NEWS ROUNDUP

The Daylight Saving change: no savings, no point The US government's plan to boost energy savings by moving Daylight Saving Time forward by three weeks was apparently a waste of time and effort, as the technological foibles Americans experienced failed to give way to any measurable energy savings. While the change caused no major infrastructure problems in the country, plenty of electronics and computer systems that were designed with the original DST switchover date (first Sunday in April) failed to update. The inconvenience was minor, and the potential savings were great. Or so we were told by the politicians behind the move. As it turns out, the US Department of Energy (and almost everyone else except members of Congress) was correct when they predicted that there would be little energy savings. This echoed concerns voiced after a similar experiment was attempted in Australia. Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened. Reuters spoke with Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co. power, who said it plainly: "We haven't seen any measurable impact." New Jersey's Public Service Enterprise Group said the same thing: "no impact" on their business....
If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks. So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US department of agriculture warns that "if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year". According to the UN food and agriculture organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from maize and wheat. Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild. But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel....
Increased timber harvests urged as budgetary solution A local property-rights group thinks the time has come to increase timber harvests on federal forest land to end Jackson County's budget crisis. "Let's end the environmental lawsuits and get everybody together," said Bryan Baumgartner, president of the Jackson County chapter of the People for the U.S.A. Grange. The organization will hold a rally in front of Medford's Central Library at noon Friday, just hours before all 15 of the county's library branches are forced to close because of Jackson County's $23 million budget shortfall. Baumgartner, a Central Point rancher, says years of environmental lawsuits dramatically have reduced timber harvests on what are known as "O&C lands" — millions of acres of forest land originally given to the Oregon and California Railroad that reverted to public ownership when the railroad went bankrupt. The O&C lands, now managed by the Bureau of Land Management, amount to 2.6 million acres in Oregon. Congress passed a law in 1937 directing the land be managed for timber production to earn money for the counties to compensate for lost property tax revenues....
Rancher shoots wolf in Picabo area A Picabo-area rancher shot and killed one of three wolves seen harassing his cattle in late March, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game official has confirmed. "The wolves had been in the cattle for a few days," IDFG Large Carnivore Manager Steve Nadeau said Tuesday. "They had been chasing the cattle and he shot one." The wolf, shot by the unnamed rancher on March 19, was an approximately 80- to 90-pound female, Nadeau said. After the wolf was killed, Fish and Game officials worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to investigate the incident. The investigation determined that the wolf was legally killed, Nadeau said. "They (the USFWS) cleared the rancher of any wrongdoing," he said....
No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue. Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico. In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns. The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had....
Water crisis possible here within 3 years Tucson businesses, apartment complexes and industries may face water-use restrictions by 2010 because of the relentless drought, the city's water chief said Tuesday. Tucson Water Director David Modeer's prediction came after a warning from federal officials that this spring's runoff into Lake Powell — which stores Colorado River water — will be barely 50 percent of normal. Because spring runoff into Powell has been below normal for nine of the past 11 years, a state water official said Tuesday that the Central Arizona Project could have its first shortage as early as three years from now. That would trigger restrictions for many Tucson Water customers, although not homeowners....
Denial in the Desert Some climatologists have not hesitated to call this a "mega-drought," even the "worst in 500 years." Others have been more cautious, not yet sure whether the current aridity in the West has surpassed the notorious thresholds of the 1930s (the Dust Bowl in the southern Plains) or 1950s (devastating drought in the Southwest). But the debate is possibly beside the point: The most recent and authoritative research finds that the "evening redness in the West" (to invoke the portentous subtitle of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian) is not simply episodic drought but the region's new "normal weather." In startling testimony before the National Research Council last December, Richard Seager, a senior geophysicist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, warned that the world's leading climate modelers were cranking out the same result from their super-computers: "According to the models, in the Southwest a climate akin to the 1950s drought becomes the new climate within the next few years to decades." This extraordinary forecast--"the imminent drying of the U.S. southwest"--is a byproduct of the monumental computational effort that has been mounted by nineteen separate climate models (including the flagship outfits at Boulder, Princeton, Exeter and Hamburg) for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPPC, of course, is the supreme court of climate science, established by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization in 1988 to assess research on global warming and its impacts. Although President Bush now grudgingly accepts the IPCC warning that the Arctic is rapidly melting, he has probably not yet registered the possibility that his ranch in Crawford might someday become a sand dune....
