NEWS ROUNDUP
Ranchers triumph over land battle with the feds... for now anyway It's sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul, as the old saying goes. But in this case, Peter is a rancher and Paul is the U.S. Army. Gov. Bill Ritter and most Colorado lawmakers have taken Peter's side, and are hoping to stop the Army from using eminent domain to expand a military training site in southern Colorado. Ritter signed a bill Thursday that removes the federal government's option to use eminent domain to obtain land for military purposes. The hope is that it would prevent the Army from condemning land to expand its PiƱon Canyon training site by 653 square miles -- almost triple the land the Army already has. The expansion would absorb dozens of ranches. With Ritter's signature on House Bill 1069, the state is basically saying "no" to the federal government. "It's never been done," Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, says with some pride. That means there's no precedent. There is no way to determine whether this is allowed, without some kind of legal ruling. Might the Supreme Court take notice? McKinley, a professional cowboy with a fierce -- and very Western -- independent streak, shrugs and says, maybe so. He invokes the Founding Fathers when he talks about the injustice of the Army's plans. "The Declaration of Independence talks about the king keeping a standing army without the colonies' consent," he said....
In Oregon suit, greens take new poke at public-lands grazing Environmentalists are making a new attempt to reduce the number of cattle on federal land in the Columbia River Basin and perhaps elsewhere in the West, arguing that federal anti-pollution laws should be applied to grazing permits. A federal suit filed last week makes a test case out of a permit issued to Bill Colvin, 66, a rancher along a tributary of the John Day River in Eastern Oregon. In 1996, a federal judge in Portland ruled that state agencies such as Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality had to certify that cattle grazed on federal lands wouldn't cause streams to be degraded. The department enforces the federal Clean Water Act. But two years later the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the decision. It said what are called "non-point" sources of runoff such as livestock grazing are not subject to review under the act. "Non-point" sources, which can also include runoff from paved-over urban areas, are distinguished from readily identifiable "point" sources such as water treatment or factory drains. The new suit cites a 2006 Supreme Court's decision from a Maine case involving a hydroelectric dam. The question was whether the water from a dam's reservoir is "discharge" into the stream below the dam. The court said it is, and the decision was interpreted as meaning that states have broader power than thought to regulate the quality of rivers. At the time, Maine's attorney general, Steven Rowe, predicted the case would have an impact "well beyond the state of Maine." The suit filed last week in Oregon said the Supreme Court's definition of discharges is broad and calls into question the appeals court ruling from 1998....
Forest Service plans sheep grazing restrictions Facing a lawsuit from three environmental groups that want to protect bighorn sheep, the U.S. Forest Service has announced that it plans to restrict sheep grazing in some areas of the Payette National Forest this summer. The Forest Service made the announcement Thursday ahead of a preliminary injunction hearing before U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise to prevent domestic sheep from being allowed onto the grazing allotments later this month. "This is a big win for us," Greg Dyson, executive director of the Hells Canyon Preservation Council, told the Idaho Statesman. "It's the first time in a long time there will be no domestic sheep in Hells Canyon." Besides the council, Western Watersheds Project and the Wilderness Society had sued the Forest Service in April over domestic sheep grazing, arguing that disease brought in by domestic sheep kills bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon. The groups also asked Winmill for an injunction to prevent domestic sheep from being put on the allotments this month. "Ninety percent of our issues were mute by the time we got to the hearing because the Forest Service conceded all of them," Dyson told The Associated Press on Friday....The Forest Service will go to court to defend their policies on oil & gas leasing and timber harvesting, but then "concede" to the enviros on grazing policy. I can't help but wonder why Mark Rey and the Bush Administration haven't been a friend to the western rancher.
Regulations take 'forest' out of deskbound forest rangers Greg Casselberry won't leave the forest. That might not seem unusual given that he's a 31-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service. But Casselberry, 55, is a rarity. Working out of the Idyllwild Ranger Station, he's one of the few longtime forest workers who still spends a good part of his time outdoors. "I decided to put my passion for land management above promotion," Casselberry says, adding that he doesn't want to spend 90 percent of his time behind a desk like so many of his colleagues. "Where the rubber meets the road is here," he says. "You're right there where you can see what's happening." And what Casselberry has seen happen in his three decades of service is a colossal shift in Forest Service philosophy and in the ways its lands are managed. Over the past 30 years, the U.S. Forest Service has been caught in a quandary: How to meet increasing demands on wild lands with ever-diminishing resources. The computer age was supposed to provide the solution, making rangers and foresters more efficient. Instead, many feel it has trapped them behind a desk, away from the environment they signed on to protect. But it is not simply a matter of money and personnel, says forester Gary Earney, another 31-year Forest Service veteran who works out of the Lytle Creek station. He says increased regulations have made caring for the land more complex and time intensive. "We can't dig a hole out in the forest for a signpost unless we have a minor environmental clearance," says Earney....
Whistle stop wilderness For nearly 100 years, the Chugach National Forest has remained a dramatic backdrop in Southcentral Alaska -- the stepping-off point for boating Prince William Sound or hiking the Kenai Peninsula. In the winter, telemark skiers and snowmobilers explore its backcountry. In summer, anglers seek its lakes and rivers. And while recreation is a big reason people come to this 5.5 million-acre forest, getting to the best areas can be a challenge. Other than flying in to remote areas or trekking by map and compass, access is limited, keeping most visitors just along the forest's edges. That's why National Forest rangers are so excited about their latest development, a new recreation opportunity called the Whistle Stop. Timed to the 100-year anniversary of the creation of the nation's second-largest national forest, the Chugach Whistle Stop will allow visitors to travel by train to predetermined stops along the Alaska Railroad corridor, giving them easier access to some of the forest's most beautiful areas. When travelers get off the train, they will be met by trails, cabins, campsites and other rustic recreation opportunities....
Feds ask for longer sentences in eco-crimes Government prosecutors filed court papers Friday seeking longer prison terms for a gang of convicted eco-saboteurs now awaiting sentencing, saying their serial arsons constituted "federal crimes of terrorism." The government's 148-page sentencing memorandum is part of the biggest prosecution of eco-saboteurs in U.S. history. It summarizes firebombings and other sabotage across the West from 1995 to 2001, and spells out the extraordinarily secretive measures of the saboteurs, who called themselves "The Family." The sentencing memo, which the government cobbled together through statements by the accused, also clears up a series of crimes that, for a time, made Oregon synonymous with the word "eco-terrorism." Solved: the Animal Liberation Front's Christmas 1995 arson at Dutch Girl Dairy in Eugene. Solved: the torching of a truck at the U.S. Forest Service's Detroit ranger station in October 1996, the first arson attributed to the Earth Liberation Front in the United States. Solved: The 1996 release of 2,000 minks from a farm in Lebanon. Six men and four women are set for sentencing before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken beginning May 22. All were convicted for their roles in a five-state arson campaign that left timber company offices, dozens of SUVs, meat companies, federal installations and a ski resort in smoldering ruins. The government estimates damages at more than $40 million....
Former forest chiefs decry costs of fires As wildfires across the nation continue to get bigger and burn longer, the U.S. Forest Service has been forced to spend a larger portion of its overall discretionary budget to pay for firefighters, helicopters and air crews. Five former Forest Service chiefs recently told Congress that those soaring costs affect other areas, such as campground maintenance and research on forest lands. "As Chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service from 1979 to 2007, we wish to express in the strongest way that the Forest Service has been put into an untenable financial situation due to the way fire suppression funding is being handled in the federal budget," their prepared statement said. The statement was signed by R. Max Peterson, F. Dale Robertson, Jack Ward Thomas, Michael Dombeck and Dale Bosworth. At one time, the Forest Service depended on the funds it took in from timber sales to keep its checkbook in the black. Whenever fire suppression costs soared past budgeted levels, the agency borrowed money from the trust funds deposited by timber purchasers. When the fire season ended, Congress reimbursed those funds through supplemental appropriations. In the 1990s, the agency's timber sale program was slashed 80 percent due to environmental concerns and those trust funds nearly dried up....
Shale's Black Sunday Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of "Black Sunday" than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West - and to those of us who've spent 25 years trying to forget it - May 2, 1982, was the day Exxon announced that it was pulling the plug on the largest boom in modern western Colorado history. After a courtesy call in the morning to then-Gov. Dick Lamm, Exxon managers locked the gates to the company's appropriately named Colony Project, signaling the end for thousands of workers. It also signaled the beginning of a decade or more of struggling recovery for Western Slope communities that had overbuilt in anticipation of Exxon's boastful predictions. Lest anyone think that's all behind us, all you have to do is take a look around. Mesa County's unemployment rate is so low, wages for everything from fast-food workers to house cleaners are going up. And just try to find a place to rent or a house that's affordable. Those of us speeding down Interstate 70 on a regular basis know that the long lines at some exits aren't caused by workers heading off to the resort towns of Glenwood Springs, Snowmass or Aspen; they're heading for Parachute, Rulison and Rifle, where the landscape has been transformed into an industrial zone....
Oil and gas well-ness checkup A gas well a stone's throw from the Hoffmeisters' retirement home south of Silt was on fire, and the area was steeped in oily smoke. Hoffmeister, 69, who has suffered intermittent mysterious ailments since that well was drilled in 2005, ended up at the emergency room. Hoffmeister and hundreds of others believe their aches and pains - and more serious ailments - are directly related to some of the 31,522 wells that dot vast stretches of the Piceance Basin and other oil-rich areas of the state. So do some doctors who treat them. But in this state and others, there are no studies proving a connection. And no agency has been charged with documenting all health concerns, leaving sick residents in limbo. Some energy companies have been willing to help - but without acknowledging a connection between illnesses and wells. Bill Barrett Corp. offered to pay for Hoffmeister to stay in a motel or apartment for six months. It also added controls to minimize emissions. Hoffmeister's condition improved. "We're trying to be as responsive to issues that people perceive as we can," said Jim Felton, a manager with Bill Barrett. He said the company spends several thousand dollars per well to lessen emissions near homes. But industry representatives generally downplay residents' tales of vertigo, bloody noses, tumors, burning lungs and aching joints as well as the more exotic illnesses - rare adrenal tumors, nerve damage and a neurological condition that makes sufferers speak in accents....
Some coal-bed methane wells not producing gas Officials in the coal-bed methane industry have been analyzing how many wells in the Powder River Basin pump water to the surface without producing gas, even after the wells have been running for years. Coal-bed methane is brought to the surface by pumping gas-saturated groundwater off underground coal seams. The groundwater is discharged on the surface. Some of the water is put to use by ranchers and others, but most of it runs away, never to be used. The water sometimes can flood low-lying grazing areas. According to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, more than 14 percent of active coal-bed methane wells in the Powder River Basin were producing only water in December. The state has faced increasing pressure to get a handle on the volumes of water produced by coal-bed methane wells. To date, wells that have not produced gas have produced more than 39,000 acre-feet of water; an acre-foot is enough to cover an acre with a foot of water. Meanwhile, agriculture, industry and regulatory officials appear to have started discussing a possible standard to limit unnecessary water production, and companies are taking inventory of which wells produce gas and which might only be creating water problems....
Easy Target The USGS estimates that invasive species cost the U.S. economy $150 billion in "biological pollution" annually, a cost outweighing all natural disasters combined. From zebra mussels in Virginia ponds and Asian carp in the Great Lakes to feral pigs on Southern California's Channel Islands and goats in the last wetlands of Los Angeles, the battle against the invading hordes rages. But when the species at the center of the dispute is charismatic megafauna, say -- a snow-white deer that has thrived for many generations in one of the last stretches of protected California coastline -- plans to remove nonnatives excites strong feelings and political opposition. Call it the Bambi effect. In the war against the ecological Other, the Park Service is increasingly employing blitzkrieg tactics that put the potshots of Bambi's faceless hunters to shame. ProHunt, the New Zealand company of professional sharpshooters that impressed conservationists with its swift slaughter of 5,000 destructive wild pigs on Santa Cruz Island last year is up for the contract in Point Reyes. With helicopters, high-powered rifles and elaborate GPS mapping and tracking devices, these wildlife managers-cum-snipers are set to restore the balance of nature. The Park Service says its scientific justification is a slam-dunk. The exotics, they say, are a menace to the ecosystem, crowding out the native coastal black-tailed deer, and denuding the landscape. But the science to back this view may be slender, which suggests the decision is motivated as much by ideology....
A better fish ladder? Central Oregon inventor Mark Rubbert believes he has designed a miracle for Pacific Northwest fish. He says his design for a huge, floating, flexible, fish-collecting, water-distributing machine - a modification of the $62 million monster that PGE engineers have already designed for the Round Butte Dam at Lake Billy Chinook - could help millions of little smolts get safely around the region's hydroelectric dams, open hundreds of miles of rivers to salmon and steelhead again and shave millions of dollars in costs from PGE's existing designs. His design, Rubbert is convinced, could affect the lives of millions of people by improving their environment, saving the region's dams and lowering the ultimate cost of their power. Rubbert, a Brothers-area rancher and charter boat captain, has shipped his drawings to the U.S. Patent Office for approval of a patent that he hopes will not just save fish, but make him millions someday....
