NEWS ROUNDUP

Sweeping changes to global climate seen by 2100: study Many of the world's climate zones will vanish entirely by 2100, or be replaced by new, previously unseen ones, if global warming continues as expected, a study released Monday said. Rising temperatures will force existing climate zones toward higher latitudes and higher elevations, squeezing out climates at the colder extremes, and leaving room for unfamiliar climes around the equator, the study predicted. "Our findings are a logical outcome of global warming scenarios that are driven by continued emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases," said Jack Williams, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of the paper. Williams and colleagues from the University of Wyoming based their predictions on computer models that translate carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions into climate change. The emissions' estimates were taken from a report issued by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in February. The models suggest that the climate zones covering as much as 48 percent of the earth's landmass could disappear by 2100....
24% Consider Al Gore Global Warming Expert Former Vice President Al Gore (D) received a warm welcome on Capitol Hill last week for his testimony on the environment and Global Warming. However, while he is now an Academy Award winner and celebrity activist, just 24% of Americans consider Gore an expert on Global Warming. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of 1,000 adults found that 47% say he is not an expert on the topic (see crosstabs). In fact, just 36% of Americans say that Gore knows what he is talking about when it comes to the environment and Global Warming. Thirty-one percent (31%) say he does not know what he is talking about while 33% are not sure. Women, by a 2-to-1 margin, say Gore knows what he is talking about. Men, by a similar margin, say he does not....
Riches await as Earth's icy north melts Barren and uninhabited, Hans Island is very hard to find on a map. Yet these days the Frisbee-shaped rock in the Arctic is much in demand — so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships. The reason: an international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by the impact of global warming on Earth's frozen north. The latest report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the ice cap is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly due to greenhouse gases. It's a catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for Inuit populations whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters. But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Russia reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the Arctic sector approaching $2 trillion....
Heat invades cool heights over Arizona desert High above the desert floor, this little alpine town has long served as a natural air-conditioned retreat for people in Tucson, one of the so-called sky islands of southern Arizona. When it is 105 degrees in the city, it is at least 20 degrees cooler up here near the 9,157-foot summit of Mount Lemmon. But for the past 10 years or so, things have been unraveling. Winter snows melt away earlier, longtime residents say, making for an erratic season at the nearby ski resort, the most southern in the nation. Legions of predatory insects have taken to the forest that mantles the upper mountain, killing trees weakened by record heat. And in 2003, a fire burned for a month, destroying much of the town and scarring more than 87,000 acres. The next year, another fire swept over 32,000 acres. The American Southwest has been warming for nearly 30 years, according to records that date to the late 19th century. And the region is in the midst of an eight-year drought. Both developments could be within the range of natural events. But what has convinced many scientists that the current spate of higher temperatures is not just another swing in the weather has been the near collapse of the sky islands and other high, formerly green havens that poke above the desert....
Scientist says he has cloned 2 wolves A former collaborator of disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk claimed Monday to have succeeded in cloning wolves. The two wolves were born Oct. 18 and 26 in 2005, said Lee Byeong-chun, a veterinary professor of Seoul National University, according to the university's office of research affairs. DNA tests showed the two wolves — named Snuwolf and Snuwolffy — are clones, the office said, adding the results would be published in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells. The team did not immediately provide any independent verification of the DNA tests. Prof. Lee's team succeeded in cloning a female dog, an Afghan hound named Bona, last year after creating the world's first cloned dog in 2005....
Ferret transplant may wait a year Plans to reintroduce the endangered black-footed ferret to Thunder Basin National Grassland may not happen this fall as originally thought. But, agencies participating in the project are optimistic that they will be able to bring the ferrets back next year. “Certainly we will move as quickly as we can, but it’s getting down to the wire for this fall,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Mary Jennings said. “If not this fall, then next year.” The agency is working to make sure adequate numbers of prairie dogs are thriving on the grassland, and solidifying support from landowners neighboring the grassland. Prairie dogs are the black-footed ferrets’ primary food source. A devastating outbreak of plague in 2001-02 decimated prairie dog numbers, although colonies are rebuilding well, said Misty Hays, deputy district ranger for the U.S. Forest Service’s Douglas Ranger District....
Opponents rally around groundwater study Opponents of Las Vegas' bid to take water from along the Utah-Nevada border say the first scientific peek at the proposal backs up their contention that it's a bad deal for Utah. The U.S. Geological Survey offered a sneak preview Monday of the agency's upcoming study of groundwater resources in the Great Basin. Ranchers, conservationists and local government officials have been eagerly awaiting the report because of what it may portend for the proposal by southern Nevada water officials to tap aquifers in the state's eastern valleys and pump it to Las Vegas via a pipeline network. The preliminary findings: There is more groundwater in the Snake Valley - which straddles Utah and Nevada - than originally thought. But there is also apparently more water flowing between Great Basin aquifers than has been historically assumed, meaning Snake Valley could eventually be impacted by groundwater pumping in neighboring Spring Valley, and perhaps elsewhere....
