy elk fenced in on his 168-acre ranch. But the outside world crashed in on Rex Rammell recently when a bear dug a hole that breached that fence, allowing what he estimates as about 100 of his 160 elk to escape his private hunting farm in August, the largest such breakout in state memory. Suddenly Rammell, who casts himself as an American West iconoclast whose forebears were homesteaders in the 1800s, was at the center of a regional tempest about the ethics of elk hunting preserves. Idaho Gov. James Risch ordered a special hunt to kill the escaped elk, angering Rammell, who's now charged with obstructing a game officer and poking a participating citizen hunter in the eye. The hunt officially ended last week. So emotional is the issue that the governors of three states tied to Yellowstone National Park, including Idaho, condemned Rammell and his shooting ranch, which is legal in Idaho and is among a growing number of 14 statewide, including one planned by former Denver Bronco Rulon Jones outside Idaho Falls. What triggered an outrage evocative of the old Wild West was concern that a large domestic herd would spread disease to Yellowstone's wild elk just 8 miles away during the rut. Like the buffalo that once blanketed the country, elk suffered near-extermination in the 1800s, but now they number about 1 million and are regarded as a national heritage, conservationists said. Rammell says the state has no right to kill his elk because they're private property, classified like livestock. He adds that he is a veterinarian who has ensured that his domestic elk are disease-free, posing no danger to Yellowstone's animals....
Column - Water war is worth fighting Every day I thank God that I live in the most geographically diverse and breathtakingly beautiful state in the nation. For that reason, I am going to fight like hell alongside those who oppose the Las Vegas water grab. Here's why: We live in the arid West. In fact, we Utahns live in the second driest state in the nation behind Nevada. Although I'm a native Westerner, for all of my life - more than 50 years - I've gone about my pursuit of happiness paying scant attention to the laws of aridity. But the proposed Las Vegas project to build a 285-mile, $2 billion pipeline to pull ground water from aquifers in six basins - part of which lie under Utah lands - to quench the seemingly quenchless thirst of Las Vegas residents jolts me out of my ignorant bliss. Here are the simple facts: We cannot live without water nor can we create water or increase our water supply. In Utah we add one person to our population about every six seconds while our average precipitation remains stubbornly low, and many of the nation's aquifers, which, by the way, pay no attention to state borders, have been steadily declining. You run the numbers....
Agents kill wolf thought to have killed 120 sheep Federal agents have shot a wolf believed responsible for killing about 120 sheep in attacks on ranches in Garfield, McCone and Dawson counties since December 2005. The 106-pound wolf was shot Thursday morning on private land between Jordan and Circle, apparently ending a series of attacks that had area livestock owners on edge for months. There was frequent speculation among wildlife agents and ranchers that the elusive predator was either a wolf or wolf hybrid. Some thought there was more than one animal attacking the sheep. "We do think it was a single animal and this chapter is closed," said Carolyn Sime, head of Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Parks' wolf program. Meanwhile, in Park County, two wolves were shot on Oct. 25 following a confirmation that a calf had been killed by the wolves on a cattle ranch about 10 miles south of Livingston, Sime said. On Wednesday, a landowner in Garfield County reported large canid tracks in deep snow on his property, Sime said. Even though there had been no confirmed reports of wolf attacks for months, USDA Wildlife Services was authorized to search for the animal and kill it. Crews in the air spotted the wolf Thursday morning and shot it....
Idaho game commissioners frustrated over delays Idaho Fish and Game Commissioners continue to express frustration at the federal government’s refusal to quickly remove wolves from endangered species status. ‘‘There is some real frustration,’’ said commission chairman Cameron Wheeler of Ririe. ‘‘The problem is we have responsibility with no authority.’’ At the commission’s meeting in Lewiston on Thursday the group pressed state wildlife biologists to work within the framework of federal rules to thin wolves in areas where elk herds are lagging, The Lewiston Tribune reported. Commissioners said that wolf populations continue to grow by 20 percent each year. They complained of the state’s stalled attempt to get permission to kill wolves in the Lolo Hunting Zone near the Montana border. They directed the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to update and resubmit their request to kill 43 wolves in the Lolo mountains, while also aggressively pushing the federal government to remove wolves from endangered species protection. Commissioner Tony McDermott of Sagle wants to push federal regulators. ‘‘I think it’s time we take some drastic measures as a state,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m tired of not finding any elk in the Lolo.’’....
Grasslands aren't just for raising cattle, researcher says The study of unique grasslands has taken Linda Kennedy from the High Plains of north central Kansas to sky islands of southeast Arizona. While she's spent plenty of time on native grasses that have been grazed by cattle and other livestock for hundreds of years, Kennedy now spends much of her time in work to correct the burdens on grasses that livestock have placed. As the director of the National Audubon Society's Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch, Kennedy has a different perspective about the impact cattle have on a different part of the nation. Kennedy offered her thoughts at a recent master class to rangeland biology students at Fort Hays State University as part of her receiving an alumni achievement award during this year's homecoming festivities. The Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch is an 8,000-acre sanctuary and research facility in southeastern Arizona. The ranch is a treasure trove of information for researchers as a contrast to, say, prairie grasslands. Kennedy said it is a "naïve" ecosystem because it does not have the historic use by large hooved animals that grasslands such as those grazed upon by bison has....
Inquiry brings some anxiety A U.S. Forest Service employee has asked to have an attorney present before answering investigators' questions involving the deaths of five Forest Service firefighters in last month's Esperanza Fire. Anxiety over answering questions may spring from a 2003 fire in Idaho that killed two firefighters and resulted in an incident commander being held criminally liable, investigators said. The incident commander lost his job and was placed on federal probation for 18 months. The commander in Idaho was found liable after an investigation by the office of the inspector general in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service. That same office is now investigating Forest Service employees' actions in the Esperanza Fire. Joe Duran, of the National Federation of Federal Employees, the union that represents all federal employees, said he does not know the identity of the employee in connection with the current fire. Dick Mangan, president of the International Association of Wildland Fire, an association of wildland fire professionals, said the inspector general's involvement has brought a distrust in the investigative process. "Now what we've done is say, 'We think you robbed a bank. Tell us how you did it. But you're still going to go to jail if you cooperate.' " The Esperanza Fire is the only other investigation conducted by the inspector general's office after a 2002 law required the office to investigate fire service deaths caused by fires....
Official says car linked to suspect found near other arsons A car linked to a man charged with setting a wildfire that killed five firefighters was spotted near at least 10 other arsons, according to an official involved in the investigation. Word of the potential connection came Friday as the first funerals were held for members of the five-man U.S. Forest Service crew that was overtaken Oct. 26 as the blaze roared through the San Jacinto Mountains, 90 miles east of Los Angeles. Cameras secretly placed atop utility poles in remote areas captured details of a car registered to a man who said he had sold it to Raymond Lee Oyler months ago, said the official, who requested anonymity because the case was continuing. The official said detectives then began investigating Oyler for a string of arsons and found evidence linking him to last week's deadly fire. The cameras did not catch Oyler setting that fire, the official said. Oyler has been charged with murder and arson. Although prosecutors described the evidence against him as overwhelming, they have not provided many details of the case....
Debate rages over status for Dominguez Canyon Riddell, a volunteer with the Western Colorado Congress who lives in Montrose, said he’s a passionate advocate of permanent protection of Dominguez and nearby canyons, maybe as wilderness, maybe as a national conservation area. That’s a kick in the chaps to others, like gold prospector Marlin Littlefield, who says any sort of protection for public land around Dominguez Canyon is a violation of his rights because it might mean prospecting and off-road vehicles may be banned from there. Dominguez Canyon has been a wilderness study area for nearly two decades. “If they turn that into a national conservation area, it’s as bad, if not worse, than a wilderness area,” said Littlefield, of Crawford. “You can’t pick up a rock and look at it.” That’s important to Littlefield, because he pans for gold along the Gunnison River, and he said he’s afraid the government will ban him from using his motorized suction dredge....
Environmental group call for release of oil shale details An environmental group is accusing the Bureau of Land Management of refusing to release information on proposed oil shale projects in Colorado. Western Resource Advocates said it has sent a letter to Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett protesting the decision not to release comments received on the BLM’s environmental review of three projects proposed in northwestern Colorado. “I think the BLM is trying to avoid scrutiny of the actions that it is proposing until it’s too late,” said Bob Randall, staff attorney for the Boulder-based group. The BLM was expected to issue final decisions on the oil shale research and development leases by the end of October. BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington in Washington said Friday a decision is expected soon and added that the agency will respond to Western Resource Advocates’ Freedom of Information request by the Nov. 8 deadline....
Three lions killed on season’s third day Three more mountain lions n one male, one female and another of which the sex had not been confirmed by news deadline n were killed Friday, according to South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks officials. The three kills on the third day of the 2006 Black Hills mountain lion season brought the season total to four. One was killed Wednesday on the opening day, and none was killed Thursday. GF&P regional supervisor Mike Kintigh, who confirmed Friday’s kills, said he was surprised. “Yeah, things are happening a little faster than I thought they would right now,” he said Friday evening. “I was anticipating a lion or so today. But to have three come in today surprises me a little.” He could only confirm the sex of two of the cats -- a male and a female. The sex of the third cat was unknown, as it hadn’t been brought into the GF&P regional office by news deadline. The Black Hills season will end either Dec. 31 or when eight females or 25 total lions are shot. Depending on the sex of the third cat, at least two of the allotted eight females have been killed....
Environmental coalition digs in at Tejon Ranch Developers of the largest chunk of privately owned wild lands remaining in Southern California and representatives from the nation's most powerful environmental groups gathered at a special summit last spring to consider a deal. Under it, environmentalists would forgo legal challenges if the proposed 23,000-home Centennial development on Tejon Ranch were reconfigured to more than double the amount of land set aside for a preserve. The May 19 meeting was supposed to have produced agreement on a tangle of thorny issues at the center of the negotiations. It failed. Tejon Ranch Co. rejected the proposal, opting to continue working with officials in Los Angeles and Kern counties on plans for Centennial and two other developments on the 270,000-acre ranch. The company wants to develop houses, resorts, industrial parks and golf courses on 5% of the property and set aside 100,000 acres of backcountry as a natural preserve, creating the biggest conservation area carved from private land in California. There are no specific plans for the rest of the ranch land....
Court Invalidates U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Exclusion of Nearly 900,000 Acres of Vernal Pool Critical Habitat Yesterday, Federal District Court Judge William B. Shubb issued a major ruling overturning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) decision to omit 900,000 acres in 11 counties from its 2005 final rule designating critical habitat for 15 imperiled vernal pool plants and animals. Vernal pools are seasonal wetlands found throughout California. Judge Shubb also rejected industry's attempt to overturn the protections for more than 800,000 acres that FWS did protect as critical habitat. The court agreed with the six conservation organizations involved in the case that FWS failed to look at whether its decision to eliminate critical habitat protections for vernal pool grasslands in Butte, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Monterey, Placer, Sacramento, Shasta, Solano, Stanislaus, and Tehama counties affected the future recovery of the vernal pool species. In sending FWS back to the drawing board, Judge Shubb accepted the central argument of the conservation organizations that in excluding vernal pool critical habitat within 11 California counties, FWS continued its long history of failing to consider the essential importance of such designation to the ultimate recovery of the vernal pool species....
New Approach to Protect Private Property Rights Landowners from across the country will be meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, November 10-11, 2006, to learn brand new techniques to protect their private property rights. Hosted by three national property rights organizations, the two-day event will offer courses that teach individual citizens strategies to fight their local battles one by one. Today, citizens realize the issues that threaten their liberty and property rights, are no longer something they only read about in the newspapers. They are personally affected by zoning, park expansions, transportation corridors, endangered species, smart growth (sustainability) issues, wetland restrictions, conservation easements, access restrictions, grazing limitations, and hundreds of other regulatory schemes. “It’s the landowners who have learned how to organize and fight strategically that have had the greatest successes at protecting their land and communities from federal, state and local anti-private property measures,” stated Margaret Byfield, executive director of Stewards of the Range, the main sponsor of the meeting. “The key is teaching people how to re-think their issues and give them the tools to fight their specific battles.” That’s what the “Unite to Fight” conference is all about – winning locally. Fred Kelly Grant has been teaching these strategies for over 10 years and has been tremendously successful. A former prosecutor, who brought down organized crime figures in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of the most ingenious land-use consultants in the West, will be teaching landowners his secrets on how to win locally....
OSU, OHSU study of 'male-oriented' rams gains high-profile foe The tale of Oregon's gay sheep experiment just grew stranger. On Thursday, tennis great Martina Navratilova sent letters asking the presidents of OSU and OHSU to end what she calls "homophobic and cruel experiments." "Many gays and lesbians," she wrote, "stand to be deeply offended by the social implications of these tests." For years, researchers at Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University searched in relative obscurity for biological differences that might distinguish rams who mount ewes from rams who mount rams. Roughly 5 percent to 8 percent of rams are "male-oriented," say the researchers, who avoid the term "gay" as being too human-focused. The research results include a 2002 finding that a part of the brain in ram-oriented rams is different than in other rams. Researcher Charles Roselli is now leading a follow-up study to explore those differences, partly by changing hormone levels in pregnant sheep to see if that affects the eventual brain development and partner preference of unborn rams....
'Wool women' plan Wyoming mill Although they laughingly refer to themselves as “domesticated hippies” looking for fun ways to turn their creativity into something lucrative, Valerie Spanos and Karen Hostetler are not to be taken lightly. They are on the verge of establishing a woolen mill in Buffalo, a mill which will take Wyoming’s raw wool and convert it into marketable products. Their first goal was to find a mill that would take a raw fleece and make it into marketable products, such as baby sweaters, socks, quilt batting and yarn. They bought a bale of wool from Peter John Camino, a local sheep rancher, only to discover the nearest mill was in Canada. About nine months later, their order arrived in Buffalo: quilt batting, two queen size comforters and skeins of all-natural yarn. “It was the softest, most beautiful yarn you ever saw, soft enough for a baby blanket,” Hostetler said. “We marketed it right here in Buffalo and everyone loved it.” Thus, the Mountain Meadow Wool Company was born. Another bale of raw wool was soon on its way to Canada, but because it took so long to get anything back, Spanos and Hostetler decided to investigate starting a mill of their own....
A look at the historic Carlsbad Irrigation District building, then and now In 1890, the county seat was changed from Seven Rivers to Eddy by a vote of 331 to 81, the prairie grass was so high hay could be cut from it and the first election was held in the new county of Eddy on Nov. 4 of that year. The town of Eddy was on the move. It was also the year a new building was built on the corner of Fox and Canal streets that was home to the Pecos Irrigation and Investment Company, the precursor to the Carlsbad Irrigation District. Today, 116 years later, the building continues to be home to the Carlsbad Irrigation District, but sadly, it is in need of repair and restoration if it is to continue to be a historic landmark. The building was placed on the National Historic Register in 1965. To save the building, located on the city's main thoroughfare, it will take thousands of dollars, which CID officials say the agency does not have....
Girl lassoes dream The Christmas list of Sheridan Lintz may be short this year, because she already received the best present ever. The 8-year-old, who has loved horses since she was a tiny tot, recently won a horse of her own in a national essay contest. The pretty filly, a sorrel quarter horse, is aptly named Dream. "I always wished for a horse at Christmas, Easter and birthdays," Sheridan said. "I got my Christmas wish early, after a lot of hard work." Sheridan, the daughter of Eric and Jenni Lintz of north Fort Collins, is a home-schooled third-grader. She won second place in the contest, sponsored by a private organization called Kids 4 Horses. The theme of this year's essay contest was "How Horses Help Children and Adults with Disabilities." Sheridan had seen a TV broadcast about horses helping injured soldiers, so she went online and found that information for her essay. She also used the public library for research and conducted her first-ever interview. She cited her references at the end of her work. In the end, Sheridan's five-page essay (reprinted on page 16) was the longest paper she had ever written. Now, Sheridan could write another essay on a favorite saying of her dad's: "If you work really hard, it always pays off."....
Ranch culture branded into hides of Western ski areas A 6-foot-wide pair of painted circles mark the snow. In the center of each stands a woman clad in a cowboy hat and full-length duster. Ahead, coiled ropes hang from fence posts. Below, horses await with saddles at their sides. The competition is set to begin. A group of ProRodeo riders, fresh from Denver's National Western Stock Show, lines up at the head of a Steamboat run. Competing in pairs, the ski-riding cowboys will charge down the slope, barrel-racing through slalom gates and flying over a 4-foot berm, hoping not to crash like a bronco-bucked buckaroo. 'Pokes who reach the bottom will attempt to lasso the lass and saddle the horse, or at least keep from sliding under it. The finish line lies just beyond. "We really don't think about the risk when we get involved with something like this," says bull rider Justin Hathaway. "That's just the cowboy way." For more than three decades, Steamboat Springs has hosted the annual Cowboy Downhill competition, and in this northern Colorado community, a chaps-on-chairlifts event seems appropriate. After all, Steamboat's roots are ranching....