State recruits public to eye water Public involvement is key to solving Colorado's looming water crisis, a senior Ritter administration official said Friday. Harris Sherman, director of the Department of Natural Resources, threw his support behind a system of roundtables that brings together people in each major river basin. The Ritter administration is committed to the new process, Sherman told members of the Interbasin Compact Committee. The committee eventually is supposed to reach an agreement among the river basins for planning Colorado's water future. Colorado cities and towns face a 20 percent water shortage in the next 25 years. Population pressures are greatest on the Front Range, but even the relatively wetter Western Slope is expected to have problems finding enough water for newcomers. Farmers and ranchers will come under increasing pressure to turn over their water to cities....
Nevada bill targets federal protests of water applications A rural Nevada lawmaker wants Cabinet-level approval of what he considers frivolous government protests to certain water rights applications, a move he said would protect water that belongs to people of the state. Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, told the Assembly Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday that his AB425 is a response to many protests by the National Park Service and federal Bureau of Land Management to water rights applications in southern Nye County. "It's having a devastating impact on the rural communities who do depend upon the lawful, legal use of their appropriation of groundwater that I believe belongs to the people of the state of Nevada," Goedhart said. "One of the most important things we can do is preserve citizens' rights to their property." AB425 prohibits the state water engineer from considering a protest filed by any government agency unless it's signed by the head of that agency, including the Interior secretary, who oversees the BLM, Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Agriculture secretary, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service....
Trails on private property to remain on map Despite opposition from farmers and environmental leaders, the Marin Planning Commission on Monday refused to remove maps of proposed hiking trails across private property from the countywide plan. Property owners, including many West Marin farmers and ranchers, object to the map, which they say encourages hikers to trespass on their property. Some environmental leaders have agreed, saying the county already has enough trails through its wildest areas. "We have a lot of trails in Marin County," said Barbara Salzman, president of the Marin Audubon Society. "We don't have to go across privately owned land."....
Editorial - High court seduced by global warming hysteria The most potent argument against judicial activism is that parties who have failed to achieve their political objectives through the legislative process, or by petitioning administrative or regulatory agencies, turn to sympathetic or malleable judges to try to get what they have failed to get through the political process. Unfortunately, in Massachusetts et. al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et. al., a majority on a divided Supreme Court engaged in precisely the kind of judicial activism that people on all sides of the ideological spectrum correctly deplore. In short, the popular passions around global warming carried the day, rather than calm legal precedent and thought. The Clean Air Act of 1970, as amended most recently in 1990, says that the EPA administrator “shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant . . . which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution” coming from new cars. Despite the trendiness of concern about global warming, the EPA has so far declined to regulate carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse gas” coming from automobile tailpipes. Its reasons have not been trivial. The science on how much human-produced greenhouse gases contribute to global warming is unsettled, and U.S. motor vehicle emissions contribute about 6 percent of global carbon dioxide, with new cars contributing only a fraction of that. So the EPA administrator, “in his judgment,” has decided that setting standards for new-car CO2 emissions is neither required by law nor a policy likely to help much. The fact that Congress has not passed legislation mandating regulation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and that the Senate never ratified the Kyoto treaty, provide some underpinning for this judgment....
Editorial - Saving the ranchlands Arizona's cowboy-and-cattle heritage is vanishing as subdivisions and "ranchettes" take over grazing land. Fortunately, there's a growing push to save some remnant of ranching. And a growing understanding that this open space is more than a picturesque backdrop. The grasslands are vital to maintaining our wildlife habitat and water supplies. Sunset magazine recently included Pima County and Arizona Open Land Trust among its "champions of the West," an annual environmental award, for their work in preserving a pair of ranches. The non-profit land trust helped in negotiations with the family that owned the Santa Lucia Ranch and Rancho Seco, which lie southwest of Tucson in the mesquite-dotted Altar Valley. Pima County supervisors in 2005 approved $18.5 million to buy 9,500 acres at the ranches, plus acquire grazing rights on 27,000 acres of federal and state trust land. Family members have a lease to continue running cattle there, while the county will monitor the health of the rangeland. What's the alternative? Consider the nearby Sopori Ranch. It was sold just a year earlier - to Phoenix-based First United Realty, which is now selling lots in a subdivision there....
