Senate colleagues salute Thomas' contributions A vase of red, white and blue flowers stood on the black-draped desk of Sen. Craig Thomas as his mourning colleagues rose together in the Senate chamber for a moment of silence early Tuesday. Senator after senator paid tribute to the late Wyoming Republican in speeches lasting the morning. They all turned to the same words: cowboy, Marine, courageous, kind, calm, straightforward. A picture emerged of a gentle spirit who never complained despite his recent illness, an upbeat man with a warm word for everyone, a quiet but tough fighter who stood his ground on issues that mattered most to his state. "For me, I'll always remember Craig's spirit, for his spirit in life was a great illustration of the spirit of Wyoming," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. "His life became a living portrait of the American West. He saw a world from the saddle of his horse and from under the brim of his cowboy hat. He was proud of Wyoming, and Wyoming was proud to be represented by him."...
Senator's grace fondly recalled among those in his home state Al Simpson remembered a young man who was a tough wrestler and football player, while Eli Bebout recalled team roping with him. Former State Treasurer Cynthia Lummis said she admired his cool, steady style of leadership - while for state Republican Chairman Fred Parady, it was a pie-eating contest that stood out. Fond memories abound of Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., who died Monday. Simpson grew up with Thomas in Cody and played football with him at the University of Wyoming. Both went into the military after college - Simpson into the Army, Thomas into the Marines. "He was a tough guy," Simpson said. Yet Thomas had a big smile. Simpson said Thomas was a leavening influence on Simpson's own rambunctious demeanor, a dynamic that continued years later, when Thomas would bring people to visit Simpson when he was a U.S. senator....
Forest Service investigates former employees The case against a wildfire commander ignites an intense debate over prescribed and unauthorized burns. It has also sparked an investigation into the actions of former firefighters. Just two days after former fire commander Van Bateman was sentenced to two years in prison for starting fires without authorization, other commanders have come out and said they know of other firefighters who have started unauthorized fires. Raqual Romero, a forest service spokesperson, told 12 News that investigators will look into the comments made by former employees Jim Paxon and Charlie Denton. Former commander Larry Humphrey, who spoke out in support of Van Bateman told 12 News he's aware of "several" firefighters who have started unauthorized burns. "It was against the rules as far as we knew but not against the law", said Humphrey. Several high ranking forest officials have come out since Bateman was sentenced and called his actions the work of a "rogue" firefighter. The forest service is just starting their investigation....
Feds begin wolverine review Scientists have long known the wolverine -- once described as a weasel with a scrap of demoniac fury -- is a beast of great ferocity, cunning and secrecy. They also know the animal lives in just a fraction of its historical range. What they don't know is whether wolverines, which inhabit parts of Wyoming, should be considered an endangered species. In response to a court ruling last fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is initiating a status review of the fierce, reclusive predator to determine whether the species warrants special protection, the agency announced Tuesday. Conservationists contend wolverine populations are in steep, drastic decline and need help. Problems for the species include loss of habitat because of roads and other human development, trapping in Montana and denning disturbances caused by snowmobiles. The Fish and Wildlife Service intends to complete the wolverine status review by a court-ordered date of Feb. 28, 2008, said agency spokeswoman Lori Nordstrom. "The Service will evaluate all existing and new information to determine whether impacts to the wolverine warrant a listing proposal," Mitch King, director of the Service's Mountain-Prairie Region, said in a news release. Nordstrom said the agency is seeking information from the public, government agencies and others regarding the status and potential impacts to the wolverine....
Bear attack victim released A wildlife photographer mauled by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park last month has been released from an eastern Idaho hospital. Jim Cole, 57, of Bozeman, suffered serious facial and eye damage when he disturbed a female bear while shooting photographs in the park's Hayden Valley. Park officials say Cole was hiking alone, off a trail, and was two or three miles from a road when the bear with a single cub attacked. Longtime friend Michael Sanders said Cole was released from the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center on Sunday and will spend the next several weeks recovering at an undisclosed location. Cole "is experiencing problems with his vision and speech," Sanders told the Idaho Falls Post-Register. "His arms are very weak, but he is doing some exercises and feeling better." The May 23 attack is not the first for Cole, who has written and taken photos for two books about grizzly bears....
Injured eagle put into wild after rehab A golden eagle that was seriously injured last winter returned to its home along the Bighorn River last week after having been rescued by cattle ranchers and rehabilitated in Bozeman. Harry and Ellen Allen, owners of the Pocket Creek Ranch near Custer, helped release the female adult eagle back into the wild last Friday. "It was pretty exciting that she is back home again," Ellen Allen said. The family is keeping an eye on the bird, and so far she is sticking close to the river, Ellen Allen said. Lou Hanebury, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the Allens' ranch is teeming with wildlife and that the family especially enjoys watching bald and golden eagles during nesting season and throughout the year. In January, the Allens noticed a golden eagle that was doing poorly and could fly only short distances. Harry Allen called the FWS on Jan. 10, and Hanebury and other agency officials went to the ranch and captured the bird....
US Chamber Joins Growing Clamor Against Rahall Energy Bill The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Tuesday joined the growing clamor against Rep. Nick Rahall's, D-W.Va., energy bill which critics say would not only stunt future oil and gas production in the U.S., but also suppress a growing wind energy market. The chamber, along with a raft of industry groups, is urging federal lawmakers to oppose the bill ahead of a markup in the House Natural Resources Committee Wednesday. Environmental groups, however, say they are mostly delighted with the bill - especially the oil and gas provisions - and are near to brokering a legislative compromise with committee chairman Rahall's office that would allow continued wind power growth while protecting wildlife. In a letter to lawmakers, chamber vice president of government affairs Bruce Josten said Rahall's Energy Reform and Revitalization Act of 2007, "not only fails to produce a single kilowatt of energy, but also threatens to reduce, and in some sectors eradicate, energy production." "Any lawmaker serious about energy security or energy independence should have strong reservations about voting for H.R. 2337," Josten wrote....
Land owners fight back against drillers The energy boom across the West has created tens of thousands of jobs and funded state scholarships, teacher raises — even top-of-the-line sports centers in remote ranch towns. The other day, Roger Hawkins was reminded how much all that wealth would cost him. Strolling his 32-acre ranch in southwest Colorado, Hawkins came across yellow survey tape running past a web of deer tracks. It indicated plans for drilling on his property — in the pine-studded hollow where he had hoped to build a new home. Like many Westerners, Hawkins owns the surface of his ranch but not the rights to the minerals below. Traditionally, property owners in such “split estates” have had little choice but to get out of the way when energy companies start chopping trees, paving roads or sinking wells to get buried fuel. But now they’re fighting back. Legislatures in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming recently passed bills to rein in oil, gas and coal extraction on private property. The measures do not halt the practice, by any means; the energy extracted heats homes and powers fuel plants, and Western states depend on energy revenue and the jobs that exploration brings. But the legislation gives some leverage to landowners....
Cry Wolf Pick up the february 2007 issue of Outdoor Life magazine, and the first thing you’ll probably notice is a pretty scary-looking confrontation. The cover features an outdoorsy oil painting—think 1950s Boy Scouts manual—of two snarling wolves charging toward a hunter. “Wolf Attack,” reads the neon-orange cover line, pointing to a story about a hunter whose dogs were killed by wolves. The story has conservationists fuming. “It makes it sound like the wolves are attacking these people and their dogs, but it doesn’t really explain what occurred,” says Suzanne Asha Stone, a spokesperson for the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife. “People went hunting with their dogs, and they released them near the wolves’ denning site. It’s unfortunate that this happened, but it’s not common.” Neither the story nor Stone’s reaction is surprising; hunters and animal advocates have an acrimonious history together, to put it mildly. But there’s a backstory that makes the Outdoor Life article especially timely—and, if you ask Stone, especially worrisome. Wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains are back from the brink of extinction....
Forest Service branch to assess emissions The regional branch of the U.S. Forest Service has decided to assess its greenhouse gas emissions by joining the California Climate Action Registry, a voluntary program established by state law. The Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region, which oversees federal forests in California, announced the plan Tuesday, becoming the first federal agency to join the registry. Its 18 national forests cover one-fifth of the state and involve about 5,000 employees, 7,600 facilities and 3,500 street-legal vehicles. Spokesman Matt Mathes said forest officials will use the registry's accounting rules to assess emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases from its vehicles and facilities. A future assessment may probe emissions from forest management. "The whole idea here is to establish a baseline for what our emissions are, and then to be able to reduce them," Mathes said. "In the long term, we do think it will be important for us to measure the effect of forest management on carbon." Everyone better watch this. It has the potential to influence every decision on management and could set a precedent for other Federal agencies. Are you ready to purchase some "carbon credits" so you can graze, hike, camp, ski etc.?? Will also be used by the agencies to ask for more money.
Budworm now bigger threat Entomologist Dr. Laurel Walters says the spruce budworm, one of the insect species previously named as one of the detrimental species affecting the Lincoln National Forest, is now a larger immediate threat to the forest than the looper. "We just surveyed many of the conifers on our one-acre property in Cloudcroft," Walters said during an interview with the Daily News Sunday. "Of 60 trees, 100 percent are infested with spruce budworm." Walters called this discovery "a disaster." "Now it is essential that we spray for this in a couple of weeks, in addition to spraying for the looper," she said. Walters, who is serving as an unpaid consultant for Otero County on the insect infestation in the Lincoln, said the budworms will become voracious in the larval stage between moulting after they leave their silken home at the base of the buds. The entomologist said she has already observed several budworms emerging out of buds on trees in the forest. "I believe that this poses an immediate threat to our trees," Walters said. "And that this may be even more deadly to the trees than the loopers."....
BLM Forest Tour: Is thinning a winning idea? This is the Bureau of Land Management’s proposal for stimulating old-growth characteristics in crowded tree stands. The pros for doing such follow: Fires ravage dense forests; birds and wildlife vie for huge, old-growth trees with thick branches and decaying cavities. Then there’s the con, which sticks in the craw of the logging industry: Thinning projects eat profits. The BLM inventories these considerations and more when it plans a thinning harvest sale. They are also the particulars of a 14-year study on tree-stand density at a dozen different sites in Western Oregon. “We don’t have stands that are complex because of things that we’ve done,” for wholesale timber sales of the past, announced Al James, a BLM forester, to a mixed group of timber industry leaders, businessmen, conservationists and a schools superintendent on a field trip last week to two study sites in the Umpqua area. But the BLM hopes it can enhance critical habitat for threatened birds and other at-risk wildlife by selling commercial thinning harvests. The work would also increase the flow of timber receipts into local and county coffers....
Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front Members Sentenced in Oregon Today U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken sentenced the final defendant in the conspiracy case involving twenty acts of arson committed by members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Justice Department announced. The ten defendants acted in an underground cell of what they called "The Family." In their previously entered guilty pleas, the defendants acknowledged that they, and their group, sought to influence and affect the conduct of government, private business, and the civilian population through force, violence, sabotage, mass destruction, intimidation and coercion, and to retaliate against government and private businesses by similar means. The investigation of the environmental extremists involved multiple federal, state and local law enforcement and spanned over nine years. "Today's sentence is a fitting culmination to the largest prosecution of environmental extremists in U.S. history. These defendants were responsible for a broad campaign of domestic terrorism that spanned five states, included roughly 20 arsons or attempted arsons, and caused more than $40 million in property damage. The lengthy sentences should serve notice to others who use violence to further their causes," said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales....
Texas' Dirty Coal The latest carbon dioxide emissions numbers from the Energy Department, listed by state, are out. Not surprisingly, Texas topped the list of biggest polluters in 2003, the most recent year with available data. It holds steady as 7th in carbon dioxide emissions behind whole nations: the entire United States, China, Russia, Japan, India and Germany. The co-star of the report was coal, Texas' major power source, because although carbon dioxide emissions from car exhaust account for 25% of America's greenhouse gasses, coal produces 50% of America's electricity and burning coal creates more carbon dioxide than any other common fuel source. Texas seems to be a house divided regarding its own place in the global emissions hierarchy. In 2005 the state's Governor Rick Perry fast-tracked plans for 11 new TXU Corp. coal power plants after the company lined the war chest for Perry's re-election campaign. But Robert Cervenka, a Republican rancher of Riesel, Texas, manage to organize 1,000 people to fight the governor and TXU Corp. in their effort to double the state's already grossly high emissions....
NASA chief regrets remarks on global warming The head of NASA told scientists and engineers that he regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press. NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in the closed-door meeting Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that “unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it.” “All I can really do is apologize to all you guys.... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this,” he said....
I can persuade George Bush on climate change - Blair Tony Blair insisted yesterday that he could persuade President Bush to agree for the first time to a global target for a "substantial cut" in greenhouse gases within a framework sanctioned by the United Nations. In an interview with the Guardian on the eve of the G8 summit, the prime minister said both elusive goals were now achievable and that America was "on the move" in its position on climate change. Although Mr Blair said it would take tough negotiations over the next three days and it was still unclear exactly what the president would agree to, he was sure Mr Bush's speech last week, in which he talked about establishing a US-led initiative to tackle global warming, was not a ploy to undermine the UN or the G8. " I think the announcement by President Bush last week was significant and important, and it is absurd to say otherwise, since it moved things on. On the other hand you then need to flesh out what it means." He stressed that any agreement reached between the G8 and the five leading developing countries would have to be sanctioned by the entire United Nations....
Can Prairie Dogs be Managed Utilizing Reconciliation Ecology? Reconciliation ecology is not really a new idea. Henry David Thoreau included human beings and human activity as part of the "environment (1)." However, the whole concept seems quite foreign and unbelievable to those who are steeped in modern Western philosophy. The concept of reconciliation ecology is to accommodate wild species within a human modified or occupied landscape(2). According to Michael Rosenzweig, saving a major part of the world's biodiversity will require more than just setting aside parks and wildlife preserves. It will require that humans adapt their own environments to accommodate other species(1). Rosenzweig defines reconciliation ecology as "… the science of inventing, establishing, and maintaining new habitats to conserve species diversity in places where people live, work, or play. Reconciliation Ecology seeks environmentally sound ways for us to continue to use the land for our own benefit(3, 4). Rosenzweig continues, "Although these habitats would not be ideally suited to wild things, they would provide enough support to allow them to adapt to us…"(8) Interestingly enough, nature has been one of our best teachers of possibilities that can result from reconciliation ecology....
Supervisors reject call for buffer zones on farmland Farmers may need help keeping their land in production once development encroaches, but forcing builders to create wide buffer zones between farms and new homes isn't the solution, Ventura County supervisors decided Tuesday. On a 3-2 vote, the board majority rejected a proposed law that would have mandated "farmland buffers" whenever a new development is built adjacent to farming operations. Such zones would have created a 300-foot open strip between farms and new construction. The barrier would have been reduced to 150 feet if the developer planted and maintained a vegetative barrier, such as a stand of trees. The ordinance was proposed by Supervisor Linda Parks of Thousand Oaks and was intended to quell fights over noise, odors and pesticide use that emerge when new homes are built close to working farms....
