NEWS ROUNDUP

Law Prof Takes Case to the Supreme Court Yesterday, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John G. Roberts ’76, a graduate of Harvard Law School, got to turn the tables on one of his former instructors. In his first Supreme Court appearance since December 2004, Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 argued that the property rights of Harvey F. Robbins, the Wyoming rancher he was representing, were violated when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took retaliatory action against him for failing to give the government access to a road. “They ransacked his cabin, they got a neighbor to run a truck into him when he was on horseback, they fabricated felony charges against him,” Tribe said. “All because he wouldn’t bow to their demands.” The Supreme Court has to determine if plaintiffs can sue government officials personally under federal racketeering laws; Robbins is trying to sue BLM employees. In his argument, Tribe claimed that the Fifth Amendment protects citizens from facing retaliation from the government for excluding the government from private property. “In my view, the Fifth Amendment protects you not only from having your property taken without just compensation, but it also protects you from being subject to government retaliation,” Tribe said in a phone interview from Washington after his appearance before the court. “That’s the case here.” While Tribe said he sensed the justices were sympathetic to his Fifth Amendment argument, they were wary of creating new ways to sue government employees. “There is a considerable amount of hostility for the possibility of opening up the floodgates of litigation against government officials,” Tribe said....
Dispute with BLM heard by top court A Wyoming rancher should be allowed to sue individual federal workers for harassment and retaliation under federal racketeering law, the rancher's lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe argued the case for Robbins, saying there should be a constitutional avenue for private citizens to sue government employees for continued harassment, instead of having to sue for individual retaliatory actions. The Bureau of Land Management, represented by the Department of Justice, argued that there is no precedent for such lawsuits under current law and thus their employees are immune from them. The justices questioned whether Robbins' lawsuit was an appropriate response to the BLM employees' actions and whether allowing it to proceed would flood the legal system with similar lawsuits....Go here (pdf) for a transcript of the oral arguments.
Bush administration reinterprets species law Tired of losing lawsuits brought by conservation groups, the Bush administration issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that would allow it to protect plants and animals only in areas where they are struggling to survive, while ignoring places they are healthy or have already died out. The opinion by U.S. Department of Interior Solicitor David Bernhardt was posted with no formal announcement on the department's Web site on Friday. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, contacted in Washington, D.C., said the new policy would allow them to focus on protecting species in areas where they are in trouble, rather than having to list a species over its entire range. That would make it easier to take the gray wolf off the federal threatened species list in Montana and Idaho, leaving it to the states to manage. And it would leave it listed in Wyoming, where the state has yet to adopt a protection plan that satisfies the federal government, Hall said....Go here (pdf) to read the opinion.
WWF's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, Rio Grande Makes List The Rio Grande is among the world's top ten rivers at risk, according to a report by the same name released today by World Wildlife Fund. The WWF report, World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, names the world's rivers that are facing widespread degradation while millions of people depend on them for survival. The Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico), along the U.S.-Mexico border, made the Top 10 list because the river is severely threatened by water diversions, widespread alteration of the floodplain, dams and pollution. Although the Rio Grande and its tributaries run through the arid Chihuahuan Desert it is home to a spectacular array of freshwater species. The river is also the lifeblood of the region's economy, providing water to some of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country and thousands of farms and ranches. Irrigation accounts for more than 80 percent of all water diversions from the river....
Court declines to referee logging dispute in scorched forest The Supreme Court declined to step into a fight Monday between the Bush administration and environmental groups who are trying to stop logging in a national forest that was damaged by wildfires. The justices refused to review an appeals court decision that temporarily blocked logging in two sections of the Eldorado National Forest, near Sacramento, Calif., while the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity pursue a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service. Fires burned nearly 19,000 acres of the forest in 2004. At issue is whether the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applied the proper legal standard in granting a preliminary injunction against the logging....
Mexican gray wolf killed by recovery team An endangered Mexican gray wolf that was involved in killing three cows in southwestern New Mexico was fatally shot Friday by a member of the wolf interagency field team. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued an order to permanently remove the male wolf, a member of the Saddle Pack, from the Arizona-New Mexico border in February. At the time, the agency said the team would make every effort to capture the wolf. But the Center for Biological Diversity criticized the kill, saying no such efforts were made....
