Study: Moose move toward humans for safety U.S. researchers said moose in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem move instinctively toward humans to gain safety while giving birth. The Wildlife Conservation Society study suggested moose move toward highways and other areas in which humans are present to avoid predators and protect their young. Researchers tracked both moose and bears and found pregnant moose in Greater Yellowstone have shifted their movements each year for the past decade about 400 feet closer to roads during calving season, apparently to avoid road-shy brown bears, which prey on moose calves. "Given that brown bears avoid areas within approximately 1,600 feet of roads in Yellowstone and elsewhere, moose mothers have apparently buffered against predation on offspring using roadside corridors," said WSC biologist Joel Berger, the study's author. "The study's results indicate moose and other prey species find humans more benign and hence move to humans for safety, whereas predators do not because we humans tend to be less kind to predators," Berger added....
Judge delays some border fence construction on Arizona-Mexico border A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily delayed construction of a 1.5-mile section of a border fence in a wildlife conservation area on the Arizona-Mexico line. The Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club had requested a 10-day delay in a motion alleging that the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies had failed to conduct a thorough study of the fence’s effect on the environment. U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said she granted the delay in part because the federal government did not explain why it hurried through an environmental assessment and began building the fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. Huvelle repeatedly asked the government’s attorney, Gregory Page, to explain why the agencies took only three weeks to do the environmental assessment. She said that amount of time was unprecedented and that the government was trying to ‘‘ram’’ the environmental study through and start construction ‘‘before anyone would wake up.’’ Huvelle also questioned why equal urgency was not applied to building border fences in Texas and California....
Test Case A new lawsuit Wednesday challenging a Flagstaff ordinance ultimately could determine the future of new zoning regulations across the state. The Pacific Legal Foundation is asking a Coconino County Superior Court judge to force the city to compensate three landowners for what it says is the reduced value of their properties. A previous claim filed with the city sought $368,000 in damages. The organization, which represents property owners in legal fights across the nation, contends the restrictions for building construction in the city's new historic preservation district west of city hall in downtown Flagstaff effectively prevent the homeowners from building second units, which would generate rental income they say is needed to make their mortgages affordable. What gives the landowners the right to sue is Proposition 207, approved by voters last November. That measure was designed to prevent government from using its right of "eminent domain'' to take private property from one person and give it to another, often a developer. But the measure, which passed on a 65-35 percent margin, also requires "just compensation'' if any new law governing property use is enacted that "reduces the fair market value of the property."....
Road to Riches: Pipeline Through Paradise It's estimated that one quarter of the world's untapped oil and gas reserves lie in the Arctic. And while politicians bicker loud and long over Iraqi oil, and oil executives lay plans for bringing natural gas and oil from West Africa, most know that the Arctic is the real prize in the ongoing international struggle to control dwindling energy resources. That's especially true now, as global warming causes Arctic ice to melt, exposing virgin territory and even, perhaps, opening for shipping the fabled Northwest Passage, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The region has become the center of an international skirmish, with Russian interests going so far as to plant an underwater flag in order to at least symbolically claim reserves presumed to exist beneath the North Pole's Lomonosov Ridge (which, they say, is connected to Russian territory by a submerged shelf). Even the U.S. government, which for decades has resisted signing an international treaty called the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea—which establishes rules for national sovereignty over portions of the earth's oceans and seas, along with the resources beneath them—suddenly supports ratifying the treaty....
Our Drinkable Water Supply Is Vanishing Demand for water is doubling every 20 years, outpacing population growth twice as fast. Currently 1.3 billion people don't have access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack proper sewage and sanitation. In less than 20 years, it is estimated that demand for fresh water will exceed the world's supply by over 50 percent. The biggest drain on our water sources is agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of the water used worldwide -- much of which is subsidized in the industrial world, providing little incentive for agribusiness to use conservation measures or less water-intensive crops. This number is also likely to increase as we struggle to feed a growing world. Population is expected to rise from 6 billion to 8 billion by 2050. Water scarcity is not just an issue of the developing world. "Twenty-one percent of irrigation in the United States is achieved by pumping groundwater at rates that exceed the water's ability to recharge," wrote water experts Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians in their landmark water book Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water....