Christmas Valley rancher remembers career as cowboy stunt man Floyd Baze is a man of many alter egos. Over the years, he has worn wigs and pasted on beards while successfully passing himself off as Lee Marvin, William Holden, Jack Lord, Robert Preston and Neville Brand, among others. It's all been legal. For 25 years Baze was a Hollywood stunt man in Westerns, mostly doing horseback stunts deemed too dangerous for the stars. "To me it was all business," Baze said. "I don't think I'd call it glamor. I'd figure out the easiest, the best and the safest (way) for me and the horse." For the 72-year-old Baze, life on horseback in the movies was just a continuation of the life he's always lived. "When I was working in the pictures a guy asked me (about) the first time I ever rode a horse. I told him I couldn't remember," Baze said. Baze was born and raised in Eastern Washington's Yakima Valley, where his father, Dock, raised race horses — always at least 800. Baze was on horseback as a youngster, and riding in rodeos at age 13....
The charms of cowboy speak It's been a good two or three weeks, getting the fall cattle roundup done, and there's enough stories right there to fill a few columns, but the thought strikes me that, just as there is in every business, there's a certain way ranchers talk and think, a way that says who they are better than any name tag or public introduction could ever do. So, it's a thrill when I hear guys like lifelong valley rancher Bill Fender holler, "Where the hell you hidin'," in a big, booming voice, knowing he'll get on my case for being in the house in the first place. He's just topped 80 and is, of course, pleased to see me at home because he wants to visit a little, maybe impart a bit of knowledge my way, with any luck. "I saw those cows coming from a long ways off, along the ridge behind Mac's house up there in Section 36. You know where I mean? Hell yes, ya better. The long, afternoon sun reflected off their backs or I might not have seen them at all in that brush. Wouldn't you know, as I sat there waiting for them to hit the middle gate into our upper place - you know, the 240 - one of the purtiest sunsets I've ever witnessed came over the sky. You've seen 'em, I know you have. I should've gone over to the Hell's Hole to look for more cows, but it was a-getting dark and that damned sunset was enough to get me home, anyway." Over coffee with a good friend, I hear, "Isn't it a pisser? People who've never owned a cow in their lives cut through your property without permission and then try to tell you how to run your business 'cause they stepped in some cow shit. Not to mention the government, always pryin' its nose into what you're doin'. Seems like you catch hell from all sides, people wantin' to run you out of the business. It's not like we're gettin' rich at this game. It's a lot of damned work, and we're sure as hell not goofin' off."....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Curious cow learns lessons of flying This is the story of a curious cow who lived on Mr. Marvin's farm in the kingdom of Kansas. Her name was Yvonne. She was of Scottish and English heritage, but farmer Marv guessed that she had some Native American Pronghorn antelope in her lineage because everyone knows that antelopes are very curious. Farmer Marv had a large old-fashioned barn with a second-story hay mow, a high pitched roof and a rooster weather vane on the tallest peak. Yvonne was piddling around the barnyard one fine day doing her hooves, trying to find her cuticles and curling her switch. "How did that rooster get on top of the barn?" she wondered. "Well," said Peggy, her best hen friend, "I suppose he walked. He could not fly because the Poultry Protection League made it illegal for us to fly higher than a chicken wire fence." "Hmmm," said Curious Cow as she wandered into the barn, "Let's see." She walked between two old draft horse feed troughs, the milk cow stanchion, the rebuilt tractor and the sacks of protein supplement to a steep set of wooden stairs....
Nevada’s Family Ranches Go the Way of the Old West In Nevada, the fastest-growing state in the country, family ranches — veritable symbols of the Old West — are disappearing. “We are losing our culture,” said Devere Dressler, 55, a fifth-generation rancher whose family has sold off all but 150 acres here in the Carson Valley in northern Nevada, home to some of the state’s oldest ranches and some of the newest mansions. Once, the Dresslers owned 20,000 acres, but economic realities clashed with romantic ideals, and family members have sold most of the land, including large chunks for a housing development called, with a bit of paradox, Gardnerville Ranchos. Steve White, hanging on to a nearly 100-year-old 150-acre dairy farm in sight of trophy homes sprouting in the surrounding fields, scoffs at the changing valley. They are nice people, Mr. White concludes of the newcomers, many of them retirees, commuters from Carson City and Reno, and casino workers and ski enthusiasts from Lake Tahoe, just over the other side of the Sierra Nevada that loom above the landscape. These “ranchettes,” he said as if describing a new weed, “are all around us now.” All over the West, city and suburb have seeped into farmland and desert, answering a demand for housing, jobs and business in settings befitting a Bierstadt painting while also raising qualms about taming the roughness that makes the region so attractive. Those same dynamics are playing out here in the Carson Valley, only more so. Aside from losing a way of life, the loss of ranching has raised questions statewide, particularly in the northern reaches where the working ranches predominate, over the pace of development and whether there will be enough water and other resources to sustain it....
Pombo race is the fight of his career Only a few months ago, most savvy political analysts had concluded that beating seven-term Republican Congressman Richard Pombo in his comfortable Northern California district was Jerry McNerney's impossible dream. The little-known Democrat McNerney, they said, may as well have been tilting at the wind turbines in Altamont Pass, which separates the solidly liberal San Francisco Bay Area from the largely conservative exurban ranchland that is Pombo's stronghold. But charges of political corruption and environmental mismanagement against Pombo, the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee, would not go away. Hundreds of political volunteers and environmental activists poured into the district from the Bay Area to work for McNerney, 55, a soft-spoken mathematics PhD and expert on alternative energy. As Tuesday's election approaches, California's 11th Congressional District is highly competitive, the most likely of the state's 53 congressional seats to change hands Tuesday....
First lady defends Pombo's record The Republican chairman of the House Resources Committee, who has faced of wave of attack ads from national conservation groups, is an "enthusiastic steward" of the environment and a friend of wildlife, first lady Laura Bush told GOP supporters Friday. The first lady defended the environmental record of seven-term U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, seeking to give him a boost in his unexpectedly tight re-election campaign. Environmental groups have spent heavily to defeat the California congressman, angered by what they say are anti-environmental policies he has championed as the committee's chairman. Appearing with Pombo at a campaign rally, Bush told supporters that the congressman has led efforts to promote alternative fuels and reform the Endangered Species Act. She said the act has created barriers to repairing the aging levees that crisscross Pombo's district, which stretches from the agricultural plains of the Central Valley to eastern San Francisco Bay area suburbs. "Congressman Pombo is an enthusiastic steward of our country's natural resources," Bush said in Pleasanton, about 40 miles east of San Francisco. "Because of his leadership, wildlife, property and people will be protected from dangerous flooding."....
'Alias' actress Jennifer Garner joins campaign to oust Pombo The fiercely competitive race for the 11th Congressional District seat got a jolt of star power Saturday as actress Jennifer Garner headlined an environmental rally dedicated to ousting Republican Rep. Richard Pombo. Garner said the battle between Pombo and Democrat Jerry McNerney was "a fight bigger than the 11th district." "This is a fight for our land and natural heritage," the "Alias" star told a crowd of about 300 gathered in a downtown park, many of them waving "McNerney for Congress" signs. The rally in Pleasanton, about 45 miles east of San Francisco, was organized by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. It is one of several national environmental groups that spent more than $1 million combined to run television ads attacking Pombo's record....
State officially added to mountain lion expansion map In August 2006, the nationally recognized Cougar Network announced that it was, for the first time, including the North Dakota Badlands region into its “big picture” map of the known mountain lion range in the United States. The decision was made based on North Dakota Game and Fish Department data confirming that breeding mountain lions have recolonized that area of the state. The Cougar Network is a nonprofit research organization whose board of directors includes some of the most-experienced research biologists in the United States. According to the Network’s mission statement, “.....we are especially interested in the phenomenon of expanding cougar populations into their former habitat.” For the past 100 years, the known mountain lion range in the United States has been west of the prairie states. In recent years, however, biologists differ as to the reasons why mountain lions have been making a fairly rapid comeback. Many knowledgeable mountain lion researchers believe that recolonization of the lions’ former range is well under way....
Operation Indian Country Editors' note: During the World War II era, the federal government condemned and leased hundreds of thousands of Indian acres for military use, much of it never returned to Indian hands. In this series, Indian Country Today spoke with Native people affected by the takings, many of whom served their country in wartime, lost their land to the government, and still harbor strong feelings on the matter. Indian time is slow. But in Washington they have a well-kept secret: the father of Indian time is ''government time.'' Today, much of the Indian estate taken when World War II veterans were still in their teens remains unsafe, unusable, unreturned or simply unremembered. The Navajo have fared better with lands at Fort Wingate depot, albeit 70 years down the road. Soon to be divided between the Navajo and Zuni, some 20,000 acres are at stake. ''We're not going backwards, so there's no need for opening these areas for range land use,'' said Charlie Davis, a Navajo rancher in the Wingate area. He'd like to see a veterans' hospital and nursing home on depot land. ''It shouldn't be something we fight on,'' he urged. ''It's something we should all have access to,'' including veterans of all colors and creeds. ''It's about more than who owns what.'' Annie Yazzie, who herded sheep on Wingate land long ago, agreed. ''Who am I to say I want that land returned to me where we're a growing community here, and we're crowded? How is that going to help the larger population by stating, 'This is where I was born. This is where I lived?''' Uranium mining north of Church Rock has contaminated land with high radon levels, including a flat where the Navajo wanted to build a large housing project. As a result, the Church Rock chapter covets former depot land for housing, provided it can be fully decontaminated. Yazzie is worried by relatives who want portions of her family's old land once the depot is handed over, a sentiment echoed by other families concerned that the rush for land may sabotage larger tribal efforts....
Hole in the dike? When a reservoir containing coal-bed methane water leaked in Sheridan County, it caused contaminated water to resurface on a hillside below. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality issued a notice of violation to the company responsible because it was considered an illegal, or unpermitted discharge of water. But when that same leak traveled down to another reservoir which in turn leaked and saturated an alfalfa field below it, the DEQ could do nothing about the damage. The water didn't resurface this time, but remained in the subsurface. Technically, it was not an illegal surface discharge in the eyes of DEQ. In another well-known case, rancher Kenny Claybaugh has watched the culmination of multiple upstream coal-bed methane water discharges transform a productive bottomland meadow on his property into a lake. This continues to happen year after year as DEQ and the state engineer continue to explain that neither is legally responsible for either preventing or rectifying the situation. "We just permitted another discharge that is showing up on Claybaugh's property because we could only look at water quality. ... But that's not the problem. It's the water quantity," DEQ water quality administrator John Wagner told members of a special legislative task force on Thursday. Several members of the Coalbed Natural Gas Water Use Task Force agreed that it may take a change in the law to fill this apparent regulatory hole that exists between DEQ and the state engineer's office....
California officials propose California Endangered Species Act Exemption for Klamath River In the Klamath River Basin these days environmental news is dominated by talk about dam removal and, occasionally, new restrictions on fishing. But now another issue is poised to compete for the headlines. The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) announced late last month that it plans to give a hundred or so farmers and alfalfa ranchers in Siskiyou County just south of the Oregon border an exemption from the California Endangered Species Act. Released without fanfare, the announcement caused barely a ripple in the regional media. But below the surface a virtual tsunami may be forming. Ever since Klamath River Coho were listed as “threatened”, Fish and Game officials have been meeting behind closed doors with Scott and Shasta River irrigation interests. The irrigators are concerned because their dams, diversions and irrigation pumps have regularly killed thousands of salmon and steelhead. They want to be protected from prosecution for killing Coho while continuing irrigation practices which virtually dry up Scott and Shasta rivers and streams in drought years. Klamath River Basin Tribes, conservation and fishing groups have been nervous about the closed door meetings. As downstream interests, they asked to be included in the talks only to be rebuffed by CDFG and the irrigators. Now the reasons for the secret meetings are beginning to come to light. While the actual Endangered Species Act exemption – technical known as an “Take Permit” - has not been released pending review by irrigator and state lawyers, preliminary environmental documents indicate that, while ranchers and growers will exclude fish from irrigation ditches, they will be allowed to continue dewatering the Scott and Shasta Rivers. If fish need water, the environmental documents indicate, the irrigators will consider renting water to CDFG on an annual basis. In return the CDFG will continue to have access to river sections that pass through private ranches and alfalfa fields – something that some ranchers have denied to CDFG since the Coho were listed as threatened....
Elk preserves elicit criticism from hunters, wildlife managers A self-described "mountain man" with a beauty queen daughter has no problem with hunters shooting trophy elk fenced in on his 168-acre ranch. But the outside world crashed in on Rex Rammell recently when a bear dug a hole that breached that fence, allowing what he estimates as about 100 of his 160 elk to escape his private hunting farm in August, the largest such breakout in state memory. Suddenly Rammell, who casts himself as an American West iconoclast whose forebears were homesteaders in the 1800s, was at the center of a regional tempest about the ethics of elk hunting preserves. Idaho Gov. James Risch ordered a special hunt to kill the escaped elk, angering Rammell, who's now charged with obstructing a game officer and poking a participating citizen hunter in the eye. The hunt officially ended last week. So emotional is the issue that the governors of three states tied to Yellowstone National Park, including Idaho, condemned Rammell and his shooting ranch, which is legal in Idaho and is among a growing number of 14 statewide, including one planned by former Denver Bronco Rulon Jones outside Idaho Falls. What triggered an outrage evocative of the old Wild West was concern that a large domestic herd would spread disease to Yellowstone's wild elk just 8 miles away during the rut. Like the buffalo that once blanketed the country, elk suffered near-extermination in the 1800s, but now they number about 1 million and are regarded as a national heritage, conservationists said. Rammell says the state has no right to kill his elk because they're private property, classified like livestock. He adds that he is a veterinarian who has ensured that his domestic elk are disease-free, posing no danger to Yellowstone's animals....
Column - Water war is worth fighting Every day I thank God that I live in the most geographically diverse and breathtakingly beautiful state in the nation. For that reason, I am going to fight like hell alongside those who oppose the Las Vegas water grab. Here's why: We live in the arid West. In fact, we Utahns live in the second driest state in the nation behind Nevada. Although I'm a native Westerner, for all of my life - more than 50 years - I've gone about my pursuit of happiness paying scant attention to the laws of aridity. But the proposed Las Vegas project to build a 285-mile, $2 billion pipeline to pull ground water from aquifers in six basins - part of which lie under Utah lands - to quench the seemingly quenchless thirst of Las Vegas residents jolts me out of my ignorant bliss. Here are the simple facts: We cannot live without water nor can we create water or increase our water supply. In Utah we add one person to our population about every six seconds while our average precipitation remains stubbornly low, and many of the nation's aquifers, which, by the way, pay no attention to state borders, have been steadily declining. You run the numbers....
Agents kill wolf thought to have killed 120 sheep Federal agents have shot a wolf believed responsible for killing about 120 sheep in attacks on ranches in Garfield, McCone and Dawson counties since December 2005. The 106-pound wolf was shot Thursday morning on private land between Jordan and Circle, apparently ending a series of attacks that had area livestock owners on edge for months. There was frequent speculation among wildlife agents and ranchers that the elusive predator was either a wolf or wolf hybrid. Some thought there was more than one animal attacking the sheep. "We do think it was a single animal and this chapter is closed," said Carolyn Sime, head of Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Parks' wolf program. Meanwhile, in Park County, two wolves were shot on Oct. 25 following a confirmation that a calf had been killed by the wolves on a cattle ranch about 10 miles south of Livingston, Sime said. On Wednesday, a landowner in Garfield County reported large canid tracks in deep snow on his property, Sime said. Even though there had been no confirmed reports of wolf attacks for months, USDA Wildlife Services was authorized to search for the animal and kill it. Crews in the air spotted the wolf Thursday morning and shot it....
Idaho game commissioners frustrated over delays Idaho Fish and Game Commissioners continue to express frustration at the federal government’s refusal to quickly remove wolves from endangered species status. ‘‘There is some real frustration,’’ said commission chairman Cameron Wheeler of Ririe. ‘‘The problem is we have responsibility with no authority.’’ At the commission’s meeting in Lewiston on Thursday the group pressed state wildlife biologists to work within the framework of federal rules to thin wolves in areas where elk herds are lagging, The Lewiston Tribune reported. Commissioners said that wolf populations continue to grow by 20 percent each year. They complained of the state’s stalled attempt to get permission to kill wolves in the Lolo Hunting Zone near the Montana border. They directed the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to update and resubmit their request to kill 43 wolves in the Lolo mountains, while also aggressively pushing the federal government to remove wolves from endangered species protection. Commissioner Tony McDermott of Sagle wants to push federal regulators. ‘‘I think it’s time we take some drastic measures as a state,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m tired of not finding any elk in the Lolo.’’....