Enviros: Children 'bad for planet' HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank. The paper by the Optimum Population Trust will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family's carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York. John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: "The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. "The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child."....
Enviro says mankind is a 'virus' and we need to 're-wild the planet' Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth. Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion. The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued. Watson was invoking the worst of Robert Malthus, an English political economist who claimed that mankind was overpopulating the earth. That claimed first appeared in the late 1700s. Watson urged some solutions for mankind as part of a process to “need to re-wild the planet”....
Gore sees 'spiritual crisis' in warming Playing equal parts visionary, cheerleader and comedian, Al Gore brought his message of how to fight global warming to a capacity crowd of receptive architects Saturday in San Antonio. The former vice president referred continually to a "new way of thinking" that is emerging in the country and offered hope in the battle to control the effects global warming will have on the planet. "It's in part a spiritual crisis," Gore told the crowd in the Convention Center at the American Institute of Architects national convention. "It's a crisis of our own self-definition — who we are. Are we creatures destined to destroy our own species? Clearly not." Gore told the architects they are in a unique position to help solve the problems by continuing to push building standards and methods that conserve energy and water. The message was in line with the focus of this year's AIA conference, titled "Growing Beyond Green." Gore, seen by some as a polarizing political figure, has long championed environmental issues. In 1992, he wrote the best-selling book "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit," and he won an Academy Award this year for his film "An Inconvenient Truth."....
Mutilated bull: No blood, no clues Robert Allen wasn't surprised when the story of the cattle mutilation last October in the small town of Kanjilon, N.M. was buried way inside the local paper. After all, the hoopla over cattle mutilations - which were a big subject back in the 1980s - has died down in the last decade or so. The problem is that while the newsworthiness of the subject has died down, cattle mutilations have not. He was in the area in October when he heard of a rancher near Kanjilon - a small community of about 200 people south of the Colorado border some 280 miles northeast of Gallup - who came across his prized four-year-old bull dead and mutilated in a field near his home. Not only mutilated but cut in a strange way. Its genitals and anus were cut away and its blood was totally drained. Even odder was that there was no blood where the bull was found. There were also no footsteps or prints of any kind going to or from the bull. Allen went to the site to look at the bull first-hand, and he talked to the family, who were still in shock and worried about what it all meant....
Boots on a fence summon a fleeting era Consider the cowboy boots hanging from a tired, barbed wire fence as your car shoots the ever-closing gap between top-dollar subdivisions described as "highly desirable" and "nicely landscaped." As you pull onto the chewed gravel shoulder of this narrow rural road to accommodate a truck delivering custom cabinets and another churning concrete, consider those worn-out Tony Lamas stained dark red by the spring rain and dripping. There's a hole in the sole of one boot where the ball of a man's left foot broke through years ago and kissed the pebbly Saltese soil. Stories are worn into the soles of these boots, stories of colts broken and calves raised and slaughtered at this crossroad of East 32nd Avenue and Linke Road. Consider what it all means and how these shriveled leather shapes fit into the ever-changing puzzle that is the West, a puzzle without edges. Like so much of what's been done out here the fence is what it is, according to Bob Storm, just because. "I just put them out there," said Storm, a 70-something cowboy, who in the tradition of cowboys keeps his small talk short and simple. His dog Sam, a "pure-blooded black dog," seems to sense all that needs to be said had been said and turns his attention to the ground....
Rare book made more valuable because of its family history, makes it home The pencil had smudged a bit since someone wrote the numeral three followed by two underlined zeros to denote the $3 price of “50 Years in the Saddle” more than six decades before. But the gentle loops of the black pen were unmistakable, untouched, unfettered. Charles Sorenson was floored by what he read: With love to Glen from Mother Christmas 1942 It wasn’t just another copy of a rare book. It was THE copy. He had stumbled upon his Uncle Glen’s book. As Steve Sorenson grew up in northern Campbell County, he looked up to his Uncle Glen, the tall, burley pipe-smoking rancher who had larger-than-life stories to match. He was a decorated World War II veteran with a cowboy hat affixed to his head in most every picture taken. Glen had always been there with a helping hand or encouraging word for Steve. He had guided him through his teenage years, introduced him to his wife on a trip to Story, been a source of inspiration and wellspring of knowledge about ranching. He told stories, recalling the old ranching and cowboy tales from his father — Steve’s grandfather — that filled in gaps of family and local history that were sometimes missing. One of those ranchers was a man by the name of William Pendleton “W.P.” Ricketts....
Wrangler's daughter chronicles cowboy's life “A Red Howell Fit,” scheduled to be out under Raging Brook Press this fall, is Aycock's third book about a way of life often immortalized in movies, serials, and dime novels, though Red was the real thing, not a Hollywood Hopalong. “I've been rich and I've been poor, and I couldn't handle either one of them,” she quoted her father, a rancher and rodeo roper who rode a roller coaster life in the saddle from cradle to grave, raising Beth and his sons along with 3,000 head of cattle on his spread about a four-hour drive from Carlsbad, N.M. in one of his many beloved cars, then suddenly bankrupted in the Depression and back to ranch hand and roper to pick up a few bucks. The title is based on the quick temper of this redheaded rounder who embraced hard work and a code of honor as he carved out his little cattle empire and became known as one of the top rodeo ropers in the country. “The book typifies the Old West experience,” Riggenbach said, describing it as sort of an expose' on the transition from the real old cowboys to the modern Western man, reflected in Red with his stereotypical patriarchal pride and toughness, leathery and hard drinking, but a family man who pushed his kids to read and study, his pockets full of candy for them when he returned from weeks away on the rodeo circuit or a livestock sale while Nell ran the ranch....
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Foreman of the Rough Ranch
Cowgirl Sass and Savvy
By Julie Carter
He wore a hat that should have had a burial five years ago, but the turkey feather stuck in the hatband was in fair shape.
The lean, wiry puncher, with his britches in his boots, was a reputation kind of cowboy - reputed for his abilities to handle cattle and horses -- and for doing things "Darrell's way."
Everybody that worked around Darrell knew there was the easy way, the hard way and Darrell's way. Darrell's way made the hard way look easy. Legend has it, Darrell wasn't afraid to make his point, if needed, with his fists.
One time Darrell had the neighbors gathered up to put a couple truckloads of fresh cattle out on wheat. The first job was to get the calves to stop running after they bailed from the back of the truck. Finally, the critters were convinced they were surrounded with Darrell riding point, a few hands on both sides and a particularly aggravating cowboy riding drag at the back
This cowboy, out of pure meanness, kept pushing the cattle up over the top of Darrell in the front in an attempt to make the cattle start running again. Darrell would ride back and give him the "what for" and then the cowboy's wife would bail into the argument. While the "discussion" often ended in a fistfight, everyone else had to stop the cattle from running off.
For all Darrell's poor ways with handling some of his help, he was better than a good hand with cattle, had a strong work ethic and made an excellent ranch foreman. While he probably could have had his choice of ranch jobs, the one that suited him best was on a ranch with rugged, rough terrain.
You see, Darrell had a weakness. He liked to ride colts. He liked it even better if they would buck before he could get them gentled down.
Horse whisperer techniques didn't interest him. His training methods included lots of miles and slow, quiet work around cattle. Darrell could get more work done on a colt than most seasoned hands on a broke horse.
One year, late in the fall, everyone who was friends enough to come help Darrell ship yearlings gathered at the Rough Ranch. It was threatening to snow but after breakfast, still in the dark, he got the entire crew horseback and headed for the backside of the outfit in a long trot.
Once there, he began dropping off hands, telling them to gather the cattle to the hilltop in the middle of the three-section brush-covered pasture. The hands knew the weather would likely catch them but also knew these cattle would cross the scales for a payday when they hit the pens, so needed to be handled slow.
The cowboys straggled to the hill top with small bunches of cattle, everyone accounted for. Darrell strung the cattle out, counted them and then counted them again.
Then he told half the crew to hold the herd and sent the rest back to the pasture to pick up strays. The weather continued to threaten and after a time, the cowboys all came back but no one had found any more cattle.
They drove the herd to the pens, weighed and put them on the waiting trucks. Darrell reported to the Rough Ranch owner that every head had been accounted for.
Later in the day, someone asked Darrell why he had sent the crew looking for strays if he already had the right count. He didn't answer, but anyone that knew Darrell knew what the deal was. He simply wanted to put a few more miles on his colt before the day was over.
There is the easy way, the hard way and Darrell's way.
Visit my Website-blog updated weekly www.julie-carter.com
© Julie Carter 2007
Cowgirl Sass and Savvy
By Julie Carter
He wore a hat that should have had a burial five years ago, but the turkey feather stuck in the hatband was in fair shape.
The lean, wiry puncher, with his britches in his boots, was a reputation kind of cowboy - reputed for his abilities to handle cattle and horses -- and for doing things "Darrell's way."
Everybody that worked around Darrell knew there was the easy way, the hard way and Darrell's way. Darrell's way made the hard way look easy. Legend has it, Darrell wasn't afraid to make his point, if needed, with his fists.
One time Darrell had the neighbors gathered up to put a couple truckloads of fresh cattle out on wheat. The first job was to get the calves to stop running after they bailed from the back of the truck. Finally, the critters were convinced they were surrounded with Darrell riding point, a few hands on both sides and a particularly aggravating cowboy riding drag at the back
This cowboy, out of pure meanness, kept pushing the cattle up over the top of Darrell in the front in an attempt to make the cattle start running again. Darrell would ride back and give him the "what for" and then the cowboy's wife would bail into the argument. While the "discussion" often ended in a fistfight, everyone else had to stop the cattle from running off.
For all Darrell's poor ways with handling some of his help, he was better than a good hand with cattle, had a strong work ethic and made an excellent ranch foreman. While he probably could have had his choice of ranch jobs, the one that suited him best was on a ranch with rugged, rough terrain.
You see, Darrell had a weakness. He liked to ride colts. He liked it even better if they would buck before he could get them gentled down.
Horse whisperer techniques didn't interest him. His training methods included lots of miles and slow, quiet work around cattle. Darrell could get more work done on a colt than most seasoned hands on a broke horse.
One year, late in the fall, everyone who was friends enough to come help Darrell ship yearlings gathered at the Rough Ranch. It was threatening to snow but after breakfast, still in the dark, he got the entire crew horseback and headed for the backside of the outfit in a long trot.
Once there, he began dropping off hands, telling them to gather the cattle to the hilltop in the middle of the three-section brush-covered pasture. The hands knew the weather would likely catch them but also knew these cattle would cross the scales for a payday when they hit the pens, so needed to be handled slow.
The cowboys straggled to the hill top with small bunches of cattle, everyone accounted for. Darrell strung the cattle out, counted them and then counted them again.
Then he told half the crew to hold the herd and sent the rest back to the pasture to pick up strays. The weather continued to threaten and after a time, the cowboys all came back but no one had found any more cattle.
They drove the herd to the pens, weighed and put them on the waiting trucks. Darrell reported to the Rough Ranch owner that every head had been accounted for.
Later in the day, someone asked Darrell why he had sent the crew looking for strays if he already had the right count. He didn't answer, but anyone that knew Darrell knew what the deal was. He simply wanted to put a few more miles on his colt before the day was over.
There is the easy way, the hard way and Darrell's way.
Visit my Website-blog updated weekly www.julie-carter.com
© Julie Carter 2007
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Cap And Trade: A System Made For Fraudsters Ever since Enron decided that carbon trading would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative," informed observers have been wary of the idea. Yet the idea of creating a new commodity by capping emissions of greenhouse gases and issuing tradable permits to produce the emissions has gained ground as hysteria over effects of global warming has grown. Now, two separate investigations have demonstrated why carbon caps and trading are bad ideas, and why they were so attractive to Enron. In the first, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the effects of cap and trade on American households. In the European version of the scheme that has been in operation since 2005, the permits are given away to firms. Some businesses are very much in favor of this, because it gives them an opportunity to reap windfall profits, as has happened in Europe. As the CBO found, "Because most of the cost of the cap would ultimately be borne by consumers, giving away nearly all of the allowances to affected energy producers would mean that the value of the allowances they received would far exceed the cost that they bear." So while energy companies benefit, the consumer suffers higher costs. If the allowances are sold, individual companies benefit less, as they have to pay for the allowances in the first place. But even if there is some compensation in the form of a reduction in payroll or corporate taxes, most of the population still suffers reduction in household income. The poorest fifth of the population suffers worst, losing about 3% of its take-home household income. The richest fifth, on the other hand, increase its take-home pay. Only if there is some carbon welfare bureaucracy to administer rebate payments do lower-income families benefit, but that almost triples the cost to the economy as a whole....