Congress to eye Colo. wildlife bill A Colorado bill designed to reduce the impact of oil and gas drilling on wildlife could serve as a model for federal law, state Rep. Dan Gibbs will tell a House committee today. Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, is scheduled to appear at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on how a surge in oil and gas drilling in the West is affecting the environment. Gibbs' bill, which passed the state House on Monday, would require Colorado's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to consult the Colorado Division of Wildlife on the effects of drilling on such things as animal habitats and mating. Concerns about the effects of drilling have united hunting and wildlife interests, who were previous political foes. The House committee is looking at ways to balance oil and gas development and environmental interests, said Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, who is on the panel. "This is becoming a bigger issue as we see more oil and gas development in the West," Pacheco said....
Ozone monitor to be installed on Aspen Mountain Come Friday, local officials will have another tool -- a nondescript gray, plastic box adorned with a protruding tube -- to help them get a handle on whether local and regional pollution is affecting air in nearby wilderness areas and other pristine high-altitude lands of the White River National Forest surrounding Aspen. The gray box, an active ozone monitor to be installed on Aspen Mountain, will record data on high-altitude ambient concentrations of ozone -- a compound produced when sunlight cooks byproducts of fossil fuel burning and other combustion called nitrous oxides -- said plant physiologist Bob Musselman of the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins. Musselman and physical scientist John Korfmacher, also of the Rocky Mountain Research Station, are collaborating with Andrea Holland-Sears of the White River National Forest to look at ozone in remote, high areas of the forest, Korfmacher said. "It's something the forest wants to keep an eye on," he explained, citing growing public and agency concerns about the possible impacts of increasing air pollution from expanding communities, traffic, and the booming oil and gas industry in western Garfield County....
Foreman: Conservation Movement Must Return To Roots In a recent column, I argued that nature conservationists who work to protect wilderness areas and wild species should be called conservationists, and that resource conservationists, who wish to domesticate and manage lands and species for the benefit and use of humans, should be called resourcists. I also believe that nature conservationists are different birds than environmentalists, who work to protect human health from the ravages of industrialization,and that therefore there is not a single “environmental movement.” When environmentalists turn their attention from the so-called “built environment” to nature, they can take either a conservationist or a resourcist pathway. I’ve named environmentalists who have a utilitarian resourcist view “enviro-resourcists.” And I’ve ruffled some feathers with this view. I’ve ruffled even more feathers lately by warning that enviro-resourcists have been slowing gaining control of conservation groups, thereby undercutting and weakening our effectiveness, and that nature lovers need to take back the conservation family....
Editorial - Abramoff scandal just won't go away Former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles' guilty plea to obstruction of justice last week marked another disgraceful chapter in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal. It also served as a reminder of how poorly the Interior Department and thus the West have been served during the Bush administration's six years in office. Griles became the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in connection with Abramoff - a still-unraveling scandal that has tentacles all over Washington. Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, resigned from Bush's Cabinet in 2006. However, there's never been any evidence that Norton knew that Abramoff or others were using her name to solicit funds from Indian tribes. She now works as a general counsel for oil giant Royal Dutch Shell - part of the same industry that was near and dear to Interior's heart. Norton was attacked by environmentalists as Interior secretary for her pro-development policies regarding oil and gas, coal and timber....
Inside the secretive plan to gut the Endangered Species Act The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is maneuvering to fundamentally weaken the Endangered Species Act, its strategy laid out in an internal 117-page draft proposal obtained by Salon. The proposed changes limit the number of species that can be protected and curtail the acres of wildlife habitat to be preserved. It shifts authority to enforce the act from the federal government to the states, and it dilutes legal barriers that protect habitat from sprawl, logging or mining. In recent months, the Fish and Wildlife Service has gone to extraordinary efforts to keep drafts of regulatory changes from the public. All copies of the working document were given a number corresponding to a person, so that leaked copies could be traced to that individual. An e-mail sent in March from an assistant regional director at the Fish and Wildlife Service to agency staff, asking for comments on and corrections to the first draft, underscored the concern with secrecy: "Please Keep close hold for now. Dale [Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] does not want this stuff leaking out to stir up discontent based on speculation." Many Fish and Wildlife Service employees believe the draft is not based on "defensible science," says a federal employee who asked to remain anonymous. Yet "there is genuine fear of retaliation for communicating that to the media. People are afraid for their jobs." Chris Tollefson, a spokesperson for the service, says that while it's accurate to characterize the agency as trying to keep the draft under wraps, the agency has every intention of communicating with the public about the proposed changes; the draft just hasn't been ready. And, he adds, it could still be changed as part of a forthcoming formal review process....
Sea lions return to dam's fish buffet line They're back -- the California sea lions that drive federal officials and fishermen to distraction by parking themselves at the Bonneville Dam to feast on spring chinook salmon as they swim up the Columbia River to spawn. Government employees dragged out the usual arsenal of large firecrackers, obnoxious noises and rubber bullets to fend off Steller sea lions, who prefer sturgeon, and reported some success. But the same tactics have famously flopped in the past against the California sea lions, who, like the Stellers, are federally protected and seem to know it. They prey on salmon that school up at the base of the dam waiting to go up the fish ladders toward spawning grounds. So far there's no sign of C404, the California sea lion who approached celebrity status by figuring out how to get into the dam's fish ladders for easy pickings. But officials are watching for him....