Grasslands aren't just for raising cattle, researcher says The study of unique grasslands has taken Linda Kennedy from the High Plains of north central Kansas to sky islands of southeast Arizona. While she's spent plenty of time on native grasses that have been grazed by cattle and other livestock for hundreds of years, Kennedy now spends much of her time in work to correct the burdens on grasses that livestock have placed. As the director of the National Audubon Society's Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch, Kennedy has a different perspective about the impact cattle have on a different part of the nation. Kennedy offered her thoughts at a recent master class to rangeland biology students at Fort Hays State University as part of her receiving an alumni achievement award during this year's homecoming festivities. The Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch is an 8,000-acre sanctuary and research facility in southeastern Arizona. The ranch is a treasure trove of information for researchers as a contrast to, say, prairie grasslands. Kennedy said it is a "naïve" ecosystem because it does not have the historic use by large hooved animals that grasslands such as those grazed upon by bison has....
Inquiry brings some anxiety A U.S. Forest Service employee has asked to have an attorney present before answering investigators' questions involving the deaths of five Forest Service firefighters in last month's Esperanza Fire. Anxiety over answering questions may spring from a 2003 fire in Idaho that killed two firefighters and resulted in an incident commander being held criminally liable, investigators said. The incident commander lost his job and was placed on federal probation for 18 months. The commander in Idaho was found liable after an investigation by the office of the inspector general in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service. That same office is now investigating Forest Service employees' actions in the Esperanza Fire. Joe Duran, of the National Federation of Federal Employees, the union that represents all federal employees, said he does not know the identity of the employee in connection with the current fire. Dick Mangan, president of the International Association of Wildland Fire, an association of wildland fire professionals, said the inspector general's involvement has brought a distrust in the investigative process. "Now what we've done is say, 'We think you robbed a bank. Tell us how you did it. But you're still going to go to jail if you cooperate.' " The Esperanza Fire is the only other investigation conducted by the inspector general's office after a 2002 law required the office to investigate fire service deaths caused by fires....
Official says car linked to suspect found near other arsons A car linked to a man charged with setting a wildfire that killed five firefighters was spotted near at least 10 other arsons, according to an official involved in the investigation. Word of the potential connection came Friday as the first funerals were held for members of the five-man U.S. Forest Service crew that was overtaken Oct. 26 as the blaze roared through the San Jacinto Mountains, 90 miles east of Los Angeles. Cameras secretly placed atop utility poles in remote areas captured details of a car registered to a man who said he had sold it to Raymond Lee Oyler months ago, said the official, who requested anonymity because the case was continuing. The official said detectives then began investigating Oyler for a string of arsons and found evidence linking him to last week's deadly fire. The cameras did not catch Oyler setting that fire, the official said. Oyler has been charged with murder and arson. Although prosecutors described the evidence against him as overwhelming, they have not provided many details of the case....
Debate rages over status for Dominguez Canyon Riddell, a volunteer with the Western Colorado Congress who lives in Montrose, said he’s a passionate advocate of permanent protection of Dominguez and nearby canyons, maybe as wilderness, maybe as a national conservation area. That’s a kick in the chaps to others, like gold prospector Marlin Littlefield, who says any sort of protection for public land around Dominguez Canyon is a violation of his rights because it might mean prospecting and off-road vehicles may be banned from there. Dominguez Canyon has been a wilderness study area for nearly two decades. “If they turn that into a national conservation area, it’s as bad, if not worse, than a wilderness area,” said Littlefield, of Crawford. “You can’t pick up a rock and look at it.” That’s important to Littlefield, because he pans for gold along the Gunnison River, and he said he’s afraid the government will ban him from using his motorized suction dredge....
Environmental group call for release of oil shale details An environmental group is accusing the Bureau of Land Management of refusing to release information on proposed oil shale projects in Colorado. Western Resource Advocates said it has sent a letter to Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett protesting the decision not to release comments received on the BLM’s environmental review of three projects proposed in northwestern Colorado. “I think the BLM is trying to avoid scrutiny of the actions that it is proposing until it’s too late,” said Bob Randall, staff attorney for the Boulder-based group. The BLM was expected to issue final decisions on the oil shale research and development leases by the end of October. BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington in Washington said Friday a decision is expected soon and added that the agency will respond to Western Resource Advocates’ Freedom of Information request by the Nov. 8 deadline....
Three lions killed on season’s third day Three more mountain lions n one male, one female and another of which the sex had not been confirmed by news deadline n were killed Friday, according to South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks officials. The three kills on the third day of the 2006 Black Hills mountain lion season brought the season total to four. One was killed Wednesday on the opening day, and none was killed Thursday. GF&P regional supervisor Mike Kintigh, who confirmed Friday’s kills, said he was surprised. “Yeah, things are happening a little faster than I thought they would right now,” he said Friday evening. “I was anticipating a lion or so today. But to have three come in today surprises me a little.” He could only confirm the sex of two of the cats -- a male and a female. The sex of the third cat was unknown, as it hadn’t been brought into the GF&P regional office by news deadline. The Black Hills season will end either Dec. 31 or when eight females or 25 total lions are shot. Depending on the sex of the third cat, at least two of the allotted eight females have been killed....
Environmental coalition digs in at Tejon Ranch Developers of the largest chunk of privately owned wild lands remaining in Southern California and representatives from the nation's most powerful environmental groups gathered at a special summit last spring to consider a deal. Under it, environmentalists would forgo legal challenges if the proposed 23,000-home Centennial development on Tejon Ranch were reconfigured to more than double the amount of land set aside for a preserve. The May 19 meeting was supposed to have produced agreement on a tangle of thorny issues at the center of the negotiations. It failed. Tejon Ranch Co. rejected the proposal, opting to continue working with officials in Los Angeles and Kern counties on plans for Centennial and two other developments on the 270,000-acre ranch. The company wants to develop houses, resorts, industrial parks and golf courses on 5% of the property and set aside 100,000 acres of backcountry as a natural preserve, creating the biggest conservation area carved from private land in California. There are no specific plans for the rest of the ranch land....
Court Invalidates U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Exclusion of Nearly 900,000 Acres of Vernal Pool Critical Habitat Yesterday, Federal District Court Judge William B. Shubb issued a major ruling overturning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) decision to omit 900,000 acres in 11 counties from its 2005 final rule designating critical habitat for 15 imperiled vernal pool plants and animals. Vernal pools are seasonal wetlands found throughout California. Judge Shubb also rejected industry's attempt to overturn the protections for more than 800,000 acres that FWS did protect as critical habitat. The court agreed with the six conservation organizations involved in the case that FWS failed to look at whether its decision to eliminate critical habitat protections for vernal pool grasslands in Butte, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Monterey, Placer, Sacramento, Shasta, Solano, Stanislaus, and Tehama counties affected the future recovery of the vernal pool species. In sending FWS back to the drawing board, Judge Shubb accepted the central argument of the conservation organizations that in excluding vernal pool critical habitat within 11 California counties, FWS continued its long history of failing to consider the essential importance of such designation to the ultimate recovery of the vernal pool species....
New Approach to Protect Private Property Rights Landowners from across the country will be meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, November 10-11, 2006, to learn brand new techniques to protect their private property rights. Hosted by three national property rights organizations, the two-day event will offer courses that teach individual citizens strategies to fight their local battles one by one. Today, citizens realize the issues that threaten their liberty and property rights, are no longer something they only read about in the newspapers. They are personally affected by zoning, park expansions, transportation corridors, endangered species, smart growth (sustainability) issues, wetland restrictions, conservation easements, access restrictions, grazing limitations, and hundreds of other regulatory schemes. “It’s the landowners who have learned how to organize and fight strategically that have had the greatest successes at protecting their land and communities from federal, state and local anti-private property measures,” stated Margaret Byfield, executive director of Stewards of the Range, the main sponsor of the meeting. “The key is teaching people how to re-think their issues and give them the tools to fight their specific battles.” That’s what the “Unite to Fight” conference is all about – winning locally. Fred Kelly Grant has been teaching these strategies for over 10 years and has been tremendously successful. A former prosecutor, who brought down organized crime figures in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of the most ingenious land-use consultants in the West, will be teaching landowners his secrets on how to win locally....
OSU, OHSU study of 'male-oriented' rams gains high-profile foe The tale of Oregon's gay sheep experiment just grew stranger. On Thursday, tennis great Martina Navratilova sent letters asking the presidents of OSU and OHSU to end what she calls "homophobic and cruel experiments." "Many gays and lesbians," she wrote, "stand to be deeply offended by the social implications of these tests." For years, researchers at Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University searched in relative obscurity for biological differences that might distinguish rams who mount ewes from rams who mount rams. Roughly 5 percent to 8 percent of rams are "male-oriented," say the researchers, who avoid the term "gay" as being too human-focused. The research results include a 2002 finding that a part of the brain in ram-oriented rams is different than in other rams. Researcher Charles Roselli is now leading a follow-up study to explore those differences, partly by changing hormone levels in pregnant sheep to see if that affects the eventual brain development and partner preference of unborn rams....
'Wool women' plan Wyoming mill Although they laughingly refer to themselves as “domesticated hippies” looking for fun ways to turn their creativity into something lucrative, Valerie Spanos and Karen Hostetler are not to be taken lightly. They are on the verge of establishing a woolen mill in Buffalo, a mill which will take Wyoming’s raw wool and convert it into marketable products. Their first goal was to find a mill that would take a raw fleece and make it into marketable products, such as baby sweaters, socks, quilt batting and yarn. They bought a bale of wool from Peter John Camino, a local sheep rancher, only to discover the nearest mill was in Canada. About nine months later, their order arrived in Buffalo: quilt batting, two queen size comforters and skeins of all-natural yarn. “It was the softest, most beautiful yarn you ever saw, soft enough for a baby blanket,” Hostetler said. “We marketed it right here in Buffalo and everyone loved it.” Thus, the Mountain Meadow Wool Company was born. Another bale of raw wool was soon on its way to Canada, but because it took so long to get anything back, Spanos and Hostetler decided to investigate starting a mill of their own....
A look at the historic Carlsbad Irrigation District building, then and now In 1890, the county seat was changed from Seven Rivers to Eddy by a vote of 331 to 81, the prairie grass was so high hay could be cut from it and the first election was held in the new county of Eddy on Nov. 4 of that year. The town of Eddy was on the move. It was also the year a new building was built on the corner of Fox and Canal streets that was home to the Pecos Irrigation and Investment Company, the precursor to the Carlsbad Irrigation District. Today, 116 years later, the building continues to be home to the Carlsbad Irrigation District, but sadly, it is in need of repair and restoration if it is to continue to be a historic landmark. The building was placed on the National Historic Register in 1965. To save the building, located on the city's main thoroughfare, it will take thousands of dollars, which CID officials say the agency does not have....
Girl lassoes dream The Christmas list of Sheridan Lintz may be short this year, because she already received the best present ever. The 8-year-old, who has loved horses since she was a tiny tot, recently won a horse of her own in a national essay contest. The pretty filly, a sorrel quarter horse, is aptly named Dream. "I always wished for a horse at Christmas, Easter and birthdays," Sheridan said. "I got my Christmas wish early, after a lot of hard work." Sheridan, the daughter of Eric and Jenni Lintz of north Fort Collins, is a home-schooled third-grader. She won second place in the contest, sponsored by a private organization called Kids 4 Horses. The theme of this year's essay contest was "How Horses Help Children and Adults with Disabilities." Sheridan had seen a TV broadcast about horses helping injured soldiers, so she went online and found that information for her essay. She also used the public library for research and conducted her first-ever interview. She cited her references at the end of her work. In the end, Sheridan's five-page essay (reprinted on page 16) was the longest paper she had ever written. Now, Sheridan could write another essay on a favorite saying of her dad's: "If you work really hard, it always pays off."....
Ranch culture branded into hides of Western ski areas A 6-foot-wide pair of painted circles mark the snow. In the center of each stands a woman clad in a cowboy hat and full-length duster. Ahead, coiled ropes hang from fence posts. Below, horses await with saddles at their sides. The competition is set to begin. A group of ProRodeo riders, fresh from Denver's National Western Stock Show, lines up at the head of a Steamboat run. Competing in pairs, the ski-riding cowboys will charge down the slope, barrel-racing through slalom gates and flying over a 4-foot berm, hoping not to crash like a bronco-bucked buckaroo. 'Pokes who reach the bottom will attempt to lasso the lass and saddle the horse, or at least keep from sliding under it. The finish line lies just beyond. "We really don't think about the risk when we get involved with something like this," says bull rider Justin Hathaway. "That's just the cowboy way." For more than three decades, Steamboat Springs has hosted the annual Cowboy Downhill competition, and in this northern Colorado community, a chaps-on-chairlifts event seems appropriate. After all, Steamboat's roots are ranching....
Christmas Valley rancher remembers career as cowboy stunt man Floyd Baze is a man of many alter egos. Over the years, he has worn wigs and pasted on beards while successfully passing himself off as Lee Marvin, William Holden, Jack Lord, Robert Preston and Neville Brand, among others. It's all been legal. For 25 years Baze was a Hollywood stunt man in Westerns, mostly doing horseback stunts deemed too dangerous for the stars. "To me it was all business," Baze said. "I don't think I'd call it glamor. I'd figure out the easiest, the best and the safest (way) for me and the horse." For the 72-year-old Baze, life on horseback in the movies was just a continuation of the life he's always lived. "When I was working in the pictures a guy asked me (about) the first time I ever rode a horse. I told him I couldn't remember," Baze said. Baze was born and raised in Eastern Washington's Yakima Valley, where his father, Dock, raised race horses — always at least 800. Baze was on horseback as a youngster, and riding in rodeos at age 13....
The charms of cowboy speak It's been a good two or three weeks, getting the fall cattle roundup done, and there's enough stories right there to fill a few columns, but the thought strikes me that, just as there is in every business, there's a certain way ranchers talk and think, a way that says who they are better than any name tag or public introduction could ever do. So, it's a thrill when I hear guys like lifelong valley rancher Bill Fender holler, "Where the hell you hidin'," in a big, booming voice, knowing he'll get on my case for being in the house in the first place. He's just topped 80 and is, of course, pleased to see me at home because he wants to visit a little, maybe impart a bit of knowledge my way, with any luck. "I saw those cows coming from a long ways off, along the ridge behind Mac's house up there in Section 36. You know where I mean? Hell yes, ya better. The long, afternoon sun reflected off their backs or I might not have seen them at all in that brush. Wouldn't you know, as I sat there waiting for them to hit the middle gate into our upper place - you know, the 240 - one of the purtiest sunsets I've ever witnessed came over the sky. You've seen 'em, I know you have. I should've gone over to the Hell's Hole to look for more cows, but it was a-getting dark and that damned sunset was enough to get me home, anyway." Over coffee with a good friend, I hear, "Isn't it a pisser? People who've never owned a cow in their lives cut through your property without permission and then try to tell you how to run your business 'cause they stepped in some cow shit. Not to mention the government, always pryin' its nose into what you're doin'. Seems like you catch hell from all sides, people wantin' to run you out of the business. It's not like we're gettin' rich at this game. It's a lot of damned work, and we're sure as hell not goofin' off."....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Curious cow learns lessons of flying This is the story of a curious cow who lived on Mr. Marvin's farm in the kingdom of Kansas. Her name was Yvonne. She was of Scottish and English heritage, but farmer Marv guessed that she had some Native American Pronghorn antelope in her lineage because everyone knows that antelopes are very curious. Farmer Marv had a large old-fashioned barn with a second-story hay mow, a high pitched roof and a rooster weather vane on the tallest peak. Yvonne was piddling around the barnyard one fine day doing her hooves, trying to find her cuticles and curling her switch. "How did that rooster get on top of the barn?" she wondered. "Well," said Peggy, her best hen friend, "I suppose he walked. He could not fly because the Poultry Protection League made it illegal for us to fly higher than a chicken wire fence." "Hmmm," said Curious Cow as she wandered into the barn, "Let's see." She walked between two old draft horse feed troughs, the milk cow stanchion, the rebuilt tractor and the sacks of protein supplement to a steep set of wooden stairs....
Sunday, November 05, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Matching the pitch to the buyer
By Julie Carter
Tex was a horse trader, skilled at many things but horse-trading was his first love.
He is also Dan's uncle. You recall Dan of "Dan the team roper and Slats the politest horse ever" fame.
Living in an area where there are lots of cowboys, lots of ropers and lots of horseman, Tex was making a viable living at trading horses. All those horsemen and ropers felt the need every once in awhile to change colors or upgrade their horses, so they'd go see Tex.
Tex tried hard to maintain an adequate inventory of trained horses but also made a point to fit each customer's needs to the abilities and personality of each horse. An admirable quality in a horse trader, indeed.
Calf roping was the "hot" sport at this particular time. Tex had Dan living in the bunkhouse, training and tuning up the calf roping horses for the customers.
Dan would get them going good, correct any little bad tendencies and be ready at a moments notice to show these good horses to prospective buyers.
One afternoon, Rocky, a regular customer, called and told Tex he needed a new but very good calf horse.
Tex was caught kind of short in his "good calf horse" inventory. All he had was one sorrel stocking-legged horses standing in the lot ready to sell.
Tex told Rocky this good sorrel horse was quiet, had nice conformation, an impressive set of papers validating good breeding and had been started right. He would need some more polishing up on his arena work but would be a good horse someday. Tex priced the sorrel at $1,250.