Wolf numbers top 1,300 in region There are now at least 1,300 wolves prowling Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, far more than anyone imagined when the species was reintroduced in the Northern Rockies 12 years ago. The wolf population has, on average, grown by about 26 percent a year for the past decade. The latest estimates, which summarize counts completed at the end of 2006, show they aren't slowing down. "I keep thinking we're at the top end of the bubble," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I can't see that there's room for any more, but we'll see." As the wolf population has grown, so have the reports of cattle, sheep and other livestock being killed. In response, wildlife officials last year killed a record number of wolves after livestock attacks....
Conservation groups prepare to sue over wolf ordinance Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians joined three other conservation groups Monday in sending Catron County commissioners notice of their intent to file a lawsuit over a new county wolf-killing ordinance. Catron County recently approved an ordinance allowing livestock producers to kill wolves that might be a danger to humans. The conservation groups say the killing of wolves to protect humans is already covered under the Endangered Species Act. The ordinance “unlawfully undermines federal wolf management.” Forest Guardians was joined in the notice by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Rewilding Insitute and Sinapu....
Clashing over Utah's trust lands: Selling the land vs. saving the land It controls 3.4 million acres of Utah land, has amassed some $700 million and is a major power broker from one end of the state to the other. Although its name carries the kind of bureaucratic freight that makes people's eyes glaze over, its actions often raise hackles. The Utah School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration is the state's gorilla. SITLA is backed up by statutory might that allows the agency to rule with an iron hand - when it wants to. White-hot topics like the trust-lands agency's desire to auction off 365 scenic acres near Little Hole, the blue-ribbon trout fishery on the Green River, have wildlife enthusiasts biting their lips. Developers want to build an upscale lodge and cabins on the land. And recently, the agency turned up its nose at a $40 million offer from the state Department of Natural Resources for 28,000 acres on Tabby Mountain on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains. It's a favorite for hunters, but trust-lands officials say they can get a better offer in the future, most likely from the private sector....
Suit targets tar-sand oil development Environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the government Wednesday to try to stop leases that could lead to an unusual style of oil extraction on federal land in southern Utah. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and others claim the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had no authority to approve ''tar sand'' leases on 38,000 acres in Garfield County. Tar sand is like black tar melded with sand, clay or stone, a concoction that looks like coffee grounds. The oil is extracted after the material is mined. ''It's extremely destructive on the surface,'' said Stephen Bloch, attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Salt Lake City. No extraction is imminent. The land is in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not far from Capitol Reef National Park, and wilderness study areas....
Helping dragonfly would cost millions Federal efforts to conserve the endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly along the Des Plaines River Valley could cost $14.6 million to $43.9 million over the next 20 years, according to an analysis released Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The estimates come as the service is considering whether to designate as a critical habitat 27,836 acres in the four Midwest states where the metallic green insect with a 3-inch wingspan and emerald-colored eyes remains. Such a designation limits development and other activities, but it protects features necessary for the species' recovery, such as water or food. Environmentalists argue that protecting the habitat of the rare dragonflies--whose only Illinois range is in slivers of Cook, DuPage and Will Counties--is important because they are indicators of the quality of groundwater in a region where it's under pressure from development. Caused mostly by the destruction of their habitats, biologists estimate there are fewer than 500 adult Hine's emerald dragonflies in the state....
Bureaucrats or anglers: who can save the Verde trout? Fishing in Central Arizona could be in big trouble if a lawsuit to list the Verde trout is successful. If that happens, all stockings of non-native fish—trout, bass, catfish and panfish—will likely stop for at least a year while biologists conduct a study to determine how such stockings impact the Verde trout. They could find that stockings of non-native fish must stop permanently. And, ironically, the lawsuit to protect the Verde trout could kill it. Oddly enough, the Center for Biological Diversity filed the suit the very same week I approached Arizona Game & Fish Department with my own Verde Trout Recovery Project. The CBD is as concerned about the fish as I am, but we're approaching the problem from two different directions; unfortunately, they're mutually exclusive. Consider tossing in your own two cents' worth after I give you some background....
Texas dolphin die-off puzzles scientists The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday. "This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. "But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters. Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore....