Editorial - A Delta water crisis? A lone judge in Alameda County is threatening to shut down the water pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that sustain 18 million Southern Californians and millions of acres of agriculture. Judge Frank Roesch's tentative ruling, which would give the state 60 days to comply, is fairly simple. Of all the paperwork on file at the Sacramento headquarters of the State Water Project (operator of the Delta pumps), there is not the "incidental take" permit that clearly shows compliance with the state Endangered Species Act. No permit, no pumping, is Roesch's logic. It is unlikely that the water pumps, the largest in the nation, will soon fall silent because of the court ruling. But the very possibility is enough to cause a political tsunami throughout the system. Developments throughout Southern California are based on a legal foundation that the State Water Project is a lawful, reliable source of supply. All kinds of business interests typically indifferent to Delta issues are about to become very interested. They will find that the Delta's stakeholders are in the early stages of considering anew how to manage the estuary. This lawsuit puts even more pressure on that process to be successful....
Protection, acre by acre For the past decade, San Diego conservationist Camille Armstrong and her colleagues have combed California for pristine parcels that might deserve the nation's most restrictive land-use designation. They've pored over maps, snapped stacks of photographs, camped far and wide across the backcountry, consulted managers of land-use agencies and lobbied politicians. They've found a big-time backer in Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., head of the Senate's environment committee. Recently, Boxer introduced her statewide wilderness blueprint for the fourth time. It proposes that more than 2.4 million acres of California – including about 45,000 acres in San Diego County – be designated as federal wilderness. It's the largest of several wilderness bills introduced in Congress this year....
Former chiefs rap snowmobiles Seven of the eight living men and women who’ve served as National Park Service directors have joined in a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne urging him to move away from snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park. The letter was released Monday, the day before Yellowstone’s winter use draft environmental impact statement was set for release. The plan is expected to call for allowing up to 720 snowmobiles a day in the park. Spanning every Democratic and Republican presidential administration from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton, the seven former Park Service leaders said the proposal would undercut Kempthorne’s commitment to emphasize conservation in the national parks....
National Parks Plan Big Fee Increases The federal government has a financial plan for the national parks, but they didn’t want to release it to the public the agency serves. Instead, a few concerned citizens have to wade through the laborious process of obtaining documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Now that Scott Silver of Wild Wilderness and friends did the digging for us, we know what many of us have suspected all along. The National Park Service (NPS) has a multi-year plan to keep raising fees. About 60 percent (88 of 147) of our parks and monuments have scheduled fee increases this year or in 2008. Most of the rest plan an increase for 2009. In the end, many parks will double or even triple fees. And who says inflation is only 2.5 percent?....
Cloned Cattle Yield Test-Tube Herds for U.S. Sirloins, Milk Mark Walton, head of the world's largest animal cloning company, sees his biotechnology lab in Austin, Texas, as the next frontier in food production. Nine months ago, scientists at Walton's closely held ViaGen Inc. extracted genetic information from customers' prized cattle and transferred the DNA into bovine eggs to make embryos. Now, 75 miles away at the 300-acre Hillman Ranch in the town of Cameron, surrogate mother cows, carrying the embryos, are giving birth to calves that are clones of the clients' finest cattle. This generation of test-tube bulls and cows may be the first whose elite genes end up in America's meat and milk. U.S. regulators are set to approve the cloning of animals for the food supply as early as this year. This action will open the way for food producers to use copies of genetically superior animals to make bigger, stronger herds and, perhaps, tastier products....
It's All Trew: Sausage came in a variety of flavors History reveals that each ethnic group of emigrants coming to America probably brought a special recipe for making sausage native to their respective country. Sometimes, sausage recipes like the languages spoken, differed from village to village within the same country. When we cook sausage either by frying, baking, boiling or smoking, we often change the taste again. Sausage is the ultimate all-purpose meat. Trew family traditions date back to the Depression days, when we participated in community hog and beef butchering days in early Ochiltree County. Too young to remember sausage ingredients, I do remember mother frying sausage patties, placing them into crocks then pouring hot lard on top to preserve. I also remember fishing around in the gooey lard later trying to find patties for meals. Depending on your location, other meats were sometimes added to the ground pork. Families with active hunters and available game put venison or elk meat into their sausage mixes adding a "gamey" flavor. Some added ground beef to keep sausage from being so greasy. Link sausage made by stuffing the meat into long casing and smoking presented a different shape and taste entirely. Last, we must not forget adding rabbit. During the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, when times were the hardest, jackrabbits and cottontail rabbits were often added to sausage recipes. Cottontail rabbit numbers seemed to never vary much. There were always a few around the outbuildings providing a break from the beef and beans menu....