Rocky told Tex he was on a winning streak, had won a couple buckles lately and better yet, his girlfriend was real impressed with his roping. He really thought he needed a horse that was quite a lot better than the sorrel Tex had offered him.
Tex thought about it a minute and with the presence of mind only the best of horse traders can muster, he began describing a stocking-legged horse to Rocky. This one had lots of "chrome," the best conformation with lots of muscle definition. He guaranteed a good solid stop on the horse where a man could get off on the right, run down the rope and tie a very quick calf.
Tex promised this horse to be a surefire winner in anybody's book, but added the caution he really wasn't planning on selling him because he didn't have his registration papers. Reluctantly he priced this special horse at $2,500.
Rocky said he'd be right over, that this horse sounded like just what he needed. Dan showed the horse to him, demonstrating his skills on several calves in the arena, catching them all.
Rocky was in love. He'd never miss another calf, would have to build a trophy case for all the buckles he win and his girl friend would be more than impressed.
As Rocky drove off with this exceptional, you guessed it, sorrel stocking-legged horse in the trailer, Tex looked at Dan and said, "Well nephew, we are plumb out of horses now and while I hate to tear up these papers, Rocky ain't going to need them anyhow."
© Jule Carter 2006 Silence can be a speech. It is hard to put a foot in a closed mouth.
The Right Hand Man
by Larry Gabriel
Like most people in charge of an operation, farmers and ranchers are well aware of the value of a good "right hand man".
No one is certain where "right hand man" originated, but it has been around for hundreds of years as an identifier of a most trusted assistant, often the second in command.
During the 18th century, the right hand man was an officer in charge of the right flank of a cavalry unit. Today the phrase applies to both men and women and generally means someone who is a trusted confidant and often left in charge.
Many farms and ranches are blessed with such a person, sometimes with the title of foreman, but often they are a long time employee with the title of "friend". Sometimes it is a son who is in the process of taking over the farm or ranch as the father gets older.
A right hand man is someone who allows the "boss" to be gone without giving a second thought to problems that may arise because his man knows exactly what to do, how to do it and what the boss would do if he were there. For those who bear management responsibility day in and day out, it is great blessing to have such a helper who is more friend than employee.
I am doubly lucky in this regard. I know the feeling of confidence and trust that comes from having a good right hand man both on the ranch and in my government job. You can't imagine what a blessing it is to leave the ranch or the South Dakota Department of Agriculture in trusted hands as I travel back and forth between them.
Another American idiom says, "all good things come to an end." I am not sure that is always true, but in the case of my right hand man at the South Dakota Department of Agriculture it is true in part. Deputy Secretary George A. Williams is leaving Pierre and moving to a new opportunity in Sioux Falls this month.
It is a sad time for our office, almost as sad as when George left us to do a tour of duty in Iraq as a Sergeant First Class in A Battery, 2nd Battalion, 147th Field Artillery unit of the South Dakota National Guard.
For me, this departure is more difficult. When he left for Iraq I knew in my heart he would be back. That's why we never changed a thing in his office and didn't even shut down his email. Our faith paid off when he finally returned.
This time I am really losing my right hand man – the man who was in charge when I was out, the man who could handle anything that might arise, and who I knew would do nothing that I would not do. He gave me freedom from worry during every absence from the office.
Losing that kind of support is difficult, whether it happens on a farm, a ranch or in an office. If you see a few technical errors in the column in the future you will know why.
However, there is also a gain involved. Next month, Sioux Falls will become a more enjoyable place for me to visit, because one of my very best friends will be there.
Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Matching the pitch to the buyer
By Julie Carter
Tex was a horse trader, skilled at many things but horse-trading was his first love.
He is also Dan's uncle. You recall Dan of "Dan the team roper and Slats the politest horse ever" fame.
Living in an area where there are lots of cowboys, lots of ropers and lots of horseman, Tex was making a viable living at trading horses. All those horsemen and ropers felt the need every once in awhile to change colors or upgrade their horses, so they'd go see Tex.
Tex tried hard to maintain an adequate inventory of trained horses but also made a point to fit each customer's needs to the abilities and personality of each horse. An admirable quality in a horse trader, indeed.
Calf roping was the "hot" sport at this particular time. Tex had Dan living in the bunkhouse, training and tuning up the calf roping horses for the customers.
Dan would get them going good, correct any little bad tendencies and be ready at a moments notice to show these good horses to prospective buyers.
One afternoon, Rocky, a regular customer, called and told Tex he needed a new but very good calf horse.
Tex was caught kind of short in his "good calf horse" inventory. All he had was one sorrel stocking-legged horses standing in the lot ready to sell.
Tex told Rocky this good sorrel horse was quiet, had nice conformation, an impressive set of papers validating good breeding and had been started right. He would need some more polishing up on his arena work but would be a good horse someday. Tex priced the sorrel at $1,250.
Rocky told Tex he was on a winning streak, had won a couple buckles lately and better yet, his girlfriend was real impressed with his roping. He really thought he needed a horse that was quite a lot better than the sorrel Tex had offered him.
Tex thought about it a minute and with the presence of mind only the best of horse traders can muster, he began describing a stocking-legged horse to Rocky. This one had lots of "chrome," the best conformation with lots of muscle definition. He guaranteed a good solid stop on the horse where a man could get off on the right, run down the rope and tie a very quick calf.
Tex promised this horse to be a surefire winner in anybody's book, but added the caution he really wasn't planning on selling him because he didn't have his registration papers. Reluctantly he priced this special horse at $2,500.
Rocky said he'd be right over, that this horse sounded like just what he needed. Dan showed the horse to him, demonstrating his skills on several calves in the arena, catching them all.
Rocky was in love. He'd never miss another calf, would have to build a trophy case for all the buckles he win and his girl friend would be more than impressed.
As Rocky drove off with this exceptional, you guessed it, sorrel stocking-legged horse in the trailer, Tex looked at Dan and said, "Well nephew, we are plumb out of horses now and while I hate to tear up these papers, Rocky ain't going to need them anyhow."
© Jule Carter 2006 Silence can be a speech. It is hard to put a foot in a closed mouth.
The Right Hand Man
by Larry Gabriel
Like most people in charge of an operation, farmers and ranchers are well aware of the value of a good "right hand man".
No one is certain where "right hand man" originated, but it has been around for hundreds of years as an identifier of a most trusted assistant, often the second in command.
During the 18th century, the right hand man was an officer in charge of the right flank of a cavalry unit. Today the phrase applies to both men and women and generally means someone who is a trusted confidant and often left in charge.
Many farms and ranches are blessed with such a person, sometimes with the title of foreman, but often they are a long time employee with the title of "friend". Sometimes it is a son who is in the process of taking over the farm or ranch as the father gets older.
A right hand man is someone who allows the "boss" to be gone without giving a second thought to problems that may arise because his man knows exactly what to do, how to do it and what the boss would do if he were there. For those who bear management responsibility day in and day out, it is great blessing to have such a helper who is more friend than employee.
I am doubly lucky in this regard. I know the feeling of confidence and trust that comes from having a good right hand man both on the ranch and in my government job. You can't imagine what a blessing it is to leave the ranch or the South Dakota Department of Agriculture in trusted hands as I travel back and forth between them.
Another American idiom says, "all good things come to an end." I am not sure that is always true, but in the case of my right hand man at the South Dakota Department of Agriculture it is true in part. Deputy Secretary George A. Williams is leaving Pierre and moving to a new opportunity in Sioux Falls this month.
It is a sad time for our office, almost as sad as when George left us to do a tour of duty in Iraq as a Sergeant First Class in A Battery, 2nd Battalion, 147th Field Artillery unit of the South Dakota National Guard.
For me, this departure is more difficult. When he left for Iraq I knew in my heart he would be back. That's why we never changed a thing in his office and didn't even shut down his email. Our faith paid off when he finally returned.
This time I am really losing my right hand man – the man who was in charge when I was out, the man who could handle anything that might arise, and who I knew would do nothing that I would not do. He gave me freedom from worry during every absence from the office.
Losing that kind of support is difficult, whether it happens on a farm, a ranch or in an office. If you see a few technical errors in the column in the future you will know why.
However, there is also a gain involved. Next month, Sioux Falls will become a more enjoyable place for me to visit, because one of my very best friends will be there.
Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
OPINION/COMMENTARY
The Anti-Kelo Wave
We'll all find out soon whether next week's elections yield the "Democratic wave" so many political seers have predicted. There isn't much doubt, however, about another kind of electoral wave that has been building across America and is set to crash on Tuesday. That tsunami is the property-rights backlash, which is the direct result of last year's misguided and deeply unpopular Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London. A narrow Court majority decided that the Constitution's "takings" clause somehow allowed the government to seize private property not merely for "public use" but also on behalf of other private interests. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued in dissent, this departed from 200 years of precedent and was an invitation for the politically powerful to use government as an ally against the weak. The one grace note was the majority's concession that "Nothing in our opinion precludes any State from placing further restrictions on its exercise of the takings power." Next week's vote will show just how many Americans are taking up the Court's challenge. No fewer than 11 states (see nearby table) have ballot measures designed to limit government's ability to pilfer private property for someone else's private economic development. Eight initiatives would enshrine those restrictions in state constitutions, and polls show that most are headed for victories. The 11 states where anti-Kelo property-rights initiatives will be on the ballot Tuesday. Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment Sept. 30. These referendums build on anti-Kelo measures already passed by state legislatures, which aren't known for moving quickly, much less for exhibiting courage in the face of the powerful special interests (developers, local governments) driving eminent domain abuses. But fear is a powerful motivator, and voter anger at Kelo has yielded striking results. Some 28 states have already passed statutes that limit "takings" powers, and five of Tuesday's 11 ballot measures were crafted by state legislatures....
BUSH ADMINISTRATION PROPOSES MASSIVE LAND GRAB
Days ago, in a proposal unnoticed by the media, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced the largest land grab since President Clinton designated massive national monuments across the West. When Clinton decreed 1.9 million acres of federal land in Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to kill a vast underground coal mine that would have employed 1,000 locals in the most economically depressed region of southern Utah, generated $20 million in annual revenue, and produced environmentally compliant coal for generating electricity, there were protests across the West. When the Bush Administration published its plans, there was barely a ripple of protest. There should have been a tidal wave of opposition! What Bush officials propose would make Clinton and his Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, proud indeed. While Clinton’s national monument proclamations affected only federal land, the Bush plan affects primarily state- and privately-owned land. Moreover, while Clinton designated a total of 5.9 million acres to receive special federal protection as national monuments, the Bush plan would impose a protective federal overlay upon 11.5 million acres (18,000 square miles) or an area the size of the states of Massachusetts and Maryland combined. Formally entitled “Revised Designation of Critical Habitat for the Contiguous United States Distinct Population Segment of the Canada Lynx” and published in the Federal Register on November 9, 2005, the plan results from a March 2000 ruling by a federal district court in the District of Columbia. There, after ten years of litigation, a host of environmental groups succeeded in efforts to require the FWS to use the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to protect the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) in the contiguous United States. That was only the beginning....
Global cooling? Bring it on!
As about six inches of snow fell on Calgary and Edmonton last week, and Fahrenheit temperatures plunged to the 20-above zero level and stayed there, the thoughts of some Albertans – of this one, anyway – focused on the subject of global warming.
"How come," I asked a friend in Virginia, who knows about such things, "how come, if the globe is warming, we have mid-winter arriving here before the end of October?" My trouble, he replied, is that I don't keep up with scientific discovery. Had I not read, for instance, the report of the chief of the Space Exploration Department of the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences and supervisor of the Astrometria project of the Russian part of the International Space Station. He warned last summer that another problem is rapidly overshadowing the global warming problem. This, he continued, was the problem of global cooling. There is mounting evidence that long before the global warming threat begins to become serious, we may be entering another glacial age. This man is Dr. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, and he reached his conclusion from his readings of solar cycles. Dr Abdusamatov notes that there are three types of solar cycles – an 11-year, a 100-year, and 200-year. The effects of the 11- and 100-year cycles afford little cause for concern. The 200-year cycle, however, is a very different matter. "The whole world has recognized the global warming theory, which pictures catastrophic situations in the future," he told the Russian press. "I do not march in step with the world at this point. However, my theory has raised a certain interest in other countries. Hardly had I made a statement when I received several messages from scientists living in the USA, Iceland and other countries. They wanted to know more of my theory. They also want to know if I have delivered a detailed report on the matter and where it was published." Dr. Abdusamatov said that a global reduction of temperatures would become evident about halfway into this century because solar radiation will be receding. The big chill will begin slowly, gathering pace between 2050 and '55. In effect it will repeat the conditions recorded between 1645 and 1715 when all canals froze in Holland and severe cold forced the evacuation of many communities....
The Snowe-Rockefeller Road to Kyoto
In a recent letter to ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and John Rockefeller (D-WV) urge Tillerson to end his company's support of "climate change denial front groups." The only group they identify by name is the one for which I work—the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). I guess the Senators haven't been keeping up with the news, because ExxonMobil stopped funding CEI months ago. The Senators get several other easily checked facts wrong as well. They fault ExxonMobil for not "investing in the development of technologies that might see us through this [global warming] crisis." Maybe they didn't get the memo, but back in 2002, ExxonMobil pledged "to invest $100 million in a groundbreaking Stanford University project dedicated to researching new options for commercially viable, technological systems for energy supply and use which have the capability to substantially reduce greenhouse emissions." More importantly, CEI is not a global warming "denier"—a highly pejorative term, meant to imply a resemblance to "Holocaust deniers." CEI does not deny that global warming is happening, nor that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the warming. Rather, we question climate alarmism—the claim, in Vice President Al Gore's words, that global warming is a "planetary emergency." For example, in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore warns that half of the Greenland Ice Sheet could melt or "slip into the sea," raising sea levels by 10 feet. He doesn't say how long this might take, but gives the impression it could happen within our lifetimes, or those of our children. The annual net loss of ice in Greenland is about 92 cubic kilometers per year. That may sound like a lot—but it translates into less than one inch of sea level rise in a century. Apocalypse Not!....
Arizonans Get An Animal-Rights Reality Check
The people who brought you constitutional rights for pigs and the "Fish Empathy Project" have descended on the Copper State. And through a series of crafty campaigns of bait-and-switch, they're hoping to impose their destructive ideology on the good people of Arizona. But we're pushing back. With mobile billboards, full-page ads in major newspapers, and opinion pieces -- like the one in today's Arizona Daily Star -- we're telling Arizonans the truth about exactly who it is they're dealing with. As we wrote in the Star: Animal "rights" sees the institution of pet ownership, including seeing-eye dogs and police K-9 units, as a form of slavery. Extending rights to rhinos would mean zoos simply couldn't keep them anymore. Likewise for circus elephants, marine-park dolphins and every living thing sold at pet stores. Embracing the animal-rights philosophy requires shifting vegetarianism from a choice to an obligation. In the long term, words like beef, pork, veal, cheese, omelet and even "wishbone" would exist only in a Scrabble dictionary. Activists may start out agitating merely for larger cages, but their real goal is the end of all animal agriculture. Including those small "family" farms....
The Anti-Kelo Wave
We'll all find out soon whether next week's elections yield the "Democratic wave" so many political seers have predicted. There isn't much doubt, however, about another kind of electoral wave that has been building across America and is set to crash on Tuesday. That tsunami is the property-rights backlash, which is the direct result of last year's misguided and deeply unpopular Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London. A narrow Court majority decided that the Constitution's "takings" clause somehow allowed the government to seize private property not merely for "public use" but also on behalf of other private interests. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued in dissent, this departed from 200 years of precedent and was an invitation for the politically powerful to use government as an ally against the weak. The one grace note was the majority's concession that "Nothing in our opinion precludes any State from placing further restrictions on its exercise of the takings power." Next week's vote will show just how many Americans are taking up the Court's challenge. No fewer than 11 states (see nearby table) have ballot measures designed to limit government's ability to pilfer private property for someone else's private economic development. Eight initiatives would enshrine those restrictions in state constitutions, and polls show that most are headed for victories. The 11 states where anti-Kelo property-rights initiatives will be on the ballot Tuesday. Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment Sept. 30. These referendums build on anti-Kelo measures already passed by state legislatures, which aren't known for moving quickly, much less for exhibiting courage in the face of the powerful special interests (developers, local governments) driving eminent domain abuses. But fear is a powerful motivator, and voter anger at Kelo has yielded striking results. Some 28 states have already passed statutes that limit "takings" powers, and five of Tuesday's 11 ballot measures were crafted by state legislatures....