New USDA initiative will help ducks in the Prairie Pothole Region Ducks Unlimited (DU) says a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiative will help restore critical duck habitat in the Prairie Pothole Region. The region is known as the nation’s “duck factory.” According to the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the new initiative is part of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The initiative is called State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement. It allows state FSA offices to address local wildlife conservation needs in conjunction with the needs of farmers and ranchers. "This new practice will allow states to focus CRP on wildlife concerns specific to their state, whether it is a game species, such as ducks or pheasants, or an at-risk species, such as the sage grouse” said John Johnson, deputy administrator for farm programs, for FSA. Johnson says the initiative is the latest in a series of steps to refine and target CRP, so it achieves specific and measurable environmental objectives....
Study: Reforestation Rich After Fires Scientists looking at the aftermath of wildfires in the forests of southwestern Oregon and Northern California found that after five to ten years even the most severely burned areas had sprouted plentiful seedlings without any help from man. Though natural regeneration generally took longer to produce pines and firs, it created a more varied forest, even after brush had become established, which is likely to benefit wildlife, concluded to the study by scientists from Oregon State University appearing in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of Forestry. "When time is not a factor in achieving the goals, then natural regeneration appears to be a very good approach to reforestation," said David Hibbs, a professor of ecology and silviculture at Oregon State University who took part in the study. The study is the latest to address the contentious issue of whether to harvest trees killed by wildfires on national forests and replant, or let them regenerate on their own....
Gila trout back, cutthroat coming The state Department of Game and Fish will work with partners starting this summer on a project to restore pure-strain native Rio Grande cutthroat trout. The goal of the 10-15-year project will be to restore Rio Grande cutthroats to about 125 miles of streams and 20 lakes in the species' historic range in northern New Mexico. Work on Comanche Creek and its feeder streams is scheduled for this summer and fall. The Rio Costilla restoration project also includes the U.S. Forest Service, the New Mexico chapter of Trout Unlimited and private landowners next to the Valle Vidal unit of the Carson National Forest. The state will offer limited fishing for Gila trout starting July 1 in some southwestern New Mexico streams that have been closed to fishing since 1966. The Gila trout was listed as a federal endangered species in 1966. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently designated the fish as threatened rather than endangered. The state Game Commission has approved fishing changes based on that decision. The new regulations allow the state Department of Game and Fish to open angling for Gila trout in certain streams that had been closed to all fishing.
Jonah Field appeal rejected The federal government has rejected an appeal from conservationists who say a planned expansion of the Jonah Field would degrade air quality and hurt wildlife. The U.S. Department of Interior's Interior Board of Land Appeals on Friday ruled that it would not overturn a previous order denying a petition to halt the project. Several conservation groups had petitioned to stop an "infill" drilling project at the 30,000-acre field, about 32 miles southeast of Pinedale. The appeals board rejected the conservation groups' contention that new information showed deficiencies in the federal analysis of the project's effect on air quality. The infill plan, approved by federal regulators last year, calls for drilling an additional 3,100 wells over 76 years. The plan calls for allowing up to 128 wells per square mile. The Wyoming Outdoor Council, Upper Green River Valley Coalition, The Wilderness Society and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition filed an appeal early last year of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's approval of the infill project....
Conservation groups plan to challenge grizzly move Conservation groups on Tuesday challenged the federal government's plan to remove Yellowstone-area grizzly bears from protection under the Endangered Species Act. In March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the removal of the grizzlies from the list of "threatened" animals effective April 30, capping what officials described as a successful three-decade effort to recover the animal from near-extinction. The change would remove some federal protections and open the door to future public hunting of grizzlies for the first time in decades. On Tuesday, eight groups notified the Fish and Wildlife Service that they intend to file a lawsuit in 60 days if the delisting is not reversed. The groups argue that the 500 bears now living in and around Yellowstone National Park are too few to guarantee long-term survival of the population in the face of global warming, habitat loss and other pressures....