Congress on the Constitution: "Tell it to the Judge" he Constitution provides, "The Senators and Representatives… shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution…." Apparently there is a difference between taking this oath and taking it seriously. Last January, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the “CLEAN (Creating Long-term Energy Alternatives for the Nation) Energy Act of 2007,” which includes: the “Ending Subsidies for Big Oil Act of 2007,” the “Royalty Relief for American Consumers Act of 2007,” and an untitled section, under which revenues generated by Sections I and II will be spent on yet-to-be-determined “alternative” energy sources. This is typical: in the 1980s, after creation of a commission to recover “$1 million a day” purportedly lost in “unpaid oil and gas royalties,” Congress promptly spent an additional $365 million. In 1995, Congress, to encourage exploration in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep water, granted some royalty relief for operators brave enough to go where none had gone before. Last summer that bore fruit with the discovery, 175 miles offshore in 7,000 feet of water, of 3 billion to 15 billion barrels of oil. Congress also gave the Department of the Interior (DOI) discretionary authority, but not a mandate, to limit the relief depending on oil and gas prices. The Clinton Administration adopted limits for most years; however, in 1998 and 1999, it did not. No skullduggery was involved; in fact, the DOI’s Inspector General wrote that industry officials reported the “mistake.” Now Congress plans a “gun to the head” of anyone with an interest in the 1,032 deep- water leases from 1998 and 1999, demanding they “renegotiate”—an ironic term given the “take it or leave it” nature of federal contracts—those leases: 20 producing leases must pay between $158 million and $788 million each; 526 leases being explored or developed owe $9,375 to $21,600 each. If they refuse, they will be barred from new Gulf of Mexico leases. Congress’s H.R. 6 could be a final Constitutional Law examination so replete is it with infirmities such as breach of contract, takings without “just compensation,” denial of equal protection and due process, and a bill of attainder....
Junk Science: Green Gas-Lighting? We will continue this column’s look at the unintended consequences and knee-slapping irony of our society’s mindless lurch toward becoming “green” by considering two new studies on alternative fuels. From hybrid cars costing far more than they save in the way of fuel economy to Northern latitude forests causing global warming, to mercury-containing compact fluorescent light bulbs potentially turning homes into toxic waste sites, it’s becoming more apparent every day that green-ness is not necessarily what it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps you have fallen (as did President Bush and the Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005) for the ethanol lobby’s line that ethanol is a “cleaner-burning fuel.” You may then be quite chagrinned to learn about a new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology (April 18) from Stanford University atmospheric scientist Mark Z. Jacobson concluding that ethanol poses substantial health risks. “If every vehicle in the United States ran on fuel made primarily from ethanol instead of pure gasoline, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations would likely increase,” states the media release for Jacobson’s study. "Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution,” said Jacobson, “but our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage.”....
Post-Kelo America: An Optimist's View Given the ever-increasing size and scope of government, it’s understandable for those of us who care about liberty to view the legislative process with cynicism. But sometimes that cynicism can blind us to real successes when lawmakers try to initiate reform. Such is the case with the legislative response to the Supreme Court’s terrible 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, in which the Court declared that local governments can use eminent domain to transfer property from to someone who promises to make more money with the land. The backlash against that decision has been, and continues to be, amazingly successful. To date, it has produced 38 laws addressing the abuse of eminent domain for private development. Most of those laws provide significant and substantial limits on that abuse. Most Kelo reforms (both from state legislatures and from citizen-driven initiatives) have been strong. For example, the vast majority of cases where eminent domain is used for private development involve dubious "blight" designations—i.e., labeling perfectly fine homes and businesses as “blighted” as a pretext for condemnation. Twenty state laws have either eliminated private-use condemnations for "blight" or defined the term so narrowly that it can’t be a vehicle for abuse. Five of those states—Pennsylvania, Kansas, Michigan, Florida, and Virginia—were, according to data collected by the Institute for Justice, among the top eight abusers of eminent domain pre-Kelo. (The other states with blight reforms are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.) In addition, 19 laws require blight designations to be on a property-by-property basis, rather than an area-wide one, thus preventing "blight gerrymandering." And several new laws shift the burden of proving "public use" in condemnation actions from property owners to the government. For litigators, these changes represent dramatic improvements....
Light Bulb Lunacy How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About $4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health. Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favor of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) — a move already either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia. According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor. Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the $2,000 cleaning....
Cap And Trade: A System Made For Fraudsters Ever since Enron decided that carbon trading would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative," informed observers have been wary of the idea. Yet the idea of creating a new commodity by capping emissions of greenhouse gases and issuing tradable permits to produce the emissions has gained ground as hysteria over effects of global warming has grown. Now, two separate investigations have demonstrated why carbon caps and trading are bad ideas, and why they were so attractive to Enron. In the first, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the effects of cap and trade on American households. In the European version of the scheme that has been in operation since 2005, the permits are given away to firms. Some businesses are very much in favor of this, because it gives them an opportunity to reap windfall profits, as has happened in Europe. As the CBO found, "Because most of the cost of the cap would ultimately be borne by consumers, giving away nearly all of the allowances to affected energy producers would mean that the value of the allowances they received would far exceed the cost that they bear." So while energy companies benefit, the consumer suffers higher costs. If the allowances are sold, individual companies benefit less, as they have to pay for the allowances in the first place. But even if there is some compensation in the form of a reduction in payroll or corporate taxes, most of the population still suffers reduction in household income. The poorest fifth of the population suffers worst, losing about 3% of its take-home household income. The richest fifth, on the other hand, increase its take-home pay. Only if there is some carbon welfare bureaucracy to administer rebate payments do lower-income families benefit, but that almost triples the cost to the economy as a whole....
Congress on the Constitution: "Tell it to the Judge" he Constitution provides, "The Senators and Representatives… shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution…." Apparently there is a difference between taking this oath and taking it seriously. Last January, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the “CLEAN (Creating Long-term Energy Alternatives for the Nation) Energy Act of 2007,” which includes: the “Ending Subsidies for Big Oil Act of 2007,” the “Royalty Relief for American Consumers Act of 2007,” and an untitled section, under which revenues generated by Sections I and II will be spent on yet-to-be-determined “alternative” energy sources. This is typical: in the 1980s, after creation of a commission to recover “$1 million a day” purportedly lost in “unpaid oil and gas royalties,” Congress promptly spent an additional $365 million. In 1995, Congress, to encourage exploration in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep water, granted some royalty relief for operators brave enough to go where none had gone before. Last summer that bore fruit with the discovery, 175 miles offshore in 7,000 feet of water, of 3 billion to 15 billion barrels of oil. Congress also gave the Department of the Interior (DOI) discretionary authority, but not a mandate, to limit the relief depending on oil and gas prices. The Clinton Administration adopted limits for most years; however, in 1998 and 1999, it did not. No skullduggery was involved; in fact, the DOI’s Inspector General wrote that industry officials reported the “mistake.” Now Congress plans a “gun to the head” of anyone with an interest in the 1,032 deep- water leases from 1998 and 1999, demanding they “renegotiate”—an ironic term given the “take it or leave it” nature of federal contracts—those leases: 20 producing leases must pay between $158 million and $788 million each; 526 leases being explored or developed owe $9,375 to $21,600 each. If they refuse, they will be barred from new Gulf of Mexico leases. Congress’s H.R. 6 could be a final Constitutional Law examination so replete is it with infirmities such as breach of contract, takings without “just compensation,” denial of equal protection and due process, and a bill of attainder....
Junk Science: Green Gas-Lighting? We will continue this column’s look at the unintended consequences and knee-slapping irony of our society’s mindless lurch toward becoming “green” by considering two new studies on alternative fuels. From hybrid cars costing far more than they save in the way of fuel economy to Northern latitude forests causing global warming, to mercury-containing compact fluorescent light bulbs potentially turning homes into toxic waste sites, it’s becoming more apparent every day that green-ness is not necessarily what it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps you have fallen (as did President Bush and the Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005) for the ethanol lobby’s line that ethanol is a “cleaner-burning fuel.” You may then be quite chagrinned to learn about a new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology (April 18) from Stanford University atmospheric scientist Mark Z. Jacobson concluding that ethanol poses substantial health risks. “If every vehicle in the United States ran on fuel made primarily from ethanol instead of pure gasoline, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations would likely increase,” states the media release for Jacobson’s study. "Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution,” said Jacobson, “but our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage.”....
Post-Kelo America: An Optimist's View Given the ever-increasing size and scope of government, it’s understandable for those of us who care about liberty to view the legislative process with cynicism. But sometimes that cynicism can blind us to real successes when lawmakers try to initiate reform. Such is the case with the legislative response to the Supreme Court’s terrible 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, in which the Court declared that local governments can use eminent domain to transfer property from to someone who promises to make more money with the land. The backlash against that decision has been, and continues to be, amazingly successful. To date, it has produced 38 laws addressing the abuse of eminent domain for private development. Most of those laws provide significant and substantial limits on that abuse. Most Kelo reforms (both from state legislatures and from citizen-driven initiatives) have been strong. For example, the vast majority of cases where eminent domain is used for private development involve dubious "blight" designations—i.e., labeling perfectly fine homes and businesses as “blighted” as a pretext for condemnation. Twenty state laws have either eliminated private-use condemnations for "blight" or defined the term so narrowly that it can’t be a vehicle for abuse. Five of those states—Pennsylvania, Kansas, Michigan, Florida, and Virginia—were, according to data collected by the Institute for Justice, among the top eight abusers of eminent domain pre-Kelo. (The other states with blight reforms are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.) In addition, 19 laws require blight designations to be on a property-by-property basis, rather than an area-wide one, thus preventing "blight gerrymandering." And several new laws shift the burden of proving "public use" in condemnation actions from property owners to the government. For litigators, these changes represent dramatic improvements....
Light Bulb Lunacy How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About $4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health. Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favor of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) — a move already either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia. According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor. Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the $2,000 cleaning....
Friday, May 04, 2007
Activists Want Chimp Declared a 'Person'
In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV. But he doesn't care for coffee, and he isn't actually a person—at least not yet. In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26- year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person." Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests. "Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group. "We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions," Theuer said. "We're not talking about the right to vote here." The campaign began after the animal sanctuary where Hiasl (pronounced HEE-zul) and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years went bankrupt. Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless if the shelter closes. Both have already suffered: They were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled in a crate to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter. Their food and veterinary bills run about $6,800 a month....
In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV. But he doesn't care for coffee, and he isn't actually a person—at least not yet. In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26- year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person." Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests. "Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group. "We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions," Theuer said. "We're not talking about the right to vote here." The campaign began after the animal sanctuary where Hiasl (pronounced HEE-zul) and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years went bankrupt. Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless if the shelter closes. Both have already suffered: They were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled in a crate to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter. Their food and veterinary bills run about $6,800 a month....
NEWS ROUNDUP
US 'biggest culprit' of climate change: WWF The United States, the world's top belcher of greenhouse gas emissions, is "the biggest culprit" of climate change, the WWF said Thursday, urging Washington to take swift action against global warming. "They are the biggest culprit and they are the biggest offender of climate," said Stephan Singer, head of the environmental group WWF's climate change policy unit. "The United States should take climate change seriously," Singer told reporters in Bangkok, where scientists around the world are attending the week-long session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN's leading authority on global warming. While accusing the US of "ignoring science" on global warming, the WWF still urged Washington to lead the world in combating climate change....
Ritter signs Pinon Canyon bill but warns it may not be enough Even though he's not sure the state has the power to say "no" to the federal government, Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday signed a bill aimed at stopping the Army from using eminent domain to expand a training site in southeastern Colorado. Ranchers have mobilized to fight the Army's proposal to expand the Pinon Canyon maneuver site by 418,000 acres - or 653 square miles. That's nearly triple the land the Army now owns, and the expansion would swallow up dozens of ranches. The Army is still studying how the expansion would be accomplished, but officials say they can't rule out the use of eminent domain if the plans move ahead. Eminent domain is the power to force a landowner to sell to make way for a project for the public good. As ranchers, students and lawmakers looked on, Ritter said he didn't want the new law (House Bill 1069) to raise expectations that the state could definitely stop the Army from forcing ranchers to sell. But he said it is a tool the state can use to help protect ranchers whose families have been living in the area since the turn of the last century....
Bush administration again opposes Mount Hood wilderness expansion The Bush administration said Thursday it opposes a plan to expand the Mount Hood wilderness area -- the second time in as many years the administration has opposed plans to increase wilderness protections on Oregons highest peak. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, said the administration opposes the wilderness bill as drafted, saying it moves to seal off more land than is appropriate and includes an unacceptable land swap. "While we strongly support public involvement and community collaboration, the concept of legislating management direction (on the mountain) is problematic," Rey told a Senate subcommittee. "We find the land exchange provisions and several of the wilderness designations to be especially troubling." Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith proposed the wilderness expansion in February. The plan would extend wilderness protection to an additional 128,600 acres surrounding Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. The bill would increase existing wilderness protection on the mountain by about two-thirds and add "wild and scenic" protection to nearly 80 miles of rivers. Rey said the administration could support as much as 59,000 acres of new wilderness on Mount Hood, but believes the current plan is too expansive....