All Creatures Great, Small ... and Endangered AFTER completing the nature documentary “The Blue Planet” — a $10 million, eight-part BBC series that took 20 camera teams five years to shoot, spawned an international concert tour based on its Emmy-winning score and eventually was shown in more than 50 countries — its producer, Alastair Fothergill, could have taken a well-deserved break. Instead, immediately following “Blue Planet’s” September 2001 debut, Mr. Fothergill, a longtime BBC producer, began work on another ambitious project. His new series, “Planet Earth,” “is trying to do for the whole planet what ‘Blue Planet’ had done for the oceans,” Mr. Fothergill said in a telephone interview. “To be honest, that’s a pretty tall order.” The new 11-part series, shown last summer in Britain, will have its United States premiere on March 25 on the Discovery Channel. To help him up the ante, the BBC, which says “Planet Earth” is its most ambitious documentary project to date, laid out up to $2 million per episode, and Mr. Fothergill didn’t waste a cent. “Until we started ‘Planet Earth’ the only aerials you could film in nature documentaries were wide angles because if you flew close enough to get a tighter shot you’d frighten the animals,” Mr. Fothergill said. Among the various photography systems employed by his vagabonding camera crew — 70 men and women who traveled to more than 200 locations on five continents — during their five years traveling the globe, the Cineflex heligimble was by far the most revolutionary. The gyroscopic stabilizing mechanism, once reserved for Hollywood studios, can support a lens four times more powerful than any previously used in nature photography....
Snowflakes as Big as Frisbees? Since at least the 19th century, people have periodically claimed to see giant snowflakes falling from the sky — big ones the size of saucers and plates or even larger, their edges turned up, their heaviness making them descend faster than small flakes. But the evidence was always sketchy and, because of the fragile nature of snowflakes, fleeting. The giant flakes were not quite in the category of sea monsters or U.F.O.’s. Even so, skeptics noted the human fondness for exaggeration, as well as the lack of convincing photographs. And the organizations that compile weather records never made tracking big flakes an observational requirement. So the giants languished in a twilight world of science, their existence claimed but seldom documented. Now, theorists, weather historians and field observers are concluding that most of the reports are true and that unusually large snowflakes two to six inches wide and perhaps wider fall regularly around the globe, surprisingly big and fluffy, if seldom witnessed or celebrated. Guinness World Records lists the largest snowflakes as having fallen during a storm in January 1887 at Fort Keogh, in Montana. A rancher nearby, the book says, called them “larger than milk pans” and measured one at 15 inches wide. But no corroborating evidence supports the claim....
Idaho's first gold rush attracted Irish immigrants Capt. Elias D. Pierce, a Californian at the head of a party of six prospectors, discovered gold on Orofino Creek in North Idaho on Sept. 30, 1860. In the spring of 1861 a gold rush of major proportions was on. Many Irish refugees from the great potato famine of the 1840s went to California during the gold rush of the 1850s. In the 1860s, many found their way to Pierce, Idaho. Most of these Irish adventurers had been too late to find much gold in California. When news of Pierce's strike reached them, they headed for the wilds of Idaho. Their biographies, collected years later, tell us of adventure, hard work, and pride in their accomplishments. Here are the stories of a few who traveled to the little mining town of Pierce in the early ‘60s....
Baxter Black : Horse sets barn ablaze I wrote a book titled "Blazin' Bloats and Cows on Fire!" It referred to the flammability of rumen gasses and the spectacular but rarely harmful occasions when they are ignited. I assumed that the predilection for ignition was confined to ruminants, but, as is often the case, I was thinking too small. Dr. Charlie broadened my horizons. He and his esteemed equine veterinary colleague, Marvelous Marv, were on a house call to examine a 4-year-old colt with colic. Although the horse was a fine looking chestnut, the facilities were not up to par. It was raining a steady drizzle and the horse pen was abloom in late spring Colorado mud. Marvelous Marv was not necessarily fastidious, but he made a point to dress professionally. A Windsor knotted tie, Pendleton wool sport coat and checkered English hunting cap set him apart from Dr. Charlie who wore more practical coverall garb. When they arrived together, most assumed Marvelous Marv was the man-in-charge and Dr. Charlie was his valet. They soon determined from the history of the patient being fed a garbage can full of lawn clippings and the swollen tight high right flank, that a gaseous cecum was the problem. The lady owner fretted. She led the horse from the muddy pen into a small very old wooden storage shed. The doctors proceeded with their examination and concluded that the cecum would have to be punctured to relieve the pressure....