Editorial - Land's End The federal government is making a novel argument in the Supreme Court in a Fifth Amendment case. If the justices buy it, then the state will be granted the powers of trespass and intimidation. The Court likely won't issue a ruling until early summer, but what it heard in the March arguments in Wilkie v. Robbins is enough to boil the blood of any property rights advocate. Robbins' lawsuit against Charles Wilkie and other BLM agents on Fifth Amendment grounds, and racketeering and organized crime law, has not yet been to trial because the government has been tied up in appeals seeking a dismissal. So it's difficult to separate the facts from the accusations made by both sides. But this much we do know, and it is disturbing: In representing the government, Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote a brief that includes the heading: "There Is No Fifth Amendment Right Against Retaliation For The Exercise Of Property Rights." Or, in less legalistic terms used by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe when arguing on Robbins' behalf before the Supreme Court, "The position of the government here is that there is no constitutional limit on the kind of retaliation they can engage in." Last June, the Supreme Court gravely erred when it ruled in Kelo v. New London that governments are free to seize private land and sell it to private developers. If it strays from the Constitution yet again by taking the government's position, it will have done more to erode property rights in the last 24 months than had been done in the previous 200 years. We hope this time there are more justices than jesters on this court....
Gov: No wolf plan by May 1 Gov. Dave Freudenthal wrote to the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday saying it would be virtually impossible for the state to adopt a new wolf management plan by May 1. Federal officials, meanwhile, say it's critical for Wyoming to submit a wolf management plan soon if the state is to be included in federal regulations scheduled to be released next year spelling out how the wolves will be removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Freudenthal, in his letter to Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director Mitch King in Denver, wrote that the state's wolf management statutes won't change until the federal agency meets requirements spelled out in a bill the Legislature passed and the governor signed last month. The legislation that Freudenthal signed gives his administration authority to negotiate with the federal government the boundaries of a permanent wolf management area in northwest Wyoming. The state legislation will expire next February if the federal government hasn't by then removed wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act and given Wyoming the authority to manage wolves in the state....
Ala. Woman on Horseback Charged With DUI A woman who went for a horseback ride through town at midnight and allegedly used the horse to ram a police car was charged with driving under the influence and drug offenses, police said Tuesday. "Cars were passing by having to avoid it, and almost hitting the horse," said Police Chief Brad Gregg. He said DUI charges can apply even when the vehicle has four legs instead of wheels. Police in the northeast Alabama town received a call around midnight Saturday about someone riding a horse on a city street, Gregg said. Officer John Seals found Melissa Byrum York, 40, of Henagar on horseback on a nearby road and attempted to stop her. Seals asked the woman repeatedly to get off the horse, but she kept trying to kick the animal to make it run, the chief said. "She wouldn't stop. She kept riding the horse and going on," Gregg said. After ramming the police car with the horse and riding away, the woman tried to jump off but caught her foot in a stirrup, Gregg said....
Five cowboy poets invite us into their world Cowboy poetry? Is that an oxymoron? Not at all, says poet Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and a BBC commentator. "I think it's terrific." Gioia, author of the controversial book Can Poetry Matter?, contends that cowboy poetry — along with hip-hop and poetry slams — propels poetry into mainstream culture, out of the musty world of academics. "That's not to say (best-selling cowboy poet and National Pubic Radio commentator) Baxter Black is W.B. Yeats," Gioia said. But he notes approvingly that cowboy poetry typically includes rhyme, meter and narrative — traditional poetic devices out of fashion in other literary circles. But those traditions were squarely in evidence at the recent Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, where cowpunchers recited poems, played music and told far-fetched stories. This year's gathering attracted an estimated 1,000 people, a record for the event. The Alpine festival is only one of an estimated 200 U.S. cowboy poetry gatherings held each year. For such a traditional-seeming form, the gatherings are relatively new: The first was held in 1985, when the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nev., launched the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering....