NEWS ROUNDUP

Court gives Navy go-ahead to use sonar off coast A federal appeals court in San Francisco has given the U.S. Navy a temporary go-ahead to use high-powered sonar during nearly a dozen upcoming training exercises in Southern California waters. Friday's ruling puts a temporary stay on an injunction ordered last month by a Los Angeles federal judge to stop the powerful bursts of sonar -- used to detect hostile submarines -- because they could "cause irreparable harm to the environment." Scientists have linked sonar use to mass whale die-offs. A three-judge panel ruled 2 to 1 that U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper did not give adequate consideration to the public's interest "in having a trained and effective Navy." "The safety of our whales must be weighed, and so must the safety of our warriors. And of our country," wrote Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of the U.S 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling Friday is not the final say on the issue. Another 9th Circuit panel will hear more in-depth arguments to decide whether to reinstate the injunction or maintain the stay, which would allow the Navy to continue to use sonar until the lawsuit is settled. That hearing is scheduled for Nov. 5 in Pasadena....
The Endangered Species Act Out of Control Is a salmon born in a hatchery a different species from the same salmon born in the wild? It is hard to believe, but recent Federal court rulings are claiming that otherwise genetically identical fish are separate species, forcing an appeal being announced recently to the 9th Circuit Court. Two court decisions in the last two months show how much is at stake in these questions. In mid-June, Judge John C. Coughenour, of the Western District of Washington, ruled that "human interference" and the "unnatural" way that hatcheries maintain salmon populations was unlawful. The judge then ordered that the Upper Columbia River steelhead remain on the endangered species list. Just this month, Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene reached a similar conclusion. After Hogan's decision, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice said "The debate over hatchery fish should be considered [in counting the number of salmon is] conclusively over." These decisions will dramatically affect a lot of people living in the Pacific Northwest. Protecting the salmon will make water much more difficult to obtain, and, without irrigation permits, many farmers and ranchers will have to stop watering their crops and livestock. Large areas of private property will have to be set aside for any species listed as threatened or endangered. The commercial and recreational fishing industries in the Northwest, which generate more than $2 billion annually, will also be affected. Promoting the survival of salmon is a worthy goal, but does it really matter if a fish’s ancestors are from a hatchery or are naturally spawned? As it is, many so-called "wild" or naturally spawned salmon were all but gone and brought back through the use of hatcheries. Given that hatcheries have been around for over a hundred years, it's likely that all naturally spawned salmon have at least some hatchery-spawned ancestors....
APEC Focus on Climate Rattles Members Intent on Trade A plan by U.S. President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard to sign a climate-change agreement at an Asia-Pacific summit may put the leaders at odds with developing nations, who only want to discuss trade. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group isn't the right forum to discuss climate change, Malaysia's Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz was cited as saying by state news agency Bernama. ``The `E' in APEC doesn't stand for the environment, it should stand for economic,'' said Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. At the APEC leaders' summit in Sydney this week, Bush and Howard, who have been criticized for refusing to ratify carbon-emission caps mandated by the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations, want to be seen taking a proactive approach as they prepare for elections at home. Leaders of the APEC economies will agree to cut ``energy intensity'' by 25 percent by 2030, according to a draft of their declaration....
114 Groups and Local Leaders Call for End to National Heritage Areas At the very time Senators were congratulating themselves for passing what they termed "the most sweeping ethics reform in history," they approved a series of "national heritage area" bills that significantly increase the potential for self-dealing and corruption, says the National Center for Public Policy Research. In response, The National Center for Public Policy Research brought together 114 policy groups, grassroots leaders, local government officials, sportsmen groups, civil rights organizations, property rights advocates, farmers, ranchers, and individuals to call on Congress not to support the creation of additional national heritage areas or federal funding for heritage area management entities, support groups, or groups that lobby for or advocate the creation of new heritage areas. The letter is being delivered to the House and Senate leadership and the leadership and membership of the respective natural resource committees. National heritage areas are creations of Congress in which special interest groups, whose work at times has been funded through secret Congressional earmarks, team up with the National Park Service to influence decisions over local land use previously made exclusively by elected local governments and private landowners....
Drillers versus killers WYOMING has got rich off oil and gas, as the pace of drilling throughout the Rocky Mountains has accelerated under the Bush administration. The state’s budget surplus approached $2 billion last year. Anyone driving through, as your columnist did in August, will notice that much of the traffic along the main highways consists of huge trucks carrying equipment to the drilling fields (which are themselves occasionally visible off to the sides of the highway). But even at the heart of the energy boom, tensions are building between the drilling and mining industries on the one hand, and ranchers and sportsmen on the other. In August the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a traditionally Republican pro-hunting group, sued the interior department to protest against the leasing of 2,000 new oil and gas wells in south-central Wyoming, an area favoured by sportsmen and wildlife viewers. “Over the last 100 years, there has been an informal alliance of agricultural industries, sportsmen and the oil and gas industry,” says Jason Marsden of Wyoming Conservation Voters, an advocacy group. That relationship is souring, he says, because of the fast pace of development. Sportsmen want healthy wildlife, to shoot or fish. But the flurry of drilling and mining has fouled rivers with silt and sediment, reduced access to hunting lands and threatened some of the West’s great herds of wildlife....
Grasslands are losing ground On eastern Colorado's grassy rangeland, the dominant plant of the future may be one shunned even by the hungriest of cattle: fringed sage. The unpalatable mint-green shrub increased in bulk by 40 times during climate change experiments conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Colorado State University, the scientists reported last week. "It was a minor species at the beginning of the study, but by the end of four years, 10 percent of the aboveground cover was this species," said Jack Morgan, a USDA range scientist in Fort Collins. "Here's a plant that may be a winner in a greenhouse future," Morgan said. Grassland covers about 40 percent of Earth's land, Morgan and his colleagues wrote in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and woody shrubs have been moving steadily into most of the planet's grasslands for more than a century. Scientists have attributed that livestock-unfriendly trend to many things, Morgan said, from the suppression of natural fires to overgrazing, drought and climate change. "There's some who would debate if carbon dioxide and climate change were a factor," Morgan said. "But that's what our study shows - clearly."....
No "critical habitat' for jaguar Ten years ago, the jaguar, the largest feline in the Western Hemisphere, was listed by the federal government as an Endangered Species. As a result of that listing, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the federal agency charged with enforcing the provisions of the Endangered Species Act, was to have begun the process of establishing a recovery plan for the jaguar, whose native range once extended well into what is now the Gila National Forest. A large part of any recovery plan is the designation of critical habitat - the actual terra firma necessary for any species on the brink of extinction to be able to recover sufficiently enough that it can, like the grizzly bear and the bald eagle, be de-listed. But, according to a lawsuit filed three weeks ago by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, the Fish & Wildlife service balked at establishing critical habitat for panthera onca arizonensis, the jaguar sub-species that, according to Big Cats Online, once trod these parts. According to a finding released on July 12, 2006, USFWS based its decision to not designate critical habitat on "the fact that U.S. habitat is not essential to the conservation of the species." "There are so many legal and biological problems with that finding that I don't even know where to begin," said Michael Robinson, a Pinos Altos-based conservation advocate for the CBD. At this time, no one even knows for certain how many jaguars there are tromping around in the U.S. The last verified sighting in these parts took place in 1997 between Silver City and Tyrone, the same year the jaguar was declared endangered. There is agreement among New Mexico and Arizona Game & Fish personnel that there are at least six permanent or semi-permanent jaguars living in and around the Peloncillo Mountains in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, and Cochise County, Arizona. Robinson is wary of fielding the inevitable next questions: What happens if there is insufficient natural gene-pooling? Could we see an reintroduction program for felines that can weigh up to 300 pounds, cats that can grow up to twice the size of mountain lions? Could we have jaguars being brought up to southwest New Mexico and Gila Country from Central America the same way wolves are now being brought down from Canada? "I do not know where this will lead," Robinson said....
Pickens seeks Kaufman's help to harness Panhandle's water, power T. Boone Pickens may have found a way to push forward his multibillion-dollar proposal to send Panhandle groundwater and wind-generated electricity to North Texas: Create a special government with the power to bury more than 300 miles of 8-foot-diameter water pipe and electric transmission lines across a dozen counties – whether the counties' leaders or affected landowners like it or not. Commissioners courts in Kaufman County and Roberts County, northeast of Amarillo, are each scheduled to vote Tuesday on a petition for an election to create such a district. If either measure passes, the stage will be set for a handful of the businessman's supporters to vote in November to form a freshwater supply district. Under state law, such districts can fund projects at low interest rates by issuing tax-exempt bonds. They can also exercise the power of eminent domain to use private property anywhere in the state, though they must pay the owners....
New tools map redwood forest Somewhere deep in an unmapped ravine or inaccessible creek bottom in Northern California hides a secret. If it exists - and it might not - it would be as old as the Roman Colosseum, yet it has never attracted much notice. It is the tallest tree in the world, a Sequoia sempervirens - a California coast redwood. And if it remains undiscovered to this day, that may soon change. Scientists with Save-the-Redwoods League are using advanced new tools to literally scan the redwood forests of Northern California, hoping to create an ultra-detailed map of the forest floor. The goal isn't to find the tallest tree of the forest. Rather, the technology aids in forest management, identifying the most at-risk spots in the forest - a problematic former logging road, for instance, or a tract in desperate need of thinning - and allowing Save-the-Redwoods and others to prioritize restoration efforts. Yet the airborne technology carries a bonus feature. As it scans the ground, it also simultaneously maps the forest canopy, giving researchers an equally detailed map and a relatively instantaneous way to separate true titans from mere giants....
Arco trying to get out of Mike Horse Dam removal Atlantic Richfield is trying to extract itself from legal and fiscal involvement in the Mike Horse Dam removal. In documents filed this month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Texas, lawyers for Atlantic Richfield n also known by the acronym Arco n say that a three-year federal and two-year state statute of limitations for claims ran out long ago. In addition, Atlantic Richfield claims that under the Clean Water Act, only the current facility owners and operators can be held liable for natural resource damages. The lawyers note that Atlantic Richfield “relinquished all property interest and ceased all mineral exploration activities at the site more than 25 years ago.”....
Forest Rangers: Memorials a Growing Problem The synthetic flowers, wind chimes, photos, brass placards and other private memorials to loved ones don't belong in wilderness areas or on the slopes of Colorado's 14,000-plus-foot peaks, forest rangers say. U.S. Forest Service policy prohibits memorials, the scattering of ashes and burials. And while forest officials generally don't know about private ash-scattering ceremonies, they can spot the memorials and want them removed -- even long-standing homages to Elvis Presley and Jerry Garcia at the Aspen ski area. "If we allowed memorials, there would be memorials all over the mountains. That would just be unacceptable," said John Bustos, spokesman for the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest west of Denver. "Memorials are just not part of the ecosystem."....
Time bomb ticks at old-time resort Listen closely, and you can almost hear the ghostly sounds of four generations of campers awaking in the wilderness: the chatter of kids hauling water to the snug log cabins. The rattle of a battered coffeepot perking away on a cast-iron stove. And, in the background, the steady hum of Squaw Creek tumbling through the forest toward the Rio Grande. At 30 Mile Resort - that's how many miles it is from the great old mining town of Creede - time seems to stand as still as the towering groves of spruce and aspen. But the clock is ticking for Charlotte Trego, the resort's peppery, 76-year-old owner. "I don't know that I'm peppery. I am assertive," Trego says. "As to when the clock starts ticking, nobody's told me." "It already is ticking," says Tom Malecek, district ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service gave Trego 60 days, or until Oct. 17, to bring the resort's old electrical system up to code. It's her last chance to save the eight- cabin resort that her enterprising father launched in 1938....
Wyo roadless case draws attention Wyoming's second court bid to shoot down a Clinton-era ban on development on millions of acres of national forest land around the country is drawing a crowd. The state of Idaho together with groups representing off-road vehicle enthusiasts, mining companies and a conservative legal foundation all recently have filed papers in federal court in Cheyenne supporting Wyoming's position. Meanwhile, the federal government, the states of California, Montana, New Mexico and Oregon and a coalition of environmental groups have all weighed in on the other side. They oppose Wyoming's request that a federal judge find the roadless rule invalid. The four states opposing Wyoming's position argue that even if U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer decides the roadless rule is void, he should limit his order overturning the rule to Wyoming....Does anyone know why Bush is defending a rule issued by Clinton, a rule which Bush tried to change but the courts threw out???
Burning Man festival ends in Nevada Thousands of revelers cheered as the annual Burning Man counterculture festival climaxed with two spectacular pyrotechnic shows on the northern Nevada desert. Fireworks erupted as the 40-foot-tall wooden figure known as "The Man," the festival's signature effigy, went up in flames Saturday night and fell to the Black Rock Desert, 120 miles north of Reno. A huge fireball later shot up into the sky after the torching of a 90-foot-plus art piece called "Crude Awakening," billed as the event's tallest structure ever. It also was preceded by a fireworks show. The eclectic art festival was to end its weeklong run Monday after the burning of more artwork Sunday night, including the "Temple of Remembrance."....
Auction refuses to sell seized livestock A livestock auction owner in Southern Idaho has refused to sell cattle confiscated by federal land managers who said the cattle had been grazing illegally on public land. Merv May, part owner of Burley Livestock Auction, declined to elaborate why he refused to sell the 31 cattle on Thursday but said a possible legal battle played a part in his decision. "For what I can get out of the deal, it's better to stay out of it," he told the Times-News. The Bureau of Land Management confiscated the cattle on Aug. 21 after a months-long dispute with Bruce Bedke and Jared Bedke over grazing rights on BLM rangeland about 20 miles south of Oakley. Before the auction, the Bedkes handed out a "Fair Warning Notice" to buyers that read: "The property being auctioned (31 head of cattle from Bruce and Jared Bedke) have been taken without warrant or due process of law. The parties named above could be involved in future federal litigation over this livestock theft. If you bid or purchase any parts of the herds, you could be subject to litigation and might have to return the cattle to their rightful owners, Bruce and Jared Bedke."....
California city may ban oleanders Residents and city officials in Yorba Linda, Calif., are considering a ban on oleanders because of the plant's risk to horses. Oleanders, which have pink and white flowers, can be deadly to a horse if consumed, and many Yorba Linda residents own horses, The Orange County Register reported. The Yorba Linda City Council plans to vote this month on banning the plants. A University of California at Davis veterinary medical publication suggests that horses could suffer heart failure even from eating a small amount of the plant, the newspaper said.
Texan rancher may have found head of mythical animal Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She has been a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other exotic animals in her house to prove it. But the roadkill she found in July outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may have the head of the mythical bloodsucking chupacabra. Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and the animal is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico. Its name comes from the mammal's reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats. "It is one ugly creature," Canion said, holding the head of the animal with big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin. Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 18kg bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 145km southeast of San Antonio, Texas. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she can get to get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity. She suspects that the animals may have killed up to 26 of her chickens in the last couple of years. What tipped Canion to the possibility that this was no ugly coyote, but perhaps the legendary creature, is that the chickens were not eaten or carried off -- all the blood was drained from them, she said....
It's All Trew: Arizona wild in 1800s Spanish explorers found what is Arizona today, in 1539 and made efforts at colonization in several areas. They made several mistakes in this effort. First, they mistreated the Apache Indians. Second, they introduced cattle, which the Indians loved to eat. And, third, they provided the foot-weary Apaches with horses to ride. As a result, the tribe totally controlled the area, with the exception of the small village of Tucson, until 1848. At this time, an effort at civilization came when the Butterfield-Overland Mail Company began spanning 2,000 miles of semi-desert country from Fort Smith, Ark., to San Francisco. Way stations were located along the way to change teams wherever water could be found. The crude coaches ran day and night, with the trip requiring 21 to 25 days. The accommodations and food were poor and it took a tough traveler to withstand the trip. During this time, the Army finally subdued the Indians and towns began to spring up across the land....