BUSH ADMINISTRATION PROPOSES MASSIVE LAND GRAB
Days ago, in a proposal unnoticed by the media, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced the largest land grab since President Clinton designated massive national monuments across the West. When Clinton decreed 1.9 million acres of federal land in Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to kill a vast underground coal mine that would have employed 1,000 locals in the most economically depressed region of southern Utah, generated $20 million in annual revenue, and produced environmentally compliant coal for generating electricity, there were protests across the West. When the Bush Administration published its plans, there was barely a ripple of protest. There should have been a tidal wave of opposition! What Bush officials propose would make Clinton and his Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, proud indeed. While Clinton’s national monument proclamations affected only federal land, the Bush plan affects primarily state- and privately-owned land. Moreover, while Clinton designated a total of 5.9 million acres to receive special federal protection as national monuments, the Bush plan would impose a protective federal overlay upon 11.5 million acres (18,000 square miles) or an area the size of the states of Massachusetts and Maryland combined. Formally entitled “Revised Designation of Critical Habitat for the Contiguous United States Distinct Population Segment of the Canada Lynx” and published in the Federal Register on November 9, 2005, the plan results from a March 2000 ruling by a federal district court in the District of Columbia. There, after ten years of litigation, a host of environmental groups succeeded in efforts to require the FWS to use the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to protect the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) in the contiguous United States. That was only the beginning....
Global cooling? Bring it on!
As about six inches of snow fell on Calgary and Edmonton last week, and Fahrenheit temperatures plunged to the 20-above zero level and stayed there, the thoughts of some Albertans – of this one, anyway – focused on the subject of global warming.
"How come," I asked a friend in Virginia, who knows about such things, "how come, if the globe is warming, we have mid-winter arriving here before the end of October?" My trouble, he replied, is that I don't keep up with scientific discovery. Had I not read, for instance, the report of the chief of the Space Exploration Department of the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences and supervisor of the Astrometria project of the Russian part of the International Space Station. He warned last summer that another problem is rapidly overshadowing the global warming problem. This, he continued, was the problem of global cooling. There is mounting evidence that long before the global warming threat begins to become serious, we may be entering another glacial age. This man is Dr. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, and he reached his conclusion from his readings of solar cycles. Dr Abdusamatov notes that there are three types of solar cycles – an 11-year, a 100-year, and 200-year. The effects of the 11- and 100-year cycles afford little cause for concern. The 200-year cycle, however, is a very different matter. "The whole world has recognized the global warming theory, which pictures catastrophic situations in the future," he told the Russian press. "I do not march in step with the world at this point. However, my theory has raised a certain interest in other countries. Hardly had I made a statement when I received several messages from scientists living in the USA, Iceland and other countries. They wanted to know more of my theory. They also want to know if I have delivered a detailed report on the matter and where it was published." Dr. Abdusamatov said that a global reduction of temperatures would become evident about halfway into this century because solar radiation will be receding. The big chill will begin slowly, gathering pace between 2050 and '55. In effect it will repeat the conditions recorded between 1645 and 1715 when all canals froze in Holland and severe cold forced the evacuation of many communities....
The Snowe-Rockefeller Road to Kyoto
In a recent letter to ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and John Rockefeller (D-WV) urge Tillerson to end his company's support of "climate change denial front groups." The only group they identify by name is the one for which I work—the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). I guess the Senators haven't been keeping up with the news, because ExxonMobil stopped funding CEI months ago. The Senators get several other easily checked facts wrong as well. They fault ExxonMobil for not "investing in the development of technologies that might see us through this [global warming] crisis." Maybe they didn't get the memo, but back in 2002, ExxonMobil pledged "to invest $100 million in a groundbreaking Stanford University project dedicated to researching new options for commercially viable, technological systems for energy supply and use which have the capability to substantially reduce greenhouse emissions." More importantly, CEI is not a global warming "denier"—a highly pejorative term, meant to imply a resemblance to "Holocaust deniers." CEI does not deny that global warming is happening, nor that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the warming. Rather, we question climate alarmism—the claim, in Vice President Al Gore's words, that global warming is a "planetary emergency." For example, in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore warns that half of the Greenland Ice Sheet could melt or "slip into the sea," raising sea levels by 10 feet. He doesn't say how long this might take, but gives the impression it could happen within our lifetimes, or those of our children. The annual net loss of ice in Greenland is about 92 cubic kilometers per year. That may sound like a lot—but it translates into less than one inch of sea level rise in a century. Apocalypse Not!....
Arizonans Get An Animal-Rights Reality Check
The people who brought you constitutional rights for pigs and the "Fish Empathy Project" have descended on the Copper State. And through a series of crafty campaigns of bait-and-switch, they're hoping to impose their destructive ideology on the good people of Arizona. But we're pushing back. With mobile billboards, full-page ads in major newspapers, and opinion pieces -- like the one in today's Arizona Daily Star -- we're telling Arizonans the truth about exactly who it is they're dealing with. As we wrote in the Star: Animal "rights" sees the institution of pet ownership, including seeing-eye dogs and police K-9 units, as a form of slavery. Extending rights to rhinos would mean zoos simply couldn't keep them anymore. Likewise for circus elephants, marine-park dolphins and every living thing sold at pet stores. Embracing the animal-rights philosophy requires shifting vegetarianism from a choice to an obligation. In the long term, words like beef, pork, veal, cheese, omelet and even "wishbone" would exist only in a Scrabble dictionary. Activists may start out agitating merely for larger cages, but their real goal is the end of all animal agriculture. Including those small "family" farms....
Friday, November 03, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Wolves killing sheep, cattle by the dozens near Council Sheep and cattle ranchers in the Council area say wolves have killed dozens of sheep and several cattle. These ranchers say its been going on for a while now and they fear wolves could put them out of business. Alvin Yantis' family has ranched in Council for more than a century. He has about 180 head of cattle that graze on 50,000 acres of Council Mountain. But a pack of wolves have killed several of his cows and nine calves. A neighboring sheep rancher, Ron Shurtz, has had more than 100 sheep killed. Yantis says if it continues, wolves could wipe them all out of business. “So, we're looking at this winter if they come in and they, you know, they got into Ronnie's sheep and killed over 100 head in one night. If they do that to your cows, you're out of business in one night,” said Yantis. This morning he takes us to an unusual sight - a herd of 50 to 60 elk are grazing just outside of town. Normally they would be up in the hills, but Yantis says wolves on Council Mountain are keeping them away....
Case against arson-murder suspect called `overwhelming' A 36-year-old auto mechanic from Beaumont was charged Thursday with arson and five counts of murder for allegedly setting last week's Esperanza fire, which killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters and destroyed 34 homes in a remote mountain area of Riverside County. Convicted felon Raymond Lee Oyler has been in custody since Tuesday, when authorities arrested him on suspicion of setting two smaller blazes in June and announced that he was a "person of interest" in the fatal arson fire. If convicted, Oyler could face the death penalty. Authorities provided little information about what led them to Oyler. Prosecutors said they found "a consistency" to the string of fires set in the San Gorgonio Pass from early June through October....
Defense fund started for commanders A federal firefighters group has started a legal defense fund to protect the rights of fire commanders likely to be questioned in several investigations into the deaths of five U.S. Forest Service firefighters in the Esperanza Fire. Casey Judd, business manager for the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, said the advocacy group is advising firefighters to avoid answering questions in the federal inquiry. "It's not a question of wrongdoing" by any firefighters during the Esperanza Fire, Judd said. "We want to make sure that each of them is able to exercise their constitutional rights." Judd said a federal law passed after the fatal July 2001 Thirtymile Fire in Washington exposes fire commanders to criminal prosecution. It directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture's inspector general to investigate how and why firefighters died. In addition to the USDA inspector general, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the Esperanza Fire because federal employees died on the job. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection also has a joint internal inquiry with the U.S. Forest Service....
The Power of Fire For those who live in or near areas heavily susceptible to burning, it is devastating, destructively menacing, but as natural as the wind, rain or clouds. In fact, the cyclical process, which for Southern California once included naturally caused fires every 20 to 50 years, has been so slowed and subverted by humanity that the perilous danger of fire has grown exponentially. Non-native grasses originally dropped off the boots of Spanish explorers have thrived, crowding out indigenous vegetation and creating new cycles of fire and re-growth that further constrict native plants and exacerbate the danger of fire. For the past 100 years, fire suppression has been the norm in forestry; only recently have controlled burns and natural fire progression become recognized as the best way to manage the resources of public forest lands. Many of the nation's forests are congested with excess growth, which for more than a century has allowed incredible amounts of combustible fuel to accumulate....
Judge asked to undo Bush's forest rules Environmentalists asked a federal judge Wednesday to overturn the Bush administration's rules for managing the country's 155 national forests, arguing that the regulations illegally weaken protections for wilderness and wildlife. Lawyers for the environmentalists told U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton that the rules do not include the safeguards for endangered wildlife and forests that federal law requires. The rules allowed forest management plans to be revised without environmental studies and repealed a requirement for forests to maintain "viable" populations of native wildlife. They also argued that the administration failed to study adequately the environmental impact of changing forest management practices and did not give the public enough opportunity to comment on the revisions....
Jousting about windmills A gathering of people in Jacksboro on Monday might go down in the books as an early skirmish in a looming battle that could pit neighbor against neighbor and play out in courtrooms across the region. The issue is wind. International companies are scouting the plains and hills, looking for places to put towering turbines to harness the power of wind and convert it into electricity. Several area communities have called town hall meetings to discuss the implications. Some landowners embrace the giants as an alternative to dwindling oil supplies - and a source of new revenue from land leases. Others oppose them as noisy, ugly behemoths that will decrease the value of the land rather than decrease dependence on fossil fuel. Dan Stephenson is one Jack County rancher who fears the coming of the windmills....
Collision course? Wyoming remains embroiled in multiple legal and philosophical discussions about what are the true beneficial uses of water produced in association with coal-bed methane -- one of Wyoming's main economic engines. Two state entities are involved in coming up with answers to the question, but there's some disagreement about whether they are working with or against each other. The Coalbed Natural Gas Water Use Task Force, formed in February, is a 15-member board of legislators, industry and agriculture representatives. The group meets today in Douglas to discuss, among other things, the beneficial uses of coal-bed methane water. At the same time, the state Environmental Quality Council is considering the same question. The citizen-appointee council, which regularly reviews the rules and regulations of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, is proceeding with a rules that could more sharply define "beneficial use" as it applies to DEQ's authority over coal-bed methane water management....
Numbers Boost Sought for Prairie Chicken Panhandle rancher Jim Bill Anderson has for years been helping to keep the rare lesser prairie chicken from a federal wildlife watch list. Now he's hoping other Texans follow his lead after the signing Thursday in Austin of an agreement between officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The agreement calls for participating landowners to control brush, manage grazing and conduct planned burns to build and maintain the bird's habitat of low shrub and grasslands. That natural landscape has shrunk through various land uses. "We have the habitat they like and maintain it, and they flourish," said Anderson, who opens up some of his thousands of acres to bird-watchers each year. "I'm glad they're doing it." Landowners who have a wildlife management plan in place already or are willing to develop one can join the conservation effort. They also would avoid further restrictions if the lesser prairie chicken moves from candidate status to threatened or endangered on the federal Endangered Species List....
Public blasts Army plans to expand training site Ranchers, high school students and biologists Wednesday condemned the Army's plans to expand operations at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado. Sam Johnson, an ecologist from Colorado Springs, said the study claimed that there was no baseline data available on the land, vegetation and wildlife, so no impact could be estimated. "There are 300 species of plants, 250 species of birds, not to mention invertebrates," he said. "It's like saying I'm going to hit the motherboard of a computer with a hammer and it will still work." "This is a prelude to the expansion," said Kennie German, of Model. "When they started the maneuver site, they said they would never use live fire. We're getting used to getting lied to."....
National Wildlife Refuge Funding Cut By 10 Percent The Bush administration has ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cutback in funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System, leaving dozens of refuges without any assigned staff, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER. The Refuge System, a part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will see declining budgets through 2011 under the Bush plan, despite significant increases in the number of refuges, visitors and an array of other costs, according to PEER, a national association of government employees in natural resources agencies. PEER says that since Congress has yet to act on the Fish and Wildlife Service budget for FY 2007, the Bush administration is implementing the cuts without waiting for Congressional approval. Each of the seven Fish and Wildlife Service regional offices across the country is now planning to absorb the budget cuts....
Conservationists to sue U.S. over status of Ariz. bald eagles Arizona conservationists will go another round with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning Arizona bald eagles and whether they deserve special protection under the Endangered Species Act. This time the fight may go to the federal courts. The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society filed a notice of intent to sue Fish and Wildlife on Thursday for rejecting a petition by the conservationists to list desert nesting bald eagles - most live in Arizona - as a "distinct population segment." The classification would qualify Arizona eagles for endangered-species protection if bald eagles lose it nationally, as expected. In August, Fish and Wildlife denied the petition, ruling that threats to the desert eagle, such as the impact of Arizona's population boom and declining rivers, couldn't be scientifically assessed and that desert eagles aren't distinct, despite their thicker eggshells, earlier breeding season and smaller size....
Bush Appointee Said to Reject Advice on Endangered Species A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists' recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show. In addition, staff complaints that their scientific findings were frequently overruled or disparaged at the behest of landowners or industry have led the agency's inspector general to look into the role of Julie MacDonald, who has been deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks since 2004, in decisions on protecting endangered species. The documents show that MacDonald has repeatedly refused to go along with staff reports concluding that species such as the white-tailed prairie dog and the Gunnison sage grouse are at risk of extinction. Career officials and scientists urged the department to identify the species as either threatened or endangered. Overall, President Bush's appointees have added far fewer species to the protected list than did the administrations of either Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush, according to the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity. As of now, the administration has listed 56 species under the Endangered Species Act, for a rate of about 10 a year. Under Clinton, officials listed 512 species, or 64 a year, and under George H.W. Bush, the department listed 234, or 59 a year....
Environmentalists Attack Richard Pombo One of the few real conservative heroes in the current Congress, Rep. Richard Pombo of California, is in danger of being defeated for re-election because of an all-out assault by left-wing environmental groups and the moneyed elite who support environmental zealotry. Polls now show him tied with the Democratic opponent he defeated in 2004 by 61% to 38%. It's not just the anti-Republican wave that threatens Pombo. The big environmental pressure groups have made him their top, almost their only, target. Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund opened a fully staffed office in his Northern California district (which includes farming areas in the San Joaquin Valley south of Sacramento and outlying suburbs east of San Francisco Bay) last spring. By the end of September, they had already spent more than half-a-million dollars and planned to spend hundreds of thousands more before Election Day. Americans for Conservation, a 527 independent expenditure committee set up earlier this year and controlled by Defenders of Wildlife, reported in its most recent filing that it had made media buys of $500,000, all of it aimed at defeating Pombo. The group lists only eight donors, who include an heir to the Getty Oil fortune, an heir to the Hewlett-Packard computer fortune, and an investment partner of the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.)....
Overzealous enforcement does the law no favors Perhaps nothing is more infuriating to Americans than the unreasonable enforcement of reasonable laws, particularly laws dealing with protection of the environment. Just ask Cuong Ly of Freeport or Johanna Tutone of Camden, a couple of otherwise law-abiding restaurateurs who have felt the full force of the law, one for displaying exotic fish and the other an old stuffed bird in their respective establishments. Their stories have been widely reported nationally -- even internationally -- because of the perception of unnecessarily narrow interpretation and ham-fisted enforcement of the laws they broke. The aims of laws in question are perfectly defensible. It was the manner of enforcement -- and perhaps the way the stories were reported -- that attracted a negative public reaction. Much was made last summer of the fact that state fish and wildlife wardens were armed when they showed up at the China Rose, Ly's restaurant, to remove 10 large koi from a tank in the lobby where they had been quietly entertaining customers for 15 years. It didn't help that Ly complained to reporters that the incident brought back unpleasant memories of his earlier life under communist rule....
Cow Pies Power Ethanol Future Cows’ farts have long been a contributor to global warming; now their manure could be part of the solution. Two biofuel companies this week announced they are building ethanol plants powered by cow manure. Panda Ethanol on Wednesday said its plant, near Muleshoe, Texas, will produce 100 million gallons per year once it’s completed in about 18 months. E3 Biofuels said Monday it is building a 25-million-gallon ethanol refinery in Mead, Nebraska that will begin production in December. How to extract energy from poop? The facility will gasify more than 1 billion pounds of the stuff each year, generating steam used to fuel the ethanol-manufacturing process. The Muleshoe plant will be Panda’s fourth cow-pie-powered ethanol project, and will be tied with the company’s Hereford, Texas plant as the largest biomass-fueled ethanol plant in the United States, according to a press statement. It will also be one of the most fuel-efficient ethanol refineries in the nation, the company said....
Supercow and pigs that glow at night - an average day on the GM farm Channel 4 is to unveil a shocking menagerie of genetically modified animals in a new show revealing the frightening leaps technology has taken. Among the bizarre engineered creatures from around the world is a giant cow, three times the size of ordinary cattle, reared without fat to produce gallons of milk. But the so-called Belgian Blue - pictured here - is perhaps the least disturbing of the creatures to be shown in the three-part series Channel 4 Farm this winter. There are also glow-inthedark pigs and goats which produce spider's silk. TV scientist Olivia Judson and journalist Giles Coren travel the world to visit the places where these animals are now being reared....