Montana Pick-Up Truck Users Concerned about Legislation in U.S. Senate The United States Senate is expected to begin discussions this week on S. 1419 which calls for radical increases in CAFE standards for pick-up trucks and light vans. If the bill is passed in its present form it would cause severe changes in the way pick-up trucks are made and reduce the amount of trucks that would be built. Montana pick-up truck, and four wheel drive users will be counting on Senators Tester and Baucus to protect their rights and work with their peers in the Senate to find effective compromises that don't threaten safety, production and consumer choice. Title V of S. 1419 would create a single car and light truck fuel economy standard of 52 miles per gallon by 2030. This is bad policy with serious consequences for many reasons: S. 1419 is extreme, by any yardstick. For the foreseeable future, few autos could achieve 52 mpg. No crossovers, minivans, SUVs or pickups on our roads could meet this extreme mileage standard. In Europe, where gasoline costs more than $5 per gallon, the average fuel economy is 35 mpg. Europeans buy small vehicles, often two-seaters. Light trucks are rare. But even Europe couldn't achieve the extreme mileage in S. 1419. Technology breakthroughs are required to meet such high mileage standards, and these breakthroughs cannot be mandated or scheduled on any timeline. S. 1419 would change how light trucks work in this country. Under such an extreme mileage standard, light trucks would become smaller, lighter, less powerful...and less capable of work....
Brucellosis tests show no infections Tests results on Montana cattle that rolled in Tuesday were all negative for brucellosis, although all the 800 blood samples drawn over the weekend won't be tabulated until today or Thursday. Christian Mackay, executive officer with the Montana Department of Livestock, said the investigation so far hasn't turned up any other positive animals. "Test results continue to come in negative, and we continue to follow all the contacts and are confident we are doing the testing in the time allowed," Mackay said. He did not know what percentage of the outstanding tests had been reported. After seven cows from a Bridger herd showed signs of exposure to the contagious bacteria in May, the herd was quarantined and testing began on cattle that may have come into contact with that group. State and federal officials have 60 days, or until about July 6, to conduct "trace backs" on cattle that may have come into contact with the positive animals....
Kansas company introduces natural beef premium program The Beef Marketing Group (BMG), headquartered at Great Bend, Kansas, announced its Customer Ownership Program in May. BMG will pay a $100 per head premium for all cattle harvested as natural. BMG is a marketing cooperative of 14 feedyards in Kansas and Nebraska. Five of those are currently dedicated to the production of natural beef as part of an agreement with Tyson Fresh Meats, the top volume Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) licensed packer. To qualify for Certified Angus Beef brand Natural, cattle must be individually identified and never received antibiotics, hormonal implants, ionophores or animal by-products. BMG prefers, but does not require pre-conditioned, weaned calves. "Through producer participation in ownership, we hope they will take the right steps to add value by making cattle healthier and preventing fall-outs," Wiens adds. Ranchers can retain full ownership or partner with BMG to own a percentage of their calves, which are procured in load lots only. Mixed groups of steers and heifers are accepted, too. All producers in the program receive carcass data. "That's just one tool to help them understand how their cattle perform through harvest," Wiens says. Producers applied use of such information ensures BMG a continued and improving high-quality supply....
Vero Beach man charged with cattle rustling You don't sell the babies or the mothers. But John Englehart sold both at the Okeechobee Livestock Market - the kind of animals nobody else was selling. Pete Clemons, the cattle auction's 80-year-old manager, took notice last fall. Suspicious that something was amiss, Clemons called Englehart's employer, John Cairns, a Port St. Lucie dentist, health club owner and, Clemons knew, a novice cattleman. Cairns, he said, shrugged it off. "All I could do was tell him what I saw and what my opinion was," Clemons said. "He said he'd take it from there, and he could keep up with John. I told him I didn't much think he could, but if he thought so, that's fine with me." Turns out Cairns could not. John Clint Englehart, 34, of Vero Beach, now faces 123 counts of grand theft livestock, or cattle rustling. After St. Lucie County Sheriff's deputies arrested Englehart Tuesday on six counts, Englehart confessed to stealing another 111 cows, police say, for a total of 117. And he faces six other charges related to incident....