Grizzly Delisting Will Test States, Forest Service My main concern is isolation. The Yellowstone ecosystem is one of six isolated grizzly populations south of Canada. Island populations are more vulnerable, especially without viable travel corridors to other populations to foster genetic diversity and to supplement low numbers. In most cases, wildlife scientists reject the idea of institutionalizing an island population. The same agency, even some of the same people in fact, have rejected the idea of delisting the wolf in the Yellowstone area only, insisting we should wait and remove the species in the entire recovery area (Idaho, Montana and Wyoming) at one time. At this point, we do not have safe travel corridors for grizzlies to travel from northwestern Montana to the Yellowstone ecosystem, but this has not delayed delisting. The need for secure travel corridors puts pressure on the state agencies and the Forest Service (FS) to protect the habitat and security of these corridors from human activities that could prevent movement of grizzlies from one ecosystem to the other. Will this happen? Everybody agrees that the viability of the Yellowstone grizzly population depends on maintenance of key habitat outside of the national park, primarily in the surrounding national forests. The FS has woeful track record of protecting wildlife habitat, but in this case the agency has made commitments to protect critical bear habitat near the park. To meet this commitment, the agency must come through with the new policies required to make this a reality, such as realistic limits on motorized use of grizzly habitat. Will this really happen?....
Tribe presses N-waste fight The Skull Valley Goshutes and their private-industry partners are trying to dodge a new obstacle in their fight for permission to store nuclear-reactor waste in Tooele County. In a Washington, D.C., appeals court, the state of Utah is pushing to have the project's license put on ice until the Skull Valley Band and its partners clear two other stumbling blocks created last fall by the U.S. Interior Department. The state, the nuclear project's harshest critic, has argued in legal papers over the past two months that the court should not bother making any final decision now on the project's license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. First, the state insists, project proponents must prove they have approval to get the waste to the site and secure a valid lease. A ruling last September from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management blocked the transportation plan. Another issued the same day by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs nixed a required lease agreement between Private Fuel Storage and the Goshutes. The rulings from the Interior Department agencies prompted U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and state leaders to declare the nuclear project "dead." Proponents have pressed forward anyhow. PFS and the tribe indicate in the latest flurry of legal papers that they plan to appeal both Interior Department decisions, although they have not done so yet. They have more than five years to appeal the rulings in court. Their plans call for storing up to 44,000 tons of used reactor waste on a 100-acre pad just across the highway from the tribal village in Tooele County, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The high-level radioactive waste would be parked on the pads for up to 40 years in steel-and-concrete containers....
BLM mostly backs Colorado River land-swap bill A proposed land deal aimed at preserving scenic areas along the Colorado River received the backing of the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday, although the agency said it would like to see some changes in the proposed swap. The Utah Recreational Land Exchange Act would transfer about 45,000 acres of scattered parcels managed by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration along the Colorado River to the federal government, including areas popular with bicyclists and river rafters. In exchange, the state trust would get about 40,000 acres of federal lands, which hold more potential for economic development. The bill is supported by the trust lands administration, as well as various environmental groups, which spent months negotiating the terms. "It's such a logical idea that it's hard to get done," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. BLM Director Jim Hughes said the agency has some concerns about the way the potential value of oil shale would be appraised, and it is not comfortable with restrictions on oil and gas drilling and mining on the lands BLM would receive. But, Hughes said, the BLM supports the goal of the legislation and hopes to resolve the issues....
Skepticism greets $36M offer by anticline drillers A $36 million offer by three energy producers to improve wildlife habitat and preserve migration routes around their gas drilling sites in the Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming met with skepticism from conservationists. While the offer is generous, whether it will succeed is in question, according to Linda Baker of the Upper Green River Valley Coalition, which represents landowners in the valley. "It seems to me that before we invest any more money into mitigation, that we have a realistic plan for success," Baker said. The $36 million offer from Questar Corp., Ultra Resources Inc., and Shell Exploration and Production Co. comes as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management crafts a plan for expanded drilling in the anticline south of Pinedale. The companies are seeking year-round drilling on parts of the anticline. Currently, gas development is restricted by seasonal closures to protect wildlife that spend the winter in the area and sage grouse that nest in the spring. Baker said Wednesday that additional wells should be limited to core areas, with surrounding areas set aside and maintained for wildlife. Ultra, Shell and Questar promised to leave the outskirts of the anticline alone and continue studies on how gas development affects habitat and wildlife if the companies can concentrate drilling in certain areas of the anticline....
Groups want judge to enforce Eagle Mountain land-swap ruling Inland environmental groups asked a federal judge to enforce his 2005 ruling that struck down a land swap and effectively quashed an effort to turn an old iron-ore mine into one of the nation's largest landfills near Joshua Tree National Park. The groups contend that those involved in the land swap -- Ontario-based Kaiser Ventures and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management -- have done little to put the land back into public hands. In addition, they said, Kaiser has leased its adjacent lands to a company that allows the military to conduct exercises with live munitions and helicopters in a fragile desert environment. A June 4 hearing has been scheduled on the matter before U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin. At issue is a 1999 land swap between the bureau and Kaiser, which wanted to turn its old iron-ore pits into the proposed Eagle Mountain landfill. The federal agency gave Kaiser 3,481 acres of public land around the old Kaiser Steel Co. mining pits to be used for a landfill. In return, Kaiser gave the bureau almost 2,500 acres of land along its 52-mile railroad in Riverside County....
US must focus on species's survival, Interior Secretary says The United States needed to focus more on ensuring the survival of wildlife rather than concentrating on listing species as endangered, U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Friday. Kempthorne is under fire over the Bush administration's new interpretation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which critics say jeopardizes animals such as wolves and grizzly bears. The new reading of the law proposed by the Interior Department would enable the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect animals and plants only where they are battling for survival. The agency would not have to protect them where they are in good shape. Kempthorne, in Canberra to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, said Friday he did not believe the new direction damaged his administration's environment credentials. "I think we need to put greater emphasis on recovery and efforts in that direction," Kempthorne told reporters, adding that only one percent of the 1,500 species listed as endangered in the past 30 years had recovered. As an example, he said the government was moving to improve the habitat of the of sage grouse, whose numbers are declining, so that that bird is never listed as endangered....
Griz-human conflicts are likely to rise Grizzly bear 398 walked west through the snow covering the towering Teton Range this spring, living the good life in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The 16-year-old male grizzly was at the top of the pecking order for predators in the region, so he could pick his territory. He chose the forests and meadows around Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park. There, he had an ample supply of elk calves, roots, whitebark pine nuts and winter-killed moose and deer to eat. Biologists had captured him for research that allowed them map his range with global positioning systems. He had lived his entire life naturally and without incident just yards from hundreds of thousands of national park visitors. His existence was a walking testimonial to the recovery program that had brought Yellowstone's bears back from the brink of extinction. On Monday, grizzly bears were removed from the threatened species list. But grizzly 398's attack on 33-year-old Tetonia carpenter Timothy Henderson on April 10 and his own death at the hands of wardens and deputies four days later mars what is one of the early environmental success stories of the 21st century....
Canada's Tenth Mad Cow Rouses Concern South of the Border U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, introduced legislation today that would prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, from expanding imports of Canadian cattle until the agency implements a system that allows consumers to see in which country their meat was produced. That system, known as Country of Origin Labeling, COOL, was scheduled, by law, to be in place by September 30, 2004. But the Bush administration has delayed its implementation several times. It is now not scheduled to be in place until September 30, 2008. After the first Canadian mad cow was found in 2003, the United States banned the import of Canadian beef, but in 2006 lifted the ban for some products. Currently cattle from Canada younger than 30 months, and boxed beef are allowed to enter the United States. In January, the Bush administration proposed allowing animals older than 30 months to enter the U.S. sometime later this year. "There is no longer any excuse for delaying implementation of COOL," Dorgan said today. "Consumers have the right to know where their meat is coming from, and to make their own decision - fully informed decisions - about whether they want to be putting beef from Canada on their dinner table, under the current circumstances. Speaking for the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, R-CALF USA, CEO Bill Bullard agrees. From his office in Billings, Montana, Bullard said, "The U.S. Department of Agriculture has failed its responsibility to adequately protect the U.S. cattle herd, the U.S. beef supply, U.S. export markets and U.S. consumers from Canada’s widespread problem with bovine spongiform encephalopathy." "Despite a very limited amount of testing, six cases of BSE have been confirmed in Canadian cattle born after Canada implemented its feed ban in 1997 – despite USDA’s unsupported insistence that the Canadian feed ban has been effective in preventing the spread of the disease," Bullard said....
Cloning: Scientists vs. Consumers Should the U.S. become the first country in the world to allow food from cloned animals onto supermarket shelves? That is the debate that has raged at the Food & Drug Administration for four months, until the period for public comment on the issue closed on May 3. The FDA said on Dec. 28 that it was inclined to allow such foods into U.S. stores, based on the evidence it had reviewed, but asked for outside comment. With the public comment period closed, it's clear that the cloning debate boils down to scientists vs. consumers. Thousands of individuals wrote to the government to voice their opposition to the prospect of cloned products being allowed into the food supply. In large part, they made emotion appeals that cloning was immoral or that cloned food was repulsive. "Unethical, disturbing, and disgusting," wrote one consumer, Lea Askren. Scientists, on the other hand, are almost completely unified in their support of cloning. They see the technology as an effective, important way to produce higher-quality, healthier food. "We have to invest in technology to move forward," says Terry Etherton, head of the Dairy & Animal Science Dept. at Penn State University. This week, the Federation of Animal Science Societies took out an advertisement in one daily paper with a picture of a cloned cow grazing peacefully with her naturally bred calf. "What's wrong with this picture?" it asked. "Absolutely nothing." The clear divergence suggests that cloned foods will indeed be introduced to U.S. consumers in the near future. The FDA has said that it will consider only scientific arguments in its decision, while popular opinion and emotional appeals will carry no weight. While there are a handful of comments that make some science-based points against cloning, there is surprisingly little in the public comments that is likely to outweigh the FDA's inclination to proceed with cloned foods....
New Kind Of Cattle Promises To Be Healthier Historically, red meat has been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and colon cancer. But a new kind of cattle being bred in Texas promises to be healthier and improve health as well. The cattle is from Japan, from Akaushi cattle. The Texas Department of Agriculture says Texas ranchers were able to get some of these cattle due to a loophole in the trade act. Now that it's available for market, they say it is a healthy choice. New to the U.S. market is HeartBrand Meat. The Texas Department of Agriculture is hoping the health claims will beef up sales. “It prevents coronary heart disease as well as cancer and diabetes,” Catherine O’Gorman, with HeartBrand Meat, said. This cattle originally is said to be genetically geared to produce conjugated linoleic acid or CLA. That's what producers say will promote good health. But, so far, doctors say CLA has only been studied in mice....
Starving vultures kill cattle HUGE flocks of starving vultures have started attacking live animals in northern Spain, officials in the city of Burgos said this week. In one incident, about 100 vultures killed a cow and her newborn calf, a rancher from the Mena Valley said, according to the Spanish Government's office in Burgos, quoted by state news agency EFE. Ranchers have complained that vultures started attacking livestock several months ago when a feeding station set up in the Ordunte mountains was closed by the neighbouring province of Vizcaya. Vultures prefer to feed on the carcasses of dead animals, but carrion is scarce in modern Spain.
US 'biggest culprit' of climate change: WWF The United States, the world's top belcher of greenhouse gas emissions, is "the biggest culprit" of climate change, the WWF said Thursday, urging Washington to take swift action against global warming. "They are the biggest culprit and they are the biggest offender of climate," said Stephan Singer, head of the environmental group WWF's climate change policy unit. "The United States should take climate change seriously," Singer told reporters in Bangkok, where scientists around the world are attending the week-long session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN's leading authority on global warming. While accusing the US of "ignoring science" on global warming, the WWF still urged Washington to lead the world in combating climate change....
Ritter signs Pinon Canyon bill but warns it may not be enough Even though he's not sure the state has the power to say "no" to the federal government, Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday signed a bill aimed at stopping the Army from using eminent domain to expand a training site in southeastern Colorado. Ranchers have mobilized to fight the Army's proposal to expand the Pinon Canyon maneuver site by 418,000 acres - or 653 square miles. That's nearly triple the land the Army now owns, and the expansion would swallow up dozens of ranches. The Army is still studying how the expansion would be accomplished, but officials say they can't rule out the use of eminent domain if the plans move ahead. Eminent domain is the power to force a landowner to sell to make way for a project for the public good. As ranchers, students and lawmakers looked on, Ritter said he didn't want the new law (House Bill 1069) to raise expectations that the state could definitely stop the Army from forcing ranchers to sell. But he said it is a tool the state can use to help protect ranchers whose families have been living in the area since the turn of the last century....
Bush administration again opposes Mount Hood wilderness expansion The Bush administration said Thursday it opposes a plan to expand the Mount Hood wilderness area -- the second time in as many years the administration has opposed plans to increase wilderness protections on Oregons highest peak. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, said the administration opposes the wilderness bill as drafted, saying it moves to seal off more land than is appropriate and includes an unacceptable land swap. "While we strongly support public involvement and community collaboration, the concept of legislating management direction (on the mountain) is problematic," Rey told a Senate subcommittee. "We find the land exchange provisions and several of the wilderness designations to be especially troubling." Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith proposed the wilderness expansion in February. The plan would extend wilderness protection to an additional 128,600 acres surrounding Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. The bill would increase existing wilderness protection on the mountain by about two-thirds and add "wild and scenic" protection to nearly 80 miles of rivers. Rey said the administration could support as much as 59,000 acres of new wilderness on Mount Hood, but believes the current plan is too expansive....
Grizzly Delisting Will Test States, Forest Service My main concern is isolation. The Yellowstone ecosystem is one of six isolated grizzly populations south of Canada. Island populations are more vulnerable, especially without viable travel corridors to other populations to foster genetic diversity and to supplement low numbers. In most cases, wildlife scientists reject the idea of institutionalizing an island population. The same agency, even some of the same people in fact, have rejected the idea of delisting the wolf in the Yellowstone area only, insisting we should wait and remove the species in the entire recovery area (Idaho, Montana and Wyoming) at one time. At this point, we do not have safe travel corridors for grizzlies to travel from northwestern Montana to the Yellowstone ecosystem, but this has not delayed delisting. The need for secure travel corridors puts pressure on the state agencies and the Forest Service (FS) to protect the habitat and security of these corridors from human activities that could prevent movement of grizzlies from one ecosystem to the other. Will this happen? Everybody agrees that the viability of the Yellowstone grizzly population depends on maintenance of key habitat outside of the national park, primarily in the surrounding national forests. The FS has woeful track record of protecting wildlife habitat, but in this case the agency has made commitments to protect critical bear habitat near the park. To meet this commitment, the agency must come through with the new policies required to make this a reality, such as realistic limits on motorized use of grizzly habitat. Will this really happen?....
Tribe presses N-waste fight The Skull Valley Goshutes and their private-industry partners are trying to dodge a new obstacle in their fight for permission to store nuclear-reactor waste in Tooele County. In a Washington, D.C., appeals court, the state of Utah is pushing to have the project's license put on ice until the Skull Valley Band and its partners clear two other stumbling blocks created last fall by the U.S. Interior Department. The state, the nuclear project's harshest critic, has argued in legal papers over the past two months that the court should not bother making any final decision now on the project's license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. First, the state insists, project proponents must prove they have approval to get the waste to the site and secure a valid lease. A ruling last September from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management blocked the transportation plan. Another issued the same day by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs nixed a required lease agreement between Private Fuel Storage and the Goshutes. The rulings from the Interior Department agencies prompted U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and state leaders to declare the nuclear project "dead." Proponents have pressed forward anyhow. PFS and the tribe indicate in the latest flurry of legal papers that they plan to appeal both Interior Department decisions, although they have not done so yet. They have more than five years to appeal the rulings in court. Their plans call for storing up to 44,000 tons of used reactor waste on a 100-acre pad just across the highway from the tribal village in Tooele County, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The high-level radioactive waste would be parked on the pads for up to 40 years in steel-and-concrete containers....
BLM mostly backs Colorado River land-swap bill A proposed land deal aimed at preserving scenic areas along the Colorado River received the backing of the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday, although the agency said it would like to see some changes in the proposed swap. The Utah Recreational Land Exchange Act would transfer about 45,000 acres of scattered parcels managed by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration along the Colorado River to the federal government, including areas popular with bicyclists and river rafters. In exchange, the state trust would get about 40,000 acres of federal lands, which hold more potential for economic development. The bill is supported by the trust lands administration, as well as various environmental groups, which spent months negotiating the terms. "It's such a logical idea that it's hard to get done," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. BLM Director Jim Hughes said the agency has some concerns about the way the potential value of oil shale would be appraised, and it is not comfortable with restrictions on oil and gas drilling and mining on the lands BLM would receive. But, Hughes said, the BLM supports the goal of the legislation and hopes to resolve the issues....
Skepticism greets $36M offer by anticline drillers A $36 million offer by three energy producers to improve wildlife habitat and preserve migration routes around their gas drilling sites in the Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming met with skepticism from conservationists. While the offer is generous, whether it will succeed is in question, according to Linda Baker of the Upper Green River Valley Coalition, which represents landowners in the valley. "It seems to me that before we invest any more money into mitigation, that we have a realistic plan for success," Baker said. The $36 million offer from Questar Corp., Ultra Resources Inc., and Shell Exploration and Production Co. comes as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management crafts a plan for expanded drilling in the anticline south of Pinedale. The companies are seeking year-round drilling on parts of the anticline. Currently, gas development is restricted by seasonal closures to protect wildlife that spend the winter in the area and sage grouse that nest in the spring. Baker said Wednesday that additional wells should be limited to core areas, with surrounding areas set aside and maintained for wildlife. Ultra, Shell and Questar promised to leave the outskirts of the anticline alone and continue studies on how gas development affects habitat and wildlife if the companies can concentrate drilling in certain areas of the anticline....
Groups want judge to enforce Eagle Mountain land-swap ruling Inland environmental groups asked a federal judge to enforce his 2005 ruling that struck down a land swap and effectively quashed an effort to turn an old iron-ore mine into one of the nation's largest landfills near Joshua Tree National Park. The groups contend that those involved in the land swap -- Ontario-based Kaiser Ventures and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management -- have done little to put the land back into public hands. In addition, they said, Kaiser has leased its adjacent lands to a company that allows the military to conduct exercises with live munitions and helicopters in a fragile desert environment. A June 4 hearing has been scheduled on the matter before U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin. At issue is a 1999 land swap between the bureau and Kaiser, which wanted to turn its old iron-ore pits into the proposed Eagle Mountain landfill. The federal agency gave Kaiser 3,481 acres of public land around the old Kaiser Steel Co. mining pits to be used for a landfill. In return, Kaiser gave the bureau almost 2,500 acres of land along its 52-mile railroad in Riverside County....
US must focus on species's survival, Interior Secretary says The United States needed to focus more on ensuring the survival of wildlife rather than concentrating on listing species as endangered, U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Friday. Kempthorne is under fire over the Bush administration's new interpretation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which critics say jeopardizes animals such as wolves and grizzly bears. The new reading of the law proposed by the Interior Department would enable the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect animals and plants only where they are battling for survival. The agency would not have to protect them where they are in good shape. Kempthorne, in Canberra to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, said Friday he did not believe the new direction damaged his administration's environment credentials. "I think we need to put greater emphasis on recovery and efforts in that direction," Kempthorne told reporters, adding that only one percent of the 1,500 species listed as endangered in the past 30 years had recovered. As an example, he said the government was moving to improve the habitat of the of sage grouse, whose numbers are declining, so that that bird is never listed as endangered....
Griz-human conflicts are likely to rise Grizzly bear 398 walked west through the snow covering the towering Teton Range this spring, living the good life in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The 16-year-old male grizzly was at the top of the pecking order for predators in the region, so he could pick his territory. He chose the forests and meadows around Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park. There, he had an ample supply of elk calves, roots, whitebark pine nuts and winter-killed moose and deer to eat. Biologists had captured him for research that allowed them map his range with global positioning systems. He had lived his entire life naturally and without incident just yards from hundreds of thousands of national park visitors. His existence was a walking testimonial to the recovery program that had brought Yellowstone's bears back from the brink of extinction. On Monday, grizzly bears were removed from the threatened species list. But grizzly 398's attack on 33-year-old Tetonia carpenter Timothy Henderson on April 10 and his own death at the hands of wardens and deputies four days later mars what is one of the early environmental success stories of the 21st century....
Canada's Tenth Mad Cow Rouses Concern South of the Border U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, introduced legislation today that would prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, from expanding imports of Canadian cattle until the agency implements a system that allows consumers to see in which country their meat was produced. That system, known as Country of Origin Labeling, COOL, was scheduled, by law, to be in place by September 30, 2004. But the Bush administration has delayed its implementation several times. It is now not scheduled to be in place until September 30, 2008. After the first Canadian mad cow was found in 2003, the United States banned the import of Canadian beef, but in 2006 lifted the ban for some products. Currently cattle from Canada younger than 30 months, and boxed beef are allowed to enter the United States. In January, the Bush administration proposed allowing animals older than 30 months to enter the U.S. sometime later this year. "There is no longer any excuse for delaying implementation of COOL," Dorgan said today. "Consumers have the right to know where their meat is coming from, and to make their own decision - fully informed decisions - about whether they want to be putting beef from Canada on their dinner table, under the current circumstances. Speaking for the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, R-CALF USA, CEO Bill Bullard agrees. From his office in Billings, Montana, Bullard said, "The U.S. Department of Agriculture has failed its responsibility to adequately protect the U.S. cattle herd, the U.S. beef supply, U.S. export markets and U.S. consumers from Canada’s widespread problem with bovine spongiform encephalopathy." "Despite a very limited amount of testing, six cases of BSE have been confirmed in Canadian cattle born after Canada implemented its feed ban in 1997 – despite USDA’s unsupported insistence that the Canadian feed ban has been effective in preventing the spread of the disease," Bullard said....
Cloning: Scientists vs. Consumers Should the U.S. become the first country in the world to allow food from cloned animals onto supermarket shelves? That is the debate that has raged at the Food & Drug Administration for four months, until the period for public comment on the issue closed on May 3. The FDA said on Dec. 28 that it was inclined to allow such foods into U.S. stores, based on the evidence it had reviewed, but asked for outside comment. With the public comment period closed, it's clear that the cloning debate boils down to scientists vs. consumers. Thousands of individuals wrote to the government to voice their opposition to the prospect of cloned products being allowed into the food supply. In large part, they made emotion appeals that cloning was immoral or that cloned food was repulsive. "Unethical, disturbing, and disgusting," wrote one consumer, Lea Askren. Scientists, on the other hand, are almost completely unified in their support of cloning. They see the technology as an effective, important way to produce higher-quality, healthier food. "We have to invest in technology to move forward," says Terry Etherton, head of the Dairy & Animal Science Dept. at Penn State University. This week, the Federation of Animal Science Societies took out an advertisement in one daily paper with a picture of a cloned cow grazing peacefully with her naturally bred calf. "What's wrong with this picture?" it asked. "Absolutely nothing." The clear divergence suggests that cloned foods will indeed be introduced to U.S. consumers in the near future. The FDA has said that it will consider only scientific arguments in its decision, while popular opinion and emotional appeals will carry no weight. While there are a handful of comments that make some science-based points against cloning, there is surprisingly little in the public comments that is likely to outweigh the FDA's inclination to proceed with cloned foods....
New Kind Of Cattle Promises To Be Healthier Historically, red meat has been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and colon cancer. But a new kind of cattle being bred in Texas promises to be healthier and improve health as well. The cattle is from Japan, from Akaushi cattle. The Texas Department of Agriculture says Texas ranchers were able to get some of these cattle due to a loophole in the trade act. Now that it's available for market, they say it is a healthy choice. New to the U.S. market is HeartBrand Meat. The Texas Department of Agriculture is hoping the health claims will beef up sales. “It prevents coronary heart disease as well as cancer and diabetes,” Catherine O’Gorman, with HeartBrand Meat, said. This cattle originally is said to be genetically geared to produce conjugated linoleic acid or CLA. That's what producers say will promote good health. But, so far, doctors say CLA has only been studied in mice....
Starving vultures kill cattle HUGE flocks of starving vultures have started attacking live animals in northern Spain, officials in the city of Burgos said this week. In one incident, about 100 vultures killed a cow and her newborn calf, a rancher from the Mena Valley said, according to the Spanish Government's office in Burgos, quoted by state news agency EFE. Ranchers have complained that vultures started attacking livestock several months ago when a feeding station set up in the Ordunte mountains was closed by the neighbouring province of Vizcaya. Vultures prefer to feed on the carcasses of dead animals, but carrion is scarce in modern Spain.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
GAO
Interstate Compacts: An Overview of the Structure and Governance of Environment and Natural Resource Compacts. GAO-07-519, April 3. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-519
Climate Change: Financial Risks to Federal and Private Insurers in Coming Decades are Potentially Significant, by John B. Stephenson, director, natural resources and environment, before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. GAO-07-820T, May 3. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-820T
Interstate Compacts: An Overview of the Structure and Governance of Environment and Natural Resource Compacts. GAO-07-519, April 3. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-519
Climate Change: Financial Risks to Federal and Private Insurers in Coming Decades are Potentially Significant, by John B. Stephenson, director, natural resources and environment, before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. GAO-07-820T, May 3. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-820T
NEWS ROUNDUP
Low snowpack heightens fears of new drought California's final snow survey of the year, taking place today in the Sierra Nevada, is expected to reveal early signs of a drought. Automated monitors already show the snowpack's water content is only 29 percent of average. Today's field measurement is expected to confirm that -- perhaps producing even worse numbers. The National Drought Mitigation Center, based in Lincoln, Neb., has declared drought conditions in nearly all of California. Its Web site paints the state in shades of dry, ranging from yellow to deep red -- deeper trouble -- from north to south. Mark Svoboda, climatologist at the center, said 27 percent of the western United States was in drought at this time last year. Now it's 51 percent. "All in all, the drought has got a strong foothold on the region," Svoboda said. "Right now there's nothing in the cards saying it's going to be over until we reassess this time next year, at least in the case of California." Despite the thin snowpack, the California Department of Water Resources predicts no water shortages this summer because reservoirs and groundwater basins are full from last winter, the fifth-wettest on record in Northern California....
Elk at risk? Otero County ranchers and farmers are calling on the county commission to demand action from the state game department regarding damages being caused by elk herds to forage, fences and crops. They are also asking for permission to shoot some elk. One such permit has already been granted, and an environmental group has raised its voice in protest. Rancher Charles Walker addressed Wednesday's commission work session and told the commission similar problems are being experienced in Lincoln, Chaves and Eddy counties. He said ranchers' pleas for compensation for the damages, or for increased landowner hunting permits, have fallen on deaf ears. Walker said under the grazing allotments with the Bureau of Land Management, the forage belongs to the ranchers. The refusal to either thin the herds or repay the allotment holders for damages represents an illegal "taking," Walker said. He and other ranchers say the problem has persisted for decades but has now become particularly acute. Commission Chairman Doug Moore said county staff are working on drafting a package of ordinances that would address the problem. He noted allotment holders have been required to reduce their herds by some 20 percent, yet no effort is being made to increase the number of elk that can be hunted each year. Moore said the elk are using as much as 80 percent of the forage resources on some of the allotments....
Litterers among 500 on marshals' warrant list Federal authorities are kicking off a blitz to arrest some 500 people in Arizona who have disobeyed laws protecting federal land. The people committed gruesome crimes, such as leaving litter at a campsite. Or getting drunk and disorderly on a mountaintop. Or perhaps even peeing in a park. The feds had offered people with outstanding tickets for such misdemeanors a Safe Surrender Day on Tuesday to come clean with their offenses. They could have visited their local federal courthouse or the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office in Mesa to clear their records. One person showed up. "I don't know what (crime) he did, but he paid a $250 fine," said Tonto National Forest spokesman Vincent Picard. Now, those who didn't show up can expect a knock on the door, Picard said, adding that the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish & Wildlife will work in concert with the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix to nab those 500 scofflaws who now have warrants out for their arrest....
America's Forests in State of Renewal and Re-Growth The United States of America is covered by 750 million acres of forestland, an amount that has remained essentially unchanged over the past 100 years, reports a landmark new study released today by the Society of American Foresters (SAF). In addition, forestland in the United States has increased by more than 10 million acres over the past 20 years. The report is available for viewing or downloading at http://www.safnet.org/. The new study found that replanting and reforestation efforts, as well as natural forest re-growth on abandoned agricultural lands has generally offset any loss of forestland during the 20th century due to urban/suburban growth. Technological advances have made farming more efficient, vastly reducing the amount of land needed to produce food, thereby allowing forestland to regenerate, the report found. The State of America's Forests reports there is good reason to believe that the positive trends will continue. The new report is a comprehensive, peer-reviewed analysis of a wide variety of data regarding forestland in the United States from a broad range of sources, including the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The report was authored by forestry expert Mila Alvarez, a professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute's College of Natural Resources and principal of Solutions for Nature, a natural resources management consulting firm. The release of The State of America's Forests comes on the heels of a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report in March that also found the United States had annual increases in forest area in the 1990s and through 2005. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences released a study in November 2006 that came to a similar conclusion, finding a widespread pattern of reforestation in the United States and calling the United States a world leader in forestland re-growth....
A controversial 'Walk with Bears' Lynn Rogers grew up terrified of bears. Now he spends much of his time alongside them -- literally, within arm's length, even feeding them by hand. He knows his casual interactions with bears -- particularly the hand-feeding aspect -- go against the conventional wisdom of wildlife managers around the country. But he is also convinced that his way, not their way, is appropriate. "People are moving into bear country like never before," said Rogers, 68, who this weekend will open the North American Bear Center, an extension of the Wildlife Research Institute he has overseen since 1971 near rural Ely, Minn. "The message today has to be coexistence, rather than the frontier mentality of whenever you see a bear, shoot it, trap it, poison it, so (bears) keep their distance." Nor does Rogers think his actions -- chronicled in a documentary film, "The Man Who Walks with Bears," that has been nationally televised on such channels at Discovery's Animal Planet more than 70 times -- are apt to endanger others trying to experience the same kind of proximity with bears in the wild....
Honda Opens Unique 'Environmental Learning Center' in Irving, Texas Honda today opened an Environmental Learning Center (ELC) in Irving, Texas, the company's third such facility in the country. The ELC is designed to be a unique community resource that promotes a responsible land use ethic through a greater understanding of the varied regional ecology. Honda also has ELCs in Colton, Calif., and Alpharetta, Georgia. Honda's Irving ELC consists of approximately four acres surrounding an existing four-acre Rider Education Center where more than 30,000 street, dirt and ATV riders have been trained since it opened in 1989. The ELC features a trail system and species of plants, grasses and trees representing ten different Texas ecosystems as part of the Center's state-of-the-art off highway training facility. "Our ELCs serve as both an environmental resource for youth organizations as well as motorcycle training centers teaching environmentally responsible rider ethics to both beginners and experienced riders," said Dave Edwards, national manager of environment and education for the Motorcycle Division of American Honda Motor Co., Inc....
N.J. man died of thirst during wilderness survival adventure in the Utah desert By Day 2 in the blazing Utah desert, Dave Buschow was in bad shape. Pale, wracked by cramps, his speech slurred, the 29-year-old New Jersey man was desperate for water and hallucinating so badly he mistook a tree for a person. After going roughly 10 hours without a drink in the 100-degree heat, he finally dropped dead of thirst, less than 100 yards from the goal: a cave with a pool of water. But Buschow was no solitary soul, lost and alone in the desert. He and 11 other hikers from various walks of life were being led by expert guides on a wilderness-survival adventure designed to test their physical and mental toughness. And the guides, it turned out, were carrying emergency water. Buschow wasn’t told that, and he wasn’t offered any....
Mountains Say Goodbye to Mom-and-Pop Ski Schools It sounds like the plot for a bad Jason London movie: A ski mogul with an eye on the bottom line takes over a local resort and cancels contracts with the community-based ski schools that have traditionally served the slopes, then asks the ski bums to join the corporate ranks. Lessons double in cost. Longtime skiers and snowboarders are outraged. The National Forest Service washes its hands of the matter. Will the underdog community schools yield to big business? Can snow-loving families afford the increased cost of lessons? Will the feds step in? Coming in winter 2008: Cold War, starring London, Tara Reid, Stephen Baldwin, Cuba Gooding Jr., and a pack of drunken sled dogs. Trite as this make-believe plot may sound, it's not far from reality at Crystal Mountain, where John Kircher and Boyne USA, owners of the Mount Rainier resort for the past nine years, are jettisoning the concession ski schools that have traditionally managed multiweek programs in the Northwest, and consolidating instruction on the mountain to a single in-house school....
Wildlife agency denies protection for Nevada butterfly A butterfly found only at a popular Nevada off-road vehicle site won't receive federal protection as a threatened or endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided Wednesday. After a 12-month review, agency officials said federal listing under the Endangered Species Act is unwarranted because of recently adopted measures to protect the habitat of the Sand Mountain blue butterfly. Also, higher-than-expected numbers of the insect were found during a survey last year, fish and wildlife officials said. "Our finding, after looking at all the available information and the conservation strategy being implemented, is that the threat of the species becoming extinct is no longer there," said Bob Williams, field supervisor of the agency's Nevada office....
Congressional delegation weighs in against closing pass All three members of Wyoming's congressional delegation sent a joint statement Wednesday to planners at Yellowstone National Park opposing the proposed closure of the East Entrance to snowmobiles and snow coaches. "This decision is unacceptable to us and to our constituents," the letter said, urging the National Park Service to reconsider the proposal. Signed by Rep. Barbara Cubin and Sens. Mike Enzi and Craig Thomas, all Republicans, the letter was a formal comment from the legislators on a draft plan that would also set a daily limit of 720 snowmobiles allowed in the park. "It is our belief that it is possible to keep reasonable access available to Yellowstone through the East Entrance," said the letter, which was also sent to Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett and National Park Service Director Mary Bomar....
Tester rapped for panel vote on liquid coal amendment Although he says he supports the technology, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., on Wednesday helped sink a measure pushed by Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., to increase the production of liquid fuels from coal. Thomas accused Tester and other Democrats of failing to act on their words of praise for transportation fuels made from coal. But Tester said he couldn't support the amendment because it would have scuttled the entire bill to which it was attached. Tester voted against the provision during a meeting of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to assemble an energy package. The legislation contains measures boosting biofuels, energy efficiency and research and development on carbon capture and storage technology. Thomas' amendment would have required 21 billion gallons of coal-based fuels to be used annually by 2022. The bill already had a provision mandating 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022. The amendment was defeated on a 12-11 party-line vote....
Washington will destroy dams to revive a river High hopes ride on knocking down two aging hydroelectric dams along the blue-green waters of the Elwha River: robust salmon runs, replenished beaches, restored wildlife habitat, a tourism windfall, access to sacred Indian sites long submerged. But the dams' demise — one would be the tallest ever demolished in the USA — may play a larger role. Hundreds of dams built in the past century are near the end of their usefulness and pose dilemmas for policymakers: remove them or make costly upgrades to keep them functioning. The Elwha River project, which won state approval in March, could be a model for how to bring a river back to life, environmentalists and biologists say. Hundreds of small dams have been torn out around the country in recent years, but none as high as the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon, the taller of the two on the Elwha....
Making ethanol of corn takes far too much water Many crops can be distilled into ethanol, but most makers are choosing corn. And corn is the most water-intensive of all the possible ethanol crops. How much water? How much corn? The answers are startling. First, many studies have suggested that corn-based ethanol isn't the best solution to breaking our oil addiction. Corn-based ethanol is far less efficient as a fuel than sugar-cane ethanol. And diverting corn from other uses, such as feeding cows and chickens, likely will drive the costs of food and farming higher. Big companies who deal in growing and marketing corn would prefer we ignore such facts. But it's harder to ignore the amount of water that using corn-based ethanol would require. This is a back-of-the-napkin look at ethanol's impact on California water. The conclusions are imprecise, because no energy, water or utility agency has gotten into this yet. Let's start with two assumptions: Corn will remain the crop of choice, and California will have to grow its own corn because other states will be using their own corn for making fuel. The Water Education Foundation says it takes about 118 gallons of water to grow a pound of corn. How many pounds of corn does it take to produce a gallon of ethanol? About 21 pounds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Doing the multiplication, each gallon of ethanol will take roughly 2,500 gallons of water....
USDA promises to do better on protecting personal info Last month, USDA announced it had accidentally published the Social Security numbers of over 29,000 farm and rural development program participants on a public Internet web site. And Wednesday, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on data security at USDA. USDA Chief Financial Officer Charles Christopherson was the primary witness. He opened his remarks with an apology and a promise. "We regret the incident that has occurred," Christopherson intoned. "We are committed to taking care of the individuals who are affected and we will fix the problems that led to this issue." According to Christopherson, USDA had attempted to contact all those who had had their Social Security numbers inadvertently released, and had reached all but a couple of dozen. He said those affected had been offered a free year of credit monitoring and a $20,000 insurance policy against the threat of identity theft. Christopherson also said USDA had quickly removed the Social Security numbers, which were embedded in a longer, 15-digit account number, from the public web site on which they'd been published. In fact, Christopherson testified that USDA had already begun a data security project over 10 months ago, shortly after the Veterans Affairs Department lost over 26,000,000 Social Security numbers. USDA’s goal, Christopherson said, is to replace Social Security numbers as record identifiers within all of USDA's information technology (IT) systems. But with 56 separate IT systems to go through, Christopherson told lawmakers the project could take a long, long time....
Reading Green: Ten books to help understand and save the environment. With all the world’s pressing environmental problems—not the least of which is the fact that humans are changing the planet’s climate—it’s all too easy to get caught up in fear and despair. It’s time to temper the bad news with knowledge. What follows is a list of books that will help anyone learn more about the state of the environment and, more specifically, the state of the West. The environmental movement has its classics, books like Thoreau’s On Walden Pond and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; there are also excellent anthologies on everything from wilderness to environmental justice. In short, there are thousands of great books on the environment—and everyone has their favorites—but these 10 are invaluable....
Author signs to Bantam after newest book Even as a first-grader, Heather Sharfeddin had a natural knack as a storyteller, often telling exaggerated stories to her friends and classmates. Fast forward to the last several years and Sherwood's Sharfeddin is now the critically acclaimed author of two novels, "Blackbelly," and the recently released "Mineral Spirits." A Sherwood-area resident for 12 years, Sharfeddin's novels capture the contemporary West and its people. Her setting for "Blackbelly" is Central Idaho, a location where the 41-year-old writer spent a portion of her life, and still recalls the seemingly simple everyday things about the area, including the taste of the well water and the smell of the dirt. Her latest work, "Mineral Spirits" takes place in the sparsely populated Mineral County, Mont.....
Low snowpack heightens fears of new drought California's final snow survey of the year, taking place today in the Sierra Nevada, is expected to reveal early signs of a drought. Automated monitors already show the snowpack's water content is only 29 percent of average. Today's field measurement is expected to confirm that -- perhaps producing even worse numbers. The National Drought Mitigation Center, based in Lincoln, Neb., has declared drought conditions in nearly all of California. Its Web site paints the state in shades of dry, ranging from yellow to deep red -- deeper trouble -- from north to south. Mark Svoboda, climatologist at the center, said 27 percent of the western United States was in drought at this time last year. Now it's 51 percent. "All in all, the drought has got a strong foothold on the region," Svoboda said. "Right now there's nothing in the cards saying it's going to be over until we reassess this time next year, at least in the case of California." Despite the thin snowpack, the California Department of Water Resources predicts no water shortages this summer because reservoirs and groundwater basins are full from last winter, the fifth-wettest on record in Northern California....
Elk at risk? Otero County ranchers and farmers are calling on the county commission to demand action from the state game department regarding damages being caused by elk herds to forage, fences and crops. They are also asking for permission to shoot some elk. One such permit has already been granted, and an environmental group has raised its voice in protest. Rancher Charles Walker addressed Wednesday's commission work session and told the commission similar problems are being experienced in Lincoln, Chaves and Eddy counties. He said ranchers' pleas for compensation for the damages, or for increased landowner hunting permits, have fallen on deaf ears. Walker said under the grazing allotments with the Bureau of Land Management, the forage belongs to the ranchers. The refusal to either thin the herds or repay the allotment holders for damages represents an illegal "taking," Walker said. He and other ranchers say the problem has persisted for decades but has now become particularly acute. Commission Chairman Doug Moore said county staff are working on drafting a package of ordinances that would address the problem. He noted allotment holders have been required to reduce their herds by some 20 percent, yet no effort is being made to increase the number of elk that can be hunted each year. Moore said the elk are using as much as 80 percent of the forage resources on some of the allotments....
Litterers among 500 on marshals' warrant list Federal authorities are kicking off a blitz to arrest some 500 people in Arizona who have disobeyed laws protecting federal land. The people committed gruesome crimes, such as leaving litter at a campsite. Or getting drunk and disorderly on a mountaintop. Or perhaps even peeing in a park. The feds had offered people with outstanding tickets for such misdemeanors a Safe Surrender Day on Tuesday to come clean with their offenses. They could have visited their local federal courthouse or the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office in Mesa to clear their records. One person showed up. "I don't know what (crime) he did, but he paid a $250 fine," said Tonto National Forest spokesman Vincent Picard. Now, those who didn't show up can expect a knock on the door, Picard said, adding that the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish & Wildlife will work in concert with the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix to nab those 500 scofflaws who now have warrants out for their arrest....
America's Forests in State of Renewal and Re-Growth The United States of America is covered by 750 million acres of forestland, an amount that has remained essentially unchanged over the past 100 years, reports a landmark new study released today by the Society of American Foresters (SAF). In addition, forestland in the United States has increased by more than 10 million acres over the past 20 years. The report is available for viewing or downloading at http://www.safnet.org/. The new study found that replanting and reforestation efforts, as well as natural forest re-growth on abandoned agricultural lands has generally offset any loss of forestland during the 20th century due to urban/suburban growth. Technological advances have made farming more efficient, vastly reducing the amount of land needed to produce food, thereby allowing forestland to regenerate, the report found. The State of America's Forests reports there is good reason to believe that the positive trends will continue. The new report is a comprehensive, peer-reviewed analysis of a wide variety of data regarding forestland in the United States from a broad range of sources, including the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The report was authored by forestry expert Mila Alvarez, a professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute's College of Natural Resources and principal of Solutions for Nature, a natural resources management consulting firm. The release of The State of America's Forests comes on the heels of a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report in March that also found the United States had annual increases in forest area in the 1990s and through 2005. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences released a study in November 2006 that came to a similar conclusion, finding a widespread pattern of reforestation in the United States and calling the United States a world leader in forestland re-growth....
A controversial 'Walk with Bears' Lynn Rogers grew up terrified of bears. Now he spends much of his time alongside them -- literally, within arm's length, even feeding them by hand. He knows his casual interactions with bears -- particularly the hand-feeding aspect -- go against the conventional wisdom of wildlife managers around the country. But he is also convinced that his way, not their way, is appropriate. "People are moving into bear country like never before," said Rogers, 68, who this weekend will open the North American Bear Center, an extension of the Wildlife Research Institute he has overseen since 1971 near rural Ely, Minn. "The message today has to be coexistence, rather than the frontier mentality of whenever you see a bear, shoot it, trap it, poison it, so (bears) keep their distance." Nor does Rogers think his actions -- chronicled in a documentary film, "The Man Who Walks with Bears," that has been nationally televised on such channels at Discovery's Animal Planet more than 70 times -- are apt to endanger others trying to experience the same kind of proximity with bears in the wild....
Honda Opens Unique 'Environmental Learning Center' in Irving, Texas Honda today opened an Environmental Learning Center (ELC) in Irving, Texas, the company's third such facility in the country. The ELC is designed to be a unique community resource that promotes a responsible land use ethic through a greater understanding of the varied regional ecology. Honda also has ELCs in Colton, Calif., and Alpharetta, Georgia. Honda's Irving ELC consists of approximately four acres surrounding an existing four-acre Rider Education Center where more than 30,000 street, dirt and ATV riders have been trained since it opened in 1989. The ELC features a trail system and species of plants, grasses and trees representing ten different Texas ecosystems as part of the Center's state-of-the-art off highway training facility. "Our ELCs serve as both an environmental resource for youth organizations as well as motorcycle training centers teaching environmentally responsible rider ethics to both beginners and experienced riders," said Dave Edwards, national manager of environment and education for the Motorcycle Division of American Honda Motor Co., Inc....
N.J. man died of thirst during wilderness survival adventure in the Utah desert By Day 2 in the blazing Utah desert, Dave Buschow was in bad shape. Pale, wracked by cramps, his speech slurred, the 29-year-old New Jersey man was desperate for water and hallucinating so badly he mistook a tree for a person. After going roughly 10 hours without a drink in the 100-degree heat, he finally dropped dead of thirst, less than 100 yards from the goal: a cave with a pool of water. But Buschow was no solitary soul, lost and alone in the desert. He and 11 other hikers from various walks of life were being led by expert guides on a wilderness-survival adventure designed to test their physical and mental toughness. And the guides, it turned out, were carrying emergency water. Buschow wasn’t told that, and he wasn’t offered any....
Mountains Say Goodbye to Mom-and-Pop Ski Schools It sounds like the plot for a bad Jason London movie: A ski mogul with an eye on the bottom line takes over a local resort and cancels contracts with the community-based ski schools that have traditionally served the slopes, then asks the ski bums to join the corporate ranks. Lessons double in cost. Longtime skiers and snowboarders are outraged. The National Forest Service washes its hands of the matter. Will the underdog community schools yield to big business? Can snow-loving families afford the increased cost of lessons? Will the feds step in? Coming in winter 2008: Cold War, starring London, Tara Reid, Stephen Baldwin, Cuba Gooding Jr., and a pack of drunken sled dogs. Trite as this make-believe plot may sound, it's not far from reality at Crystal Mountain, where John Kircher and Boyne USA, owners of the Mount Rainier resort for the past nine years, are jettisoning the concession ski schools that have traditionally managed multiweek programs in the Northwest, and consolidating instruction on the mountain to a single in-house school....
Wildlife agency denies protection for Nevada butterfly A butterfly found only at a popular Nevada off-road vehicle site won't receive federal protection as a threatened or endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided Wednesday. After a 12-month review, agency officials said federal listing under the Endangered Species Act is unwarranted because of recently adopted measures to protect the habitat of the Sand Mountain blue butterfly. Also, higher-than-expected numbers of the insect were found during a survey last year, fish and wildlife officials said. "Our finding, after looking at all the available information and the conservation strategy being implemented, is that the threat of the species becoming extinct is no longer there," said Bob Williams, field supervisor of the agency's Nevada office....
Congressional delegation weighs in against closing pass All three members of Wyoming's congressional delegation sent a joint statement Wednesday to planners at Yellowstone National Park opposing the proposed closure of the East Entrance to snowmobiles and snow coaches. "This decision is unacceptable to us and to our constituents," the letter said, urging the National Park Service to reconsider the proposal. Signed by Rep. Barbara Cubin and Sens. Mike Enzi and Craig Thomas, all Republicans, the letter was a formal comment from the legislators on a draft plan that would also set a daily limit of 720 snowmobiles allowed in the park. "It is our belief that it is possible to keep reasonable access available to Yellowstone through the East Entrance," said the letter, which was also sent to Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett and National Park Service Director Mary Bomar....
Tester rapped for panel vote on liquid coal amendment Although he says he supports the technology, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., on Wednesday helped sink a measure pushed by Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., to increase the production of liquid fuels from coal. Thomas accused Tester and other Democrats of failing to act on their words of praise for transportation fuels made from coal. But Tester said he couldn't support the amendment because it would have scuttled the entire bill to which it was attached. Tester voted against the provision during a meeting of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to assemble an energy package. The legislation contains measures boosting biofuels, energy efficiency and research and development on carbon capture and storage technology. Thomas' amendment would have required 21 billion gallons of coal-based fuels to be used annually by 2022. The bill already had a provision mandating 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022. The amendment was defeated on a 12-11 party-line vote....
Washington will destroy dams to revive a river High hopes ride on knocking down two aging hydroelectric dams along the blue-green waters of the Elwha River: robust salmon runs, replenished beaches, restored wildlife habitat, a tourism windfall, access to sacred Indian sites long submerged. But the dams' demise — one would be the tallest ever demolished in the USA — may play a larger role. Hundreds of dams built in the past century are near the end of their usefulness and pose dilemmas for policymakers: remove them or make costly upgrades to keep them functioning. The Elwha River project, which won state approval in March, could be a model for how to bring a river back to life, environmentalists and biologists say. Hundreds of small dams have been torn out around the country in recent years, but none as high as the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon, the taller of the two on the Elwha....
Making ethanol of corn takes far too much water Many crops can be distilled into ethanol, but most makers are choosing corn. And corn is the most water-intensive of all the possible ethanol crops. How much water? How much corn? The answers are startling. First, many studies have suggested that corn-based ethanol isn't the best solution to breaking our oil addiction. Corn-based ethanol is far less efficient as a fuel than sugar-cane ethanol. And diverting corn from other uses, such as feeding cows and chickens, likely will drive the costs of food and farming higher. Big companies who deal in growing and marketing corn would prefer we ignore such facts. But it's harder to ignore the amount of water that using corn-based ethanol would require. This is a back-of-the-napkin look at ethanol's impact on California water. The conclusions are imprecise, because no energy, water or utility agency has gotten into this yet. Let's start with two assumptions: Corn will remain the crop of choice, and California will have to grow its own corn because other states will be using their own corn for making fuel. The Water Education Foundation says it takes about 118 gallons of water to grow a pound of corn. How many pounds of corn does it take to produce a gallon of ethanol? About 21 pounds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Doing the multiplication, each gallon of ethanol will take roughly 2,500 gallons of water....
USDA promises to do better on protecting personal info Last month, USDA announced it had accidentally published the Social Security numbers of over 29,000 farm and rural development program participants on a public Internet web site. And Wednesday, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on data security at USDA. USDA Chief Financial Officer Charles Christopherson was the primary witness. He opened his remarks with an apology and a promise. "We regret the incident that has occurred," Christopherson intoned. "We are committed to taking care of the individuals who are affected and we will fix the problems that led to this issue." According to Christopherson, USDA had attempted to contact all those who had had their Social Security numbers inadvertently released, and had reached all but a couple of dozen. He said those affected had been offered a free year of credit monitoring and a $20,000 insurance policy against the threat of identity theft. Christopherson also said USDA had quickly removed the Social Security numbers, which were embedded in a longer, 15-digit account number, from the public web site on which they'd been published. In fact, Christopherson testified that USDA had already begun a data security project over 10 months ago, shortly after the Veterans Affairs Department lost over 26,000,000 Social Security numbers. USDA’s goal, Christopherson said, is to replace Social Security numbers as record identifiers within all of USDA's information technology (IT) systems. But with 56 separate IT systems to go through, Christopherson told lawmakers the project could take a long, long time....
Reading Green: Ten books to help understand and save the environment. With all the world’s pressing environmental problems—not the least of which is the fact that humans are changing the planet’s climate—it’s all too easy to get caught up in fear and despair. It’s time to temper the bad news with knowledge. What follows is a list of books that will help anyone learn more about the state of the environment and, more specifically, the state of the West. The environmental movement has its classics, books like Thoreau’s On Walden Pond and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; there are also excellent anthologies on everything from wilderness to environmental justice. In short, there are thousands of great books on the environment—and everyone has their favorites—but these 10 are invaluable....
Author signs to Bantam after newest book Even as a first-grader, Heather Sharfeddin had a natural knack as a storyteller, often telling exaggerated stories to her friends and classmates. Fast forward to the last several years and Sherwood's Sharfeddin is now the critically acclaimed author of two novels, "Blackbelly," and the recently released "Mineral Spirits." A Sherwood-area resident for 12 years, Sharfeddin's novels capture the contemporary West and its people. Her setting for "Blackbelly" is Central Idaho, a location where the 41-year-old writer spent a portion of her life, and still recalls the seemingly simple everyday things about the area, including the taste of the well water and the smell of the dirt. Her latest work, "Mineral Spirits" takes place in the sparsely populated Mineral County, Mont.....
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
MAD COW DISEASE
Canada confirms new mad cow case
Another Canadian case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, has been confirmed in a mature dairy cow in the province of British Columbia, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said on Wednesday. The CFIA said the cow was 66 months old, within the age range of other Canadian cattle found to have the disease. The agency has the animal's carcass and no part of it entered the human or animal feed systems. The case is the tenth found in Canadian cattle since 2003, and the second in less than three months. Many of the cases have been blamed on exposure to contaminated feed. The CFIA did not specify the likely cause of the new case, but said in its release the animal likely came into contact with invective material during the first year of its life. The agency is now seeking out the animal's herdmates....
Another Canadian case of BSE born after feed ban
Canada found its tenth case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) within its borders Wednesday. This latest one, like several before it, was also born after that country implemented a ruminant-to-ruminant feeding ban. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the latest BSE-positive animal is a dairy cow in British Columbia that was born 66 months ago. That puts its date of birth in or near November of 2001. Canada implemented its feed ban, which when effectively administered, prevents the transmission of BSE, in August of 1997. A rule pending final approval by USDA would allow all Canadian cattle born after March of 1999, 18 months after Canada implemented its feed ban, into the country on an essentially unrestricted basis. When Dr. John Clifford, the top veterinarian for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced that proposed final rule earlier this year, he conceded the March, 1999 date had been a "back of the envelope" calculation that surmised an 18-month window would be sufficient to allow Canada's feed ban to take effect. America's first case of BSE involved an older dairy cow in Washington State that had been imported from Canada. USDA has since found two other native born cases, both involving animals born before the U.S. implemented its own ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban....
Canada confirms new mad cow case
Another Canadian case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, has been confirmed in a mature dairy cow in the province of British Columbia, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said on Wednesday. The CFIA said the cow was 66 months old, within the age range of other Canadian cattle found to have the disease. The agency has the animal's carcass and no part of it entered the human or animal feed systems. The case is the tenth found in Canadian cattle since 2003, and the second in less than three months. Many of the cases have been blamed on exposure to contaminated feed. The CFIA did not specify the likely cause of the new case, but said in its release the animal likely came into contact with invective material during the first year of its life. The agency is now seeking out the animal's herdmates....
Another Canadian case of BSE born after feed ban
Canada found its tenth case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) within its borders Wednesday. This latest one, like several before it, was also born after that country implemented a ruminant-to-ruminant feeding ban. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the latest BSE-positive animal is a dairy cow in British Columbia that was born 66 months ago. That puts its date of birth in or near November of 2001. Canada implemented its feed ban, which when effectively administered, prevents the transmission of BSE, in August of 1997. A rule pending final approval by USDA would allow all Canadian cattle born after March of 1999, 18 months after Canada implemented its feed ban, into the country on an essentially unrestricted basis. When Dr. John Clifford, the top veterinarian for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced that proposed final rule earlier this year, he conceded the March, 1999 date had been a "back of the envelope" calculation that surmised an 18-month window would be sufficient to allow Canada's feed ban to take effect. America's first case of BSE involved an older dairy cow in Washington State that had been imported from Canada. USDA has since found two other native born cases, both involving animals born before the U.S. implemented its own ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Interior Official Quits Ahead of Hearing An Interior Department official accused of pressuring government scientists to make their research fit her policy goals has resigned. Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, submitted her resignation letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, a department spokesman said Tuesday. MacDonald resigned a week before a House congressional oversight committee was to hold a hearing on accusations that she violated the Endangered Species Act, censored science and mistreated staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. MacDonald was recently rebuked by the department's inspector general, who told Congress in a report last month that she broke federal rules and should face punishment for leaking information about endangered species to private groups. Interior Department spokesman Hugh Vickery confirmed MacDonald's resignation but declined to comment further. Environmentalists cheered the departure of MacDonald, who they say tried to bully government scientists into altering their findings, often without scientific basis....
Corps Asked to Explain Pump Contract When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications - typos and all - from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract, a review of documents by The Associated Press found. The pumps, supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., and installed at canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, proved to be defective, as the AP reported in March. The matter is under investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. In a letter dated April 13, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., called on the Corps to look into how the politically connected company got the post-Hurricane Katrina contract. MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother, to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party. While it may not be a violation of federal regulations to adopt a company's technical specifications, it is frowned on, especially for large jobs like the MWI contract, because it could give the impression the job was rigged for the benefit of a certain company, contractors familiar with Corps practices say....
EU-U.S. summit call for "urgent" climate action The European Union and the United States agreed on Monday that global warming is an "urgent" priority, and President George W. Bush conceded he must work to convince Russia of the need for a missile shield in Europe. At a joint news conference in the Rose Garden, the European side said it felt progress was made on the issue, despite an absence of concrete steps the EU and the United States can take together to address the problem. "I really welcome the fact that there was progress in this meeting," said Barroso. "We agree there's a threat, there's a very serious and global threat. We agree that there is a need to reduce emissions. We agree that we should work together." Bush, who critics charged was late to recognize climate change as a problem, made clear he felt any agreement between the United States and Europe would have a limited impact as long as developing countries like China are not included. "The United States could shut our economy and emit no greenhouse gases, and all it would take is for China in about 18 months to produce as much as we had been producing" to make up the difference, he said. But Merkel retorted that the developed world must lead the effort to reduce carbon emissions. "If the developed countries with the best technologies do nothing, then it will be very tough to convince the others. Without convincing the others, worldwide CO2 emissions won't go down," she said....
Albertans demand action on 'vile' well water When Fiona Lauridsen turns on her tap, the smelly water that flows out fizzes and burps. “The water coming out of my well is vile,” said Mrs. Lauridsen, who farms with her husband and family near Rosebud, Alta., a hamlet located about 100 kilometres east of Calgary. She and a small group of landowners and farmers travelled Tuesday to the Alberta Legislature to raise concerns about whether rampant oil and gas production around the country's fastest growing province may be poisoning their groundwater. The group, which is supported by the Alberta Liberals, is circulating a petition to urge the provincial and federal governments to act immediately. In Mrs. Lauridsen's case, she suspects that nearby coal-bed methane drilling – a source of natural gas – has led to her water problems. She said lab tests revealed high levels of methane....
Agents push bison back into park State and federal wildlife managers began hazing hundreds of bison back into Yellowstone National Park Tuesday ahead of a May 15 deadline, after which any bison outside the park likely will be sent to slaughter. For the first time in recent years, bison had been allowed to linger outside the park this spring, on U.S. Forest Service land about 10 miles north of West Yellowstone, Mont., said Melissa Frost with the Montana Department of Fish, Parks and Wildlife. Because they carry brucellosis, and ranchers are concerned it could be spread to cattle, the bison must be off that land and any private property outside the park so cattle can return to their summer ranges in the West Yellowstone Basin. "Any bison outside of the park after May 15 will likely be lethally removed," Frost said. State officials contend that when hazing the bison fails, they have no option but slaughter given the threat brucellosis poses to the cattle industry. Brucellosis causes cattle to abort. Widespread vaccination of bison is not considered feasible because of the potential cost and difficulty of vaccinating every bison....
Report: Drilling squeezes hunters, habitat Loss of wildlife habitat and fewer places for sportsmen to hunt in the West are blamed in a new report on Bush administration energy policies that spurred a boom in oil and gas drilling. Drilling on federal lands in five Western states doubled over the last decade, to more than 2,000 wells per year, according to the report to be released today by the Environmental Working Group and the National Wildlife Federation. That so-called "rush to drill" in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Colorado and New Mexico is squeezing hunters off public land and destroying crucial habitat for species including antelope, mule deer, elk and sage grouse, the report says. The environmental groups' report was based on comparisons of state wildlife agency habitat maps with BLM oil and gas lease sales. Their analysis showed the agency has leased 23 million acres of mule deer habitat, 18 million acres of antelope habitat, 17 million acres of sage grouse habitat and 13 million acres of elk habitat....Go here to read the report.
Officials tout CO2 injection Government and company officials and scientists on Tuesday urged more federal attention and funding for new technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide when burning coal, keeping the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. Witnesses at the joint hearing of two House Natural Resources subcommittees estimated that the technology could be in widespread commercial use in 10 to 15 years, but only if well funded and researched projects begin now. The technology would allow carbon dioxide to be captured and injected deep underground in geologic formations, where it would remain trapped. The issue is of great interest in Wyoming, the nation's leading coal producer. Carl Bauer, executive director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory, said that at its most rapid development the technology would be available in a decade, with broader commercial use in 15 to 20 years. For the technology to have significant impact on reducing greenhouse gases, several hundred to several thousand carbon capture and storage facilities would need to be built around the world, he said....
Pinon bill ready for Governor's signature Gov. Bill Ritter will sign a measure Thursday aimed at making it more difficult for the U.S. Army to use its eminent domain powers to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in Southeastern Colorado. The measure, HB1069, withdraws the state's permission for the Army to use eminent domain in expanding Pinon Canyon. No state has attempted this in the past. Introduced by Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, and Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, legislators hope the bill will force the Army to acquire land through easement agreements or outright purchases. The Army, which has said it plans to do that anyway, is looking to expand the 238,000-acre training site by as many as 418,000 acres. The governor will sign the measure at a bill-signing ceremony on the east steps of the state Capitol at 1:15 p.m. Thursday. Ranchers and other landowners from the area surrounding the site are expected to attend....
Letter - Expansion's costs In a recent Pueblo Chieftain, Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, is quoted by Charles Ashby in an article entitled, "Senate delivers Army a message." Sen. Morse stated, "Some of our citizens will pay a disproportionate cost to support our national defense. Some of our ranchers will pay that cost in having to sell their land. I’m not saying that is fair. It seems to me that patriotism is about accepting your cost even if it is disproportionate." How dare you make the Pinon Canyon expansion into a patriot vs. non-patriot fight! How dare you openly imply that we, the ranchers in SE Colorado, are not patriotic, because we want to keep our land! How dare you make us out to be un-American because we are not jumping at the opportunity to vacate our homes, our land and our lives and try to pick up the pieces somewhere else? According to Sen. Morse’s statement, if this is what patriotism is all about, then all of you in Colorado Springs and Pueblo should quit worrying about where the troops are going to live and where their kids are going to go to school. After all, you are all patriots, right? Then you will just give up your homes to the incoming troops and their families, quit your jobs so their spouses will have jobs and have your children vacate their school desks for their children. After all, " . . . patriotism is about accepting your cost even if it is disproportionate."....
Fears of eminent domain arising Officials say two words are striking fear in the hearts of Texas landowners who have been contacted in recent days about handing over their riverfront property for a massive border wall: eminent domain. That's the term for the government's power to condemn private land for public use, and some say it's being thrown around in South Texas, where federal authorities are actively planning to build more than 125 miles of fencing, officials say. "Right now, landowners are very, very reluctant to have this happen," said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo. Cuellar met with landowners last week in tiny Roma, in the Rio Grande Valley, where officials are eyeing numerous private tracts for the wall. He said officials with the Department of Homeland Security mentioned its condemnation authority "within the first 15 words" spoken to landowners in recent meetings in the district he represents. "Keep in mind we can take away your property through eminent domain," the officials said, according to Cuellar. State Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Democrat who represents Roma in the Legislature, said landowners in his district want Congress to halt the wall before their land is seized. But Border Patrol spokesman Xavier