Wolves killing sheep, cattle by the dozens near Council Sheep and cattle ranchers in the Council area say wolves have killed dozens of sheep and several cattle. These ranchers say its been going on for a while now and they fear wolves could put them out of business. Alvin Yantis' family has ranched in Council for more than a century. He has about 180 head of cattle that graze on 50,000 acres of Council Mountain. But a pack of wolves have killed several of his cows and nine calves. A neighboring sheep rancher, Ron Shurtz, has had more than 100 sheep killed. Yantis says if it continues, wolves could wipe them all out of business. “So, we're looking at this winter if they come in and they, you know, they got into Ronnie's sheep and killed over 100 head in one night. If they do that to your cows, you're out of business in one night,” said Yantis. This morning he takes us to an unusual sight - a herd of 50 to 60 elk are grazing just outside of town. Normally they would be up in the hills, but Yantis says wolves on Council Mountain are keeping them away....
Case against arson-murder suspect called `overwhelming' A 36-year-old auto mechanic from Beaumont was charged Thursday with arson and five counts of murder for allegedly setting last week's Esperanza fire, which killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters and destroyed 34 homes in a remote mountain area of Riverside County. Convicted felon Raymond Lee Oyler has been in custody since Tuesday, when authorities arrested him on suspicion of setting two smaller blazes in June and announced that he was a "person of interest" in the fatal arson fire. If convicted, Oyler could face the death penalty. Authorities provided little information about what led them to Oyler. Prosecutors said they found "a consistency" to the string of fires set in the San Gorgonio Pass from early June through October....
Defense fund started for commanders A federal firefighters group has started a legal defense fund to protect the rights of fire commanders likely to be questioned in several investigations into the deaths of five U.S. Forest Service firefighters in the Esperanza Fire. Casey Judd, business manager for the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, said the advocacy group is advising firefighters to avoid answering questions in the federal inquiry. "It's not a question of wrongdoing" by any firefighters during the Esperanza Fire, Judd said. "We want to make sure that each of them is able to exercise their constitutional rights." Judd said a federal law passed after the fatal July 2001 Thirtymile Fire in Washington exposes fire commanders to criminal prosecution. It directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture's inspector general to investigate how and why firefighters died. In addition to the USDA inspector general, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the Esperanza Fire because federal employees died on the job. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection also has a joint internal inquiry with the U.S. Forest Service....
The Power of Fire For those who live in or near areas heavily susceptible to burning, it is devastating, destructively menacing, but as natural as the wind, rain or clouds. In fact, the cyclical process, which for Southern California once included naturally caused fires every 20 to 50 years, has been so slowed and subverted by humanity that the perilous danger of fire has grown exponentially. Non-native grasses originally dropped off the boots of Spanish explorers have thrived, crowding out indigenous vegetation and creating new cycles of fire and re-growth that further constrict native plants and exacerbate the danger of fire. For the past 100 years, fire suppression has been the norm in forestry; only recently have controlled burns and natural fire progression become recognized as the best way to manage the resources of public forest lands. Many of the nation's forests are congested with excess growth, which for more than a century has allowed incredible amounts of combustible fuel to accumulate....
Judge asked to undo Bush's forest rules Environmentalists asked a federal judge Wednesday to overturn the Bush administration's rules for managing the country's 155 national forests, arguing that the regulations illegally weaken protections for wilderness and wildlife. Lawyers for the environmentalists told U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton that the rules do not include the safeguards for endangered wildlife and forests that federal law requires. The rules allowed forest management plans to be revised without environmental studies and repealed a requirement for forests to maintain "viable" populations of native wildlife. They also argued that the administration failed to study adequately the environmental impact of changing forest management practices and did not give the public enough opportunity to comment on the revisions....
Jousting about windmills A gathering of people in Jacksboro on Monday might go down in the books as an early skirmish in a looming battle that could pit neighbor against neighbor and play out in courtrooms across the region. The issue is wind. International companies are scouting the plains and hills, looking for places to put towering turbines to harness the power of wind and convert it into electricity. Several area communities have called town hall meetings to discuss the implications. Some landowners embrace the giants as an alternative to dwindling oil supplies - and a source of new revenue from land leases. Others oppose them as noisy, ugly behemoths that will decrease the value of the land rather than decrease dependence on fossil fuel. Dan Stephenson is one Jack County rancher who fears the coming of the windmills....
Collision course? Wyoming remains embroiled in multiple legal and philosophical discussions about what are the true beneficial uses of water produced in association with coal-bed methane -- one of Wyoming's main economic engines. Two state entities are involved in coming up with answers to the question, but there's some disagreement about whether they are working with or against each other. The Coalbed Natural Gas Water Use Task Force, formed in February, is a 15-member board of legislators, industry and agriculture representatives. The group meets today in Douglas to discuss, among other things, the beneficial uses of coal-bed methane water. At the same time, the state Environmental Quality Council is considering the same question. The citizen-appointee council, which regularly reviews the rules and regulations of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, is proceeding with a rules that could more sharply define "beneficial use" as it applies to DEQ's authority over coal-bed methane water management....
Numbers Boost Sought for Prairie Chicken Panhandle rancher Jim Bill Anderson has for years been helping to keep the rare lesser prairie chicken from a federal wildlife watch list. Now he's hoping other Texans follow his lead after the signing Thursday in Austin of an agreement between officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The agreement calls for participating landowners to control brush, manage grazing and conduct planned burns to build and maintain the bird's habitat of low shrub and grasslands. That natural landscape has shrunk through various land uses. "We have the habitat they like and maintain it, and they flourish," said Anderson, who opens up some of his thousands of acres to bird-watchers each year. "I'm glad they're doing it." Landowners who have a wildlife management plan in place already or are willing to develop one can join the conservation effort. They also would avoid further restrictions if the lesser prairie chicken moves from candidate status to threatened or endangered on the federal Endangered Species List....
Public blasts Army plans to expand training site Ranchers, high school students and biologists Wednesday condemned the Army's plans to expand operations at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado. Sam Johnson, an ecologist from Colorado Springs, said the study claimed that there was no baseline data available on the land, vegetation and wildlife, so no impact could be estimated. "There are 300 species of plants, 250 species of birds, not to mention invertebrates," he said. "It's like saying I'm going to hit the motherboard of a computer with a hammer and it will still work." "This is a prelude to the expansion," said Kennie German, of Model. "When they started the maneuver site, they said they would never use live fire. We're getting used to getting lied to."....
National Wildlife Refuge Funding Cut By 10 Percent The Bush administration has ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cutback in funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System, leaving dozens of refuges without any assigned staff, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER. The Refuge System, a part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will see declining budgets through 2011 under the Bush plan, despite significant increases in the number of refuges, visitors and an array of other costs, according to PEER, a national association of government employees in natural resources agencies. PEER says that since Congress has yet to act on the Fish and Wildlife Service budget for FY 2007, the Bush administration is implementing the cuts without waiting for Congressional approval. Each of the seven Fish and Wildlife Service regional offices across the country is now planning to absorb the budget cuts....
Conservationists to sue U.S. over status of Ariz. bald eagles Arizona conservationists will go another round with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning Arizona bald eagles and whether they deserve special protection under the Endangered Species Act. This time the fight may go to the federal courts. The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society filed a notice of intent to sue Fish and Wildlife on Thursday for rejecting a petition by the conservationists to list desert nesting bald eagles - most live in Arizona - as a "distinct population segment." The classification would qualify Arizona eagles for endangered-species protection if bald eagles lose it nationally, as expected. In August, Fish and Wildlife denied the petition, ruling that threats to the desert eagle, such as the impact of Arizona's population boom and declining rivers, couldn't be scientifically assessed and that desert eagles aren't distinct, despite their thicker eggshells, earlier breeding season and smaller size....
Bush Appointee Said to Reject Advice on Endangered Species A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists' recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show. In addition, staff complaints that their scientific findings were frequently overruled or disparaged at the behest of landowners or industry have led the agency's inspector general to look into the role of Julie MacDonald, who has been deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks since 2004, in decisions on protecting endangered species. The documents show that MacDonald has repeatedly refused to go along with staff reports concluding that species such as the white-tailed prairie dog and the Gunnison sage grouse are at risk of extinction. Career officials and scientists urged the department to identify the species as either threatened or endangered. Overall, President Bush's appointees have added far fewer species to the protected list than did the administrations of either Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush, according to the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity. As of now, the administration has listed 56 species under the Endangered Species Act, for a rate of about 10 a year. Under Clinton, officials listed 512 species, or 64 a year, and under George H.W. Bush, the department listed 234, or 59 a year....
Environmentalists Attack Richard Pombo One of the few real conservative heroes in the current Congress, Rep. Richard Pombo of California, is in danger of being defeated for re-election because of an all-out assault by left-wing environmental groups and the moneyed elite who support environmental zealotry. Polls now show him tied with the Democratic opponent he defeated in 2004 by 61% to 38%. It's not just the anti-Republican wave that threatens Pombo. The big environmental pressure groups have made him their top, almost their only, target. Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund opened a fully staffed office in his Northern California district (which includes farming areas in the San Joaquin Valley south of Sacramento and outlying suburbs east of San Francisco Bay) last spring. By the end of September, they had already spent more than half-a-million dollars and planned to spend hundreds of thousands more before Election Day. Americans for Conservation, a 527 independent expenditure committee set up earlier this year and controlled by Defenders of Wildlife, reported in its most recent filing that it had made media buys of $500,000, all of it aimed at defeating Pombo. The group lists only eight donors, who include an heir to the Getty Oil fortune, an heir to the Hewlett-Packard computer fortune, and an investment partner of the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.)....
Overzealous enforcement does the law no favors Perhaps nothing is more infuriating to Americans than the unreasonable enforcement of reasonable laws, particularly laws dealing with protection of the environment. Just ask Cuong Ly of Freeport or Johanna Tutone of Camden, a couple of otherwise law-abiding restaurateurs who have felt the full force of the law, one for displaying exotic fish and the other an old stuffed bird in their respective establishments. Their stories have been widely reported nationally -- even internationally -- because of the perception of unnecessarily narrow interpretation and ham-fisted enforcement of the laws they broke. The aims of laws in question are perfectly defensible. It was the manner of enforcement -- and perhaps the way the stories were reported -- that attracted a negative public reaction. Much was made last summer of the fact that state fish and wildlife wardens were armed when they showed up at the China Rose, Ly's restaurant, to remove 10 large koi from a tank in the lobby where they had been quietly entertaining customers for 15 years. It didn't help that Ly complained to reporters that the incident brought back unpleasant memories of his earlier life under communist rule....
Cow Pies Power Ethanol Future Cows’ farts have long been a contributor to global warming; now their manure could be part of the solution. Two biofuel companies this week announced they are building ethanol plants powered by cow manure. Panda Ethanol on Wednesday said its plant, near Muleshoe, Texas, will produce 100 million gallons per year once it’s completed in about 18 months. E3 Biofuels said Monday it is building a 25-million-gallon ethanol refinery in Mead, Nebraska that will begin production in December. How to extract energy from poop? The facility will gasify more than 1 billion pounds of the stuff each year, generating steam used to fuel the ethanol-manufacturing process. The Muleshoe plant will be Panda’s fourth cow-pie-powered ethanol project, and will be tied with the company’s Hereford, Texas plant as the largest biomass-fueled ethanol plant in the United States, according to a press statement. It will also be one of the most fuel-efficient ethanol refineries in the nation, the company said....
Supercow and pigs that glow at night - an average day on the GM farm Channel 4 is to unveil a shocking menagerie of genetically modified animals in a new show revealing the frightening leaps technology has taken. Among the bizarre engineered creatures from around the world is a giant cow, three times the size of ordinary cattle, reared without fat to produce gallons of milk. But the so-called Belgian Blue - pictured here - is perhaps the least disturbing of the creatures to be shown in the three-part series Channel 4 Farm this winter. There are also glow-inthedark pigs and goats which produce spider's silk. TV scientist Olivia Judson and journalist Giles Coren travel the world to visit the places where these animals are now being reared....
EARTH WITHOUT PEOPLE & A RESPONSE
Imagine Earth without people
Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet. Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth - all 6.5 billion of us and counting - could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let's not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses). Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust. "The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California....
Eden Without Us?
The October 12 edition of New Scientist magazine ("Science Fact not Science Fiction") offered an article called "Imagine Earth without people" (online version ). Author Bob Holmes imagines what is evidently meant to be a heart-warming future in which all humans disappear from the planet instantaneously and things begin to "work their way back to a natural state" - "a natural state" being "the way they were before humans interfered." To begin with, then, we are to assume that the rise of mind, of consciousness, the development of language, the invention of civilization - all these and their implications - are somehow not "natural," and that their presence on the planet for these hundred thousand years or so has amounted only to "interference." Holmes writes as though he had in mind a peculiar theory of panspermia, in which seeds of our uniquely predatory species have drifted through interstellar space for eons, infecting first one and then another planet with their deadly spawn. Earth's bad luck was to have been in the wrong place and the wrong time. Holmes carefully traces out the changes that would occur in the very near term, such as the collapse of many structures (old fashioned masonry ones holding out the longest), and then at progressively longer intervals. One of the first effects, as power stations run out of fuel, is the elimination of "light pollution" of the night sky over formerly populated areas. This effect of artificial illumination was dubbed "pollution" by astronomers decades ago and is perfectly justified, given their special needs. Why it is to be thought of as pollution more generally is unexplained by Holmes, as is why its elimination would be a welcome development when there is no one left to look at the stars....
Imagine Earth without people
Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet. Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth - all 6.5 billion of us and counting - could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let's not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses). Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust. "The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California....
Eden Without Us?
The October 12 edition of New Scientist magazine ("Science Fact not Science Fiction") offered an article called "Imagine Earth without people" (online version ). Author Bob Holmes imagines what is evidently meant to be a heart-warming future in which all humans disappear from the planet instantaneously and things begin to "work their way back to a natural state" - "a natural state" being "the way they were before humans interfered." To begin with, then, we are to assume that the rise of mind, of consciousness, the development of language, the invention of civilization - all these and their implications - are somehow not "natural," and that their presence on the planet for these hundred thousand years or so has amounted only to "interference." Holmes writes as though he had in mind a peculiar theory of panspermia, in which seeds of our uniquely predatory species have drifted through interstellar space for eons, infecting first one and then another planet with their deadly spawn. Earth's bad luck was to have been in the wrong place and the wrong time. Holmes carefully traces out the changes that would occur in the very near term, such as the collapse of many structures (old fashioned masonry ones holding out the longest), and then at progressively longer intervals. One of the first effects, as power stations run out of fuel, is the elimination of "light pollution" of the night sky over formerly populated areas. This effect of artificial illumination was dubbed "pollution" by astronomers decades ago and is perfectly justified, given their special needs. Why it is to be thought of as pollution more generally is unexplained by Holmes, as is why its elimination would be a welcome development when there is no one left to look at the stars....
Thursday, November 02, 2006
FINDLAW RECENT CASE SUMMARIES
STATE OF NEW MEXICO V. GEN. ELEC. CO.
10th Circuit
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act's (CERCLA) comprehensive natural resource damages (NRD) scheme preempts any state remedy designed to achieve something other than the restoration, replacement, or acquisition of the equivalent of a contaminated natural resource. In an action in which New Mexico sought unrestricted money damages exclusively under state law for groundwater contamination in Albuquerque, an appeal from summary judgment for defendants, General Electric Co. and another company, is affirmed in part and dismissed in part for want of jurisdiction.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/10th/042191.html
US V. JOHNSON
1st Circuit
Following the Supreme Court's decision in Rapanos v. US, 126 S.Ct. 2208 (2006), a suit against a group of cranberry farmers for violation of the Clean Water Act is remanded to the district court for factual determinations relating to the federal government's jurisdiction over "navigable waters," and thus the wetlands in question. On remand, the government can establish jurisdiction over the target sites if it meets either the plurality's literal interpretation of the term "navigable waters" or Justice Kennedy's "substantial nexus" standard.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/1st/051444.html
STATE OF NEW MEXICO V. GEN. ELEC. CO.
10th Circuit
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act's (CERCLA) comprehensive natural resource damages (NRD) scheme preempts any state remedy designed to achieve something other than the restoration, replacement, or acquisition of the equivalent of a contaminated natural resource. In an action in which New Mexico sought unrestricted money damages exclusively under state law for groundwater contamination in Albuquerque, an appeal from summary judgment for defendants, General Electric Co. and another company, is affirmed in part and dismissed in part for want of jurisdiction.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/10th/042191.html
US V. JOHNSON
1st Circuit
Following the Supreme Court's decision in Rapanos v. US, 126 S.Ct. 2208 (2006), a suit against a group of cranberry farmers for violation of the Clean Water Act is remanded to the district court for factual determinations relating to the federal government's jurisdiction over "navigable waters," and thus the wetlands in question. On remand, the government can establish jurisdiction over the target sites if it meets either the plurality's literal interpretation of the term "navigable waters" or Justice Kennedy's "substantial nexus" standard.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/1st/051444.html
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Study sees shift away from ranching near Yellowstone Owning a slice of paradise isn't what it used to be. Generations of ranchers on the rural fringes of Yellowstone National Park passed their land to offspring or sold it to likeminded people. But for the past decade and longer, more ranches have been snatched up by people with less interest in turning a buck off the land than weekend trips, trout fishing and catching a glimpse of an elk or wolf on their property, according to a new study. In sales involving 400 acres or more outside Yellowstone, only 26 percent of buyers were "traditional ranchers," according to researchers' study of records from 1990 to 2001. The largest category, at 39 percent, were "amenity buyers," those who want the land not primarily for agriculture production but for its recreation and ambience, the study said. The new buyers often arrive with a different set of values from those who have family ties stretching back generations. In some cases the new owners try to fit in, and in some cases they don't. Either way, they're transforming the social and natural dynamics, said Hannah Gosnell, an assistant geography professor at Oregon State University, one of the study's authors....
Dike removal at century-old ranch site opens Nisqually estuary The Nisqually Tribe on Tuesday celebrated the return of saltwater to 140 acres of the Nisqually River estuary, where dike removal restored critical salmon habitat in south Puget Sound. The land had been used for a cattle ranch for more than a century. Tribal dancers and drummers in vibrant black-and-red blankets and other traditional garb opened the event at the edge of the estuary, where the river meets the inland sea. As speakers addressed the crowd, a 14-foot tide began slowly filling the basin. Birds darted overhead and autumn-brilliant trees rustled along the shore. The 140-acre wetland was named Blaget Marsh to honor the family. Longtime rancher Kenny Blaget sold the family's 410-acre property to the tribe for $2.4 million in 1999. Most of the 840-acre estuary was diked in the early 20th century for agricultural use. The tribe and its state and federal partners removed the dikes enclosing 100 acres this summer, following a 40-acre project earlier. The first saltwater flowed in on Oct. 1, shortly after Blaget died....
EPA sets limits on pesticide use to protect frog California's farmers and ranchers may be significantly impacted by a recent decision issued by a federal district court that prohibits the use of 66 pesticides on thousands of acres of land designated as critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. "California's farmers and ranchers will be directly impacted by this even though they were not parties to either the lawsuit or the injunction. Many of the 66 pesticides are important management tools that form an integral part of successful farming and ranching operations," said Ronda Azevedo Lucas, California Farm Bureau Federation Natural Resources and Environmental Division associate counsel. "Farm Bureau is concerned the injunction is overly broad and questions some of its scientific and legal underpinnings." The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently reached a settlement agreement barring the application of the pesticides in critical red-legged frog habitat areas and in adjoining buffer zones throughout the state until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completes formal consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....
Arson suspect held; 5th firefighter dies Authorities on Tuesday arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of intentionally starting two wildfires this summer and who is considered a "person of interest" in the Esperanza blaze, which killed five firefighters. Raymond Lee Oyler of Beaumont was arrested at 3 p.m. on two counts of arson related to wildfires in June, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. Oyler was not named as a suspect in the Esperanza wildfire, which roared across more than 60 square miles last week. Also on Tuesday, a fifth U.S. Forest Service firefighter died of burns suffered when an engine crew was overrun by the Esperanza wildfire last week. Firefighter Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley died at 5:08 p.m. at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, said Jeanne Wade Evans, the San Bernardino National Forest supervisor, at a press conference outside the hospital....
Firefighter supervisor pleads guilty in '04 blaze A Flagstaff man who was among the nation's elite firefighting supervisors pleaded guilty Monday to setting a 2004 wildfire that burned 22 acres of timber near Mormon Lake. Before his arrest, Van Bateman, 55, supervised all federal firefighters in the Mogollon Rim area and led one of the U.S. Forest Service's 16 incident management teams that responded to national disasters. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he spent a month assisting New York firefighters with logistics at the World Trade Center. In 2002, Bateman oversaw firefighting efforts against the Rodeo-Chediski blaze, the state's largest ever, half of which was also set by a firefighter. Paul Charlton, U.S. attorney for Arizona, said Bateman "joins a small universe of firefighters who, for reasons we may never fully understand, violated the public's trust by igniting fires, not extinguishing them."....
Cataloging nature's wounds Scientists on Monday began the long-term work to assess and repair damage done to the natural and cultural landscape by the Esperanza Fire and those who fought it. The recovery job takes brains and brawn, experts as well as inmates. The fire burned a sparsely settled 63 square miles south of Beaumont, scorching parts of the Morongo and Soboba Indian reservations and damaging as much as 90 percent of Potrero Canyon, a key endangered species preserve in Riverside County. The flames made a charcoal-covered landscape of the mountainous terrain along Highway 243, south of Interstate 10. Farther up the mountains, the burned landscape was snow-white, covered in ash. Previously a steep highway drive that takes motorists past desert scrub, sages and manzanitas on the way to a pine forest, the hillsides had only remnants of those signature plants. Animals such as chipmunks, rabbits and birds could be seen through columns of smoke that rose from smoldering roots of burned plants. Assessing damage to the landscape, animal habitats and American Indian artifacts is the first step in helping the region recover the richness of its natural and cultural heritage....
Pine Beetle infestation study: Beetles Invasion Don Goheen says mountain pine beetles are part of a forest’s landscape, but more beetles recently in the Umpqua National Forest are a sign of an oncoming and devastating outbreak. Last week the entomologist and U.S. Forest Service officials met at Diamond Lake Campground to discuss methods for curtailing a potential population explosion of mountain pine beetles. Goheen chopped away bark from a dead lodgepole pine and exposed the inner workings of beetle infestation. Clinging to the tree and underneath the bark were black beetles the size of rice kernels. To prevent a future beetle outbreak, Goheen — who works with the Southwest Oregon Forest Insect and Disease Service Center in Central Point — suggested the Forest Service should focus its concentration on high-risk stands not yet infected. His wife, Ellen Goheen, a plant pathologist with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, said thinning and harvesting on wholesale levels could stymie the beetles’ destruction. Stands of mixed species could be thinned of lodgepole pine while stands of 80 percent lodgepole or more could be clear cut, “so your whole area doesn’t get hammered at once,” she said....
Trout Unlimited working to keep Alaska wild Trout Unlimited is taking a lead role in restoring southeast Alaska fisheries damaged by logging. From fighting erosion caused by clear-cuts and road-building to replacing culverts vital for fish passage to spawning sites, the TU Alaska Program is reminding anglers everywhere that in spite of its apparent remoteness, the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest is a public treasure. “This is a near-pristine area owned by every American,” said Scott Hed (rhymes with ‘made’), outreach director for the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska. “When sportsmen think of Alaska, this is the ultimate dream, the last of the last best places.”....
New Mexico Asked to Designate Pristine Waters Under Clean Water Act A coalition of conservation and wildlife groups has asked the State of New Mexico to protect some of the state’s cleanest waters that flow from its roadless national forests. The groups filed a formal petition with the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission to name the waters inside of the Inventoried Roadless Areas on the Santa Fe National Forests above the cities of Pecos and Las Vegas as Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRWs). The Clean Water Act designation would permanently protect the critical source of drinking water for the City of Las Vegas, provide a measure of protection for the roadless forests in which these waters are found, and protect healthy landscapes for future generations of humans and wildlife. The groups filing the petition are Forest Guardians, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, and the Sierra Club. Among the streams nominated for protection are the Pecos and Gallinas rivers and numerous of their tributaries, which provide abundant habitat for fish and wildlife and a variety of recreational opportunities. The Pecos Wilderness Area alone receives 48,000 site visits annually for a contribution of $2.6 million to the State. The rivers not only provide municipal drinking water but also vital water for traditional agriculture downstream. In total, the nomination calls for the protection of more than 100 miles of waterway....
Wild-born ferrets popping up after biologists' restorative efforts Biologists spotlighted two black-footed ferrets that were born in the wild this year among the nine they found in a northwestern Colorado prairie dog colonies. State Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said tracking the nocturnal animals that live in prairie dog colonies is difficult, and this year's effort is significant. Hampton says the first wild-born black-footed ferret was found by researchers in 2005, so the discovery of two additional wild-born ferrets is significant. This marks the 25th anniversary for the effort to restore the highly endangered ferrets in the United States....
McMahon acquitted of bribing federal officer One week after his former business partner pleaded guilty to bribing a federal officer, a jury acquitted Norman Geoff McMahon of all charges that he allegedly bribed the same officer, according to Norman Cairns, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney General's Office. McMahon's former NewCo Aggregate business partner, Curtis Slade, pleaded guilty on Oct. 20 to one count of bribing Ralph Mason, a former Bureau of Land Management (BLM) geologist. A jury acquitted McMahon in federal District Court on Oct. 27. He faced one count of bribing a public official and another charge of giving a gratuity payment to a public official. McMahon and Slade were charged with bribing the same BLM officer. However, Slade pleaded guilty. McMahon was accused of giving Mason $7,000 in four payments to mine humate — an organic material used in soil conditioners, supplements and fertilizers....
BLM backing for roads asked Moffat County officials asked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday to back their claims to roads that cut across wild federal land in northwest Colorado - a step that environmentalists call a tactic to block wilderness designation of the area. The request on five roads is a test of a new policy laid down by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton shortly before she left office in March. Norton signed a "secretarial order" telling federal land managers that if they determine such claims are valid, they can allow county governments that claim them to send crews out to maintain the roads. Environmental groups say the Norton policy carves up public lands, opens them to off-road vehicles and allows local governments to prevent land from being considered for formal wilderness designation. "Some of them go into very sensitive areas that have been closed to vehicles for a very long time," said Kristen Brengel of the Wilderness Society. "We believe BLM has the authority to deny these claims." Moffat County officials say they're simply preserving traditional access across public lands. They say they don't intend to send bulldozers out to cut new roadbeds....
'America's largest Petri dish' Infectious and sometimes deadly wildlife diseases are inching closer to Yellowstone National Park, and few of its most famous animals seem immune from the threat. The list reads like a who's who of troubling bugs and viruses: chronic wasting disease, West Nile, avian flu, whirling disease, hantavirus and brucellosis. Some are already in Yellowstone; others may be coming. If they take hold, they threaten elk, bison, deer and other mammals along with native trout and birds. Several factors are at work changing the dynamics of animal disease: more people and domestic animals living near the park, less room outside Yellowstone to find relief from disease outbreaks, and the emergence of several dangerous diseases that move quickly and infect previously unexposed animal populations....
State's shrinking glaciers: Going ... going ... gone? Like tiny doctors on the belly of a sleeping giant, three National Park Service workers trudged up the middle of the Nisqually Glacier, stepping over tiny creeks and peering down a dizzying chute where water from the melting glacier wormed into the 300-foot-thick slab of ice. Nearby, a tall plastic pole arced from the ice into the sky. Park scientist Rebecca Doyle knelt at its base, whipped out a tape measure, and began jotting down numbers. The pole is 41 feet long. Six months ago, in April, it was totally buried in snow and ice. On this recent sunny October day, so much snow had melted that only a few inches of the pole remained buried....
A dozen years of desert protection Speeding motorists bent on reaching Las Vegas or Laughlin Nev., as rapidly as possible view the eastern Mojave Desert as a vast wasteland as they zip along Interstate 15 or Interstate 40. Along the way, they pass endless clusters of creosote bushes, some of nature's oldest plants,growing in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve. "A lot of people don't know what's out here," said Dennis Schramm, superintendent of the vast desert preserve, which marked its 12th anniversary Tuesday. "It contains over 900 species of plants, 206 species of birds, 47 species of animals and 36 species of reptiles." And it also is resplendent with massive sand dunes, desolate mountain peaks, stands of Joshua trees, Indian wall paintings called petrogylphs, herds of bighorn sheep and the historic Mojave wagon road. Alarmed by the relentless expansion of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, environmental visionaries mapped out strategy in the 1970s to counter the threat that urban growth posed for the Southern California desert....
Bush Opens National Parks to Bio-Prospecting Consider, for example, the election-season news that the National Park Service is moving forward with its plans to allow private corporations to "bioprospect" for microorganisms in national parks like Yellowstone in exchange for a piece of the action. Bioprospecting, or bio-pirating in this case since it's being taken from the public without our consent, is the act of mining for living organisms anything from microorganisms to plant and animal genes -- in the pursuit of science and/or profit. And whom should the corporate bioprospectors thank for this unprecedented gift of access to the public's natural resources? Well, both political parties and the various federal agencies they've ruled over, of course. Because it was the Clinton-led Park Service that first hatched this idea and now it's the Bush-led Park Service that is seeing it through. Yep, bipartisanship seems to work best when corporate interests are involved....
Park service ordered to review impact of drilling The National Park Service failed to take "a hard look" at the environmental impact of directional drilling on land adjacent to the Big Thicket Preserve in Southeast Texas, a federal judge ruled last week. Judge John D. Bates said that the park service's findings of no significant impact were "arbitrary and capricious" and that the agency didn't provide supporting evidence for its conclusions. "We hope it will insure more stringent rules, a little tighter regulation and that they'll be a little more protective of the environment," said Brandt Mannchen, chairman of the Big Thicket Committee for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "We hope this ruling won't just affect the Big Thicket but the entire National Park System," Mannchen said. "The Big Thicket is really the nexus of this issue because it has the most gas and drilling."....
Campaign Border Patrol First, as for the movie: "Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration," is a tour de force. It doesn't proselytize. It doesn't announce a political position. But it leaves no doubt how vexing, and at times how incredibly dangerous, is the issue of illegal immigration. Ranchers on the border have their property littered, their livestock attacked, and sometimes their safety threatened, by illegals crossing from Mexico. Police and other law-enforcement officials are attacked and in some cases killed. Drugs are run and teenage girls molested, and agitators yell that American land actually should belong to the Mexican people anyway. And, lest we forget, many of the illegals themselves, ones who themselves are peaceful but impoverished, are abused or abandoned en route by paid human-smugglers out to make a quick buck. But the documentary (available through CitizensUnited.com or at retailers such as Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, Netflix and Amazon) also gives ample time, without the moviemakers doing any editorializing, to Enrique Morones, a man dedicated to the mission of caring for the illegals and who becomes increasingly activist in pushing for open borders. Filmed over the course of seven months, the documentary comes across as being scrupulously fair. Yet it's almost impossible to finish the movie thinking anything other than that the borders must be better patrolled and protected, and that the illegal access must be stopped -- because American lands and American citizenship must not be violated....
The return of an old L.A. flame You think you know barbecue? This is real barbecue, the way people did it around here 100 years ago. Angelenos had their own style of 'cue, a heritage from the days of the 19th century Spanish rancheros, who called it carne tatemada. Down through the 1920s, no convention, charity extravaganza or Fourth of July was a party without a huge spread of our distinctive pit-cooked barbecue. We proudly served it to honored visitors, confident that it was superior to grilling and Southern barbecue alike. As late as the mid-1930s, when old-timers lamented that barbecue was dying out, you could get as many as 60,000 people to come to one of these events. Los Angeles barbecue grew out of cattle ranching, which was our main industry for many decades. We might have barbecued chicken or mutton from time to time, but the overwhelming choice around here was beef. And we used huge amounts of beef. Because there weren't any railroads to ship cattle East until late in the 19th century, hides and tallow were all that cattle ranchers had to sell. In effect, beef was a byproduct of the leather industry in L.A., so it was absurdly cheap for a very long time....
Reub Long loved 'Oregon Desert' "Reub Long's Oregon Desert," one in a series of television shows called "Oregon Experience," will bring to life a vision of rural Oregon life in this episode, which airs Friday on Oregon Public Broadcasting. This documentary tells about how, back in the early 1960's, Russ Jackman, a retired Oregon State University extension agent, and Reuben Long, a colorful Fort Rock Valley rancher, collaborated to create a unique book, "The Oregon Desert." It successfully blended natural science with cowboy humor and scholarly prose with casual meanderings. The book was a celebration of rural Western storytelling; over the years, it has become a Northwest classic. The TV show will replicate much of the point of view of the book. Reub Long, who died in 1974, lived his whole life in a flat, dry area of northern Lake County....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Thank researchers, mice for life There are people who are ennobled by their service to mankind. We think of soldiers, nurses, teachers or ministers whose contributions are recognized daily. Others are national leaders, inventors, Olympic athletes or philanthropists. Their achievements attract laudatory headlines and press. But there are many who toil beneath the radar, who persevere and over a lifetime of service produce profound long-lasting benefits to the world. One example is research scientists. I think of research scientists as the really smart people in my physiological chemistry classes who now work in bat caves chasing cures for the physical maladies of mankind. Much of our knowledge about the human body has come from studying animals. From Sir Alexander Fleming's mouse to Dr. Debakey's heart transplant calf, from NASA's monkey to Dolly the cloned sheep, animals have been used to discover and unlock the secrets of disease and initiate their cures. Is it worth it? Ask my friend with Parkinson's. Ask his family. Sir Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929. The average life span of a 29-year-old person that year in the United States was 49 years. In 2006, the average life span of a 29-year-old person is now 72....
Study sees shift away from ranching near Yellowstone Owning a slice of paradise isn't what it used to be. Generations of ranchers on the rural fringes of Yellowstone National Park passed their land to offspring or sold it to likeminded people. But for the past decade and longer, more ranches have been snatched up by people with less interest in turning a buck off the land than weekend trips, trout fishing and catching a glimpse of an elk or wolf on their property, according to a new study. In sales involving 400 acres or more outside Yellowstone, only 26 percent of buyers were "traditional ranchers," according to researchers' study of records from 1990 to 2001. The largest category, at 39 percent, were "amenity buyers," those who want the land not primarily for agriculture production but for its recreation and ambience, the study said. The new buyers often arrive with a different set of values from those who have family ties stretching back generations. In some cases the new owners try to fit in, and in some cases they don't. Either way, they're transforming the social and natural dynamics, said Hannah Gosnell, an assistant geography professor at Oregon State University, one of the study's authors....
Dike removal at century-old ranch site opens Nisqually estuary The Nisqually Tribe on Tuesday celebrated the return of saltwater to 140 acres of the Nisqually River estuary, where dike removal restored critical salmon habitat in south Puget Sound. The land had been used for a cattle ranch for more than a century. Tribal dancers and drummers in vibrant black-and-red blankets and other traditional garb opened the event at the edge of the estuary, where the river meets the inland sea. As speakers addressed the crowd, a 14-foot tide began slowly filling the basin. Birds darted overhead and autumn-brilliant trees rustled along the shore. The 140-acre wetland was named Blaget Marsh to honor the family. Longtime rancher Kenny Blaget sold the family's 410-acre property to the tribe for $2.4 million in 1999. Most of the 840-acre estuary was diked in the early 20th century for agricultural use. The tribe and its state and federal partners removed the dikes enclosing 100 acres this summer, following a 40-acre project earlier. The first saltwater flowed in on Oct. 1, shortly after Blaget died....
EPA sets limits on pesticide use to protect frog California's farmers and ranchers may be significantly impacted by a recent decision issued by a federal district court that prohibits the use of 66 pesticides on thousands of acres of land designated as critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. "California's farmers and ranchers will be directly impacted by this even though they were not parties to either the lawsuit or the injunction. Many of the 66 pesticides are important management tools that form an integral part of successful farming and ranching operations," said Ronda Azevedo Lucas, California Farm Bureau Federation Natural Resources and Environmental Division associate counsel. "Farm Bureau is concerned the injunction is overly broad and questions some of its scientific and legal underpinnings." The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently reached a settlement agreement barring the application of the pesticides in critical red-legged frog habitat areas and in adjoining buffer zones throughout the state until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completes formal consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....
Arson suspect held; 5th firefighter dies Authorities on Tuesday arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of intentionally starting two wildfires this summer and who is considered a "person of interest" in the Esperanza blaze, which killed five firefighters. Raymond Lee Oyler of Beaumont was arrested at 3 p.m. on two counts of arson related to wildfires in June, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. Oyler was not named as a suspect in the Esperanza wildfire, which roared across more than 60 square miles last week. Also on Tuesday, a fifth U.S. Forest Service firefighter died of burns suffered when an engine crew was overrun by the Esperanza wildfire last week. Firefighter Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley died at 5:08 p.m. at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, said Jeanne Wade Evans, the San Bernardino National Forest supervisor, at a press conference outside the hospital....
Firefighter supervisor pleads guilty in '04 blaze A Flagstaff man who was among the nation's elite firefighting supervisors pleaded guilty Monday to setting a 2004 wildfire that burned 22 acres of timber near Mormon Lake. Before his arrest, Van Bateman, 55, supervised all federal firefighters in the Mogollon Rim area and led one of the U.S. Forest Service's 16 incident management teams that responded to national disasters. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he spent a month assisting New York firefighters with logistics at the World Trade Center. In 2002, Bateman oversaw firefighting efforts against the Rodeo-Chediski blaze, the state's largest ever, half of which was also set by a firefighter. Paul Charlton, U.S. attorney for Arizona, said Bateman "joins a small universe of firefighters who, for reasons we may never fully understand, violated the public's trust by igniting fires, not extinguishing them."....
Cataloging nature's wounds Scientists on Monday began the long-term work to assess and repair damage done to the natural and cultural landscape by the Esperanza Fire and those who fought it. The recovery job takes brains and brawn, experts as well as inmates. The fire burned a sparsely settled 63 square miles south of Beaumont, scorching parts of the Morongo and Soboba Indian reservations and damaging as much as 90 percent of Potrero Canyon, a key endangered species preserve in Riverside County. The flames made a charcoal-covered landscape of the mountainous terrain along Highway 243, south of Interstate 10. Farther up the mountains, the burned landscape was snow-white, covered in ash. Previously a steep highway drive that takes motorists past desert scrub, sages and manzanitas on the way to a pine forest, the hillsides had only remnants of those signature plants. Animals such as chipmunks, rabbits and birds could be seen through columns of smoke that rose from smoldering roots of burned plants. Assessing damage to the landscape, animal habitats and American Indian artifacts is the first step in helping the region recover the richness of its natural and cultural heritage....
Pine Beetle infestation study: Beetles Invasion Don Goheen says mountain pine beetles are part of a forest’s landscape, but more beetles recently in the Umpqua National Forest are a sign of an oncoming and devastating outbreak. Last week the entomologist and U.S. Forest Service officials met at Diamond Lake Campground to discuss methods for curtailing a potential population explosion of mountain pine beetles. Goheen chopped away bark from a dead lodgepole pine and exposed the inner workings of beetle infestation. Clinging to the tree and underneath the bark were black beetles the size of rice kernels. To prevent a future beetle outbreak, Goheen — who works with the Southwest Oregon Forest Insect and Disease Service Center in Central Point — suggested the Forest Service should focus its concentration on high-risk stands not yet infected. His wife, Ellen Goheen, a plant pathologist with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, said thinning and harvesting on wholesale levels could stymie the beetles’ destruction. Stands of mixed species could be thinned of lodgepole pine while stands of 80 percent lodgepole or more could be clear cut, “so your whole area doesn’t get hammered at once,” she said....
Trout Unlimited working to keep Alaska wild Trout Unlimited is taking a lead role in restoring southeast Alaska fisheries damaged by logging. From fighting erosion caused by clear-cuts and road-building to replacing culverts vital for fish passage to spawning sites, the TU Alaska Program is reminding anglers everywhere that in spite of its apparent remoteness, the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest is a public treasure. “This is a near-pristine area owned by every American,” said Scott Hed (rhymes with ‘made’), outreach director for the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska. “When sportsmen think of Alaska, this is the ultimate dream, the last of the last best places.”....
New Mexico Asked to Designate Pristine Waters Under Clean Water Act A coalition of conservation and wildlife groups has asked the State of New Mexico to protect some of the state’s cleanest waters that flow from its roadless national forests. The groups filed a formal petition with the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission to name the waters inside of the Inventoried Roadless Areas on the Santa Fe National Forests above the cities of Pecos and Las Vegas as Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRWs). The Clean Water Act designation would permanently protect the critical source of drinking water for the City of Las Vegas, provide a measure of protection for the roadless forests in which these waters are found, and protect healthy landscapes for future generations of humans and wildlife. The groups filing the petition are Forest Guardians, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, and the Sierra Club. Among the streams nominated for protection are the Pecos and Gallinas rivers and numerous of their tributaries, which provide abundant habitat for fish and wildlife and a variety of recreational opportunities. The Pecos Wilderness Area alone receives 48,000 site visits annually for a contribution of $2.6 million to the State. The rivers not only provide municipal drinking water but also vital water for traditional agriculture downstream. In total, the nomination calls for the protection of more than 100 miles of waterway....
Wild-born ferrets popping up after biologists' restorative efforts Biologists spotlighted two black-footed ferrets that were born in the wild this year among the nine they found in a northwestern Colorado prairie dog colonies. State Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said tracking the nocturnal animals that live in prairie dog colonies is difficult, and this year's effort is significant. Hampton says the first wild-born black-footed ferret was found by researchers in 2005, so the discovery of two additional wild-born ferrets is significant. This marks the 25th anniversary for the effort to restore the highly endangered ferrets in the United States....
McMahon acquitted of bribing federal officer One week after his former business partner pleaded guilty to bribing a federal officer, a jury acquitted Norman Geoff McMahon of all charges that he allegedly bribed the same officer, according to Norman Cairns, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney General's Office. McMahon's former NewCo Aggregate business partner, Curtis Slade, pleaded guilty on Oct. 20 to one count of bribing Ralph Mason, a former Bureau of Land Management (BLM) geologist. A jury acquitted McMahon in federal District Court on Oct. 27. He faced one count of bribing a public official and another charge of giving a gratuity payment to a public official. McMahon and Slade were charged with bribing the same BLM officer. However, Slade pleaded guilty. McMahon was accused of giving Mason $7,000 in four payments to mine humate — an organic material used in soil conditioners, supplements and fertilizers....
BLM backing for roads asked Moffat County officials asked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday to back their claims to roads that cut across wild federal land in northwest Colorado - a step that environmentalists call a tactic to block wilderness designation of the area. The request on five roads is a test of a new policy laid down by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton shortly before she left office in March. Norton signed a "secretarial order" telling federal land managers that if they determine such claims are valid, they can allow county governments that claim them to send crews out to maintain the roads. Environmental groups say the Norton policy carves up public lands, opens them to off-road vehicles and allows local governments to prevent land from being considered for formal wilderness designation. "Some of them go into very sensitive areas that have been closed to vehicles for a very long time," said Kristen Brengel of the Wilderness Society. "We believe BLM has the authority to deny these claims." Moffat County officials say they're simply preserving traditional access across public lands. They say they don't intend to send bulldozers out to cut new roadbeds....
'America's largest Petri dish' Infectious and sometimes deadly wildlife diseases are inching closer to Yellowstone National Park, and few of its most famous animals seem immune from the threat. The list reads like a who's who of troubling bugs and viruses: chronic wasting disease, West Nile, avian flu, whirling disease, hantavirus and brucellosis. Some are already in Yellowstone; others may be coming. If they take hold, they threaten elk, bison, deer and other mammals along with native trout and birds. Several factors are at work changing the dynamics of animal disease: more people and domestic animals living near the park, less room outside Yellowstone to find relief from disease outbreaks, and the emergence of several dangerous diseases that move quickly and infect previously unexposed animal populations....
State's shrinking glaciers: Going ... going ... gone? Like tiny doctors on the belly of a sleeping giant, three National Park Service workers trudged up the middle of the Nisqually Glacier, stepping over tiny creeks and peering down a dizzying chute where water from the melting glacier wormed into the 300-foot-thick slab of ice. Nearby, a tall plastic pole arced from the ice into the sky. Park scientist Rebecca Doyle knelt at its base, whipped out a tape measure, and began jotting down numbers. The pole is 41 feet long. Six months ago, in April, it was totally buried in snow and ice. On this recent sunny October day, so much snow had melted that only a few inches of the pole remained buried....
A dozen years of desert protection Speeding motorists bent on reaching Las Vegas or Laughlin Nev., as rapidly as possible view the eastern Mojave Desert as a vast wasteland as they zip along Interstate 15 or Interstate 40. Along the way, they pass endless clusters of creosote bushes, some of nature's oldest plants,growing in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve. "A lot of people don't know what's out here," said Dennis Schramm, superintendent of the vast desert preserve, which marked its 12th anniversary Tuesday. "It contains over 900 species of plants, 206 species of birds, 47 species of animals and 36 species of reptiles." And it also is resplendent with massive sand dunes, desolate mountain peaks, stands of Joshua trees, Indian wall paintings called petrogylphs, herds of bighorn sheep and the historic Mojave wagon road. Alarmed by the relentless expansion of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, environmental visionaries mapped out strategy in the 1970s to counter the threat that urban growth posed for the Southern California desert....
Bush Opens National Parks to Bio-Prospecting Consider, for example, the election-season news that the National Park Service is moving forward with its plans to allow private corporations to "bioprospect" for microorganisms in national parks like Yellowstone in exchange for a piece of the action. Bioprospecting, or bio-pirating in this case since it's being taken from the public without our consent, is the act of mining for living organisms anything from microorganisms to plant and animal genes -- in the pursuit of science and/or profit. And whom should the corporate bioprospectors thank for this unprecedented gift of access to the public's natural resources? Well, both political parties and the various federal agencies they've ruled over, of course. Because it was the Clinton-led Park Service that first hatched this idea and now it's the Bush-led Park Service that is seeing it through. Yep, bipartisanship seems to work best when corporate interests are involved....
Park service ordered to review impact of drilling The National Park Service failed to take "a hard look" at the environmental impact of directional drilling on land adjacent to the Big Thicket Preserve in Southeast Texas, a federal judge ruled last week. Judge John D. Bates said that the park service's findings of no significant impact were "arbitrary and capricious" and that the agency didn't provide supporting evidence for its conclusions. "We hope it will insure more stringent rules, a little tighter regulation and that they'll be a little more protective of the environment," said Brandt Mannchen, chairman of the Big Thicket Committee for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "We hope this ruling won't just affect the Big Thicket but the entire National Park System," Mannchen said. "The Big Thicket is really the nexus of this issue because it has the most gas and drilling."....
Campaign Border Patrol First, as for the movie: "Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration," is a tour de force. It doesn't proselytize. It doesn't announce a political position. But it leaves no doubt how vexing, and at times how incredibly dangerous, is the issue of illegal immigration. Ranchers on the border have their property littered, their livestock attacked, and sometimes their safety threatened, by illegals crossing from Mexico. Police and other law-enforcement officials are attacked and in some cases killed. Drugs are run and teenage girls molested, and agitators yell that American land actually should belong to the Mexican people anyway. And, lest we forget, many of the illegals themselves, ones who themselves are peaceful but impoverished, are abused or abandoned en route by paid human-smugglers out to make a quick buck. But the documentary (available through CitizensUnited.com or at retailers such as Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, Netflix and Amazon) also gives ample time, without the moviemakers doing any editorializing, to Enrique Morones, a man dedicated to the mission of caring for the illegals and who becomes increasingly activist in pushing for open borders. Filmed over the course of seven months, the documentary comes across as being scrupulously fair. Yet it's almost impossible to finish the movie thinking anything other than that the borders must be better patrolled and protected, and that the illegal access must be stopped -- because American lands and American citizenship must not be violated....
The return of an old L.A. flame You think you know barbecue? This is real barbecue, the way people did it around here 100 years ago. Angelenos had their own style of 'cue, a heritage from the days of the 19th century Spanish rancheros, who called it carne tatemada. Down through the 1920s, no convention, charity extravaganza or Fourth of July was a party without a huge spread of our distinctive pit-cooked barbecue. We proudly served it to honored visitors, confident that it was superior to grilling and Southern barbecue alike. As late as the mid-1930s, when old-timers lamented that barbecue was dying out, you could get as many as 60,000 people to come to one of these events. Los Angeles barbecue grew out of cattle ranching, which was our main industry for many decades. We might have barbecued chicken or mutton from time to time, but the overwhelming choice around here was beef. And we used huge amounts of beef. Because there weren't any railroads to ship cattle East until late in the 19th century, hides and tallow were all that cattle ranchers had to sell. In effect, beef was a byproduct of the leather industry in L.A., so it was absurdly cheap for a very long time....
Reub Long loved 'Oregon Desert' "Reub Long's Oregon Desert," one in a series of television shows called "Oregon Experience," will bring to life a vision of rural Oregon life in this episode, which airs Friday on Oregon Public Broadcasting. This documentary tells about how, back in the early 1960's, Russ Jackman, a retired Oregon State University extension agent, and Reuben Long, a colorful Fort Rock Valley rancher, collaborated to create a unique book, "The Oregon Desert." It successfully blended natural science with cowboy humor and scholarly prose with casual meanderings. The book was a celebration of rural Western storytelling; over the years, it has become a Northwest classic. The TV show will replicate much of the point of view of the book. Reub Long, who died in 1974, lived his whole life in a flat, dry area of northern Lake County....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Thank researchers, mice for life There are people who are ennobled by their service to mankind. We think of soldiers, nurses, teachers or ministers whose contributions are recognized daily. Others are national leaders, inventors, Olympic athletes or philanthropists. Their achievements attract laudatory headlines and press. But there are many who toil beneath the radar, who persevere and over a lifetime of service produce profound long-lasting benefits to the world. One example is research scientists. I think of research scientists as the really smart people in my physiological chemistry classes who now work in bat caves chasing cures for the physical maladies of mankind. Much of our knowledge about the human body has come from studying animals. From Sir Alexander Fleming's mouse to Dr. Debakey's heart transplant calf, from NASA's monkey to Dolly the cloned sheep, animals have been used to discover and unlock the secrets of disease and initiate their cures. Is it worth it? Ask my friend with Parkinson's. Ask his family. Sir Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929. The average life span of a 29-year-old person that year in the United States was 49 years. In 2006, the average life span of a 29-year-old person is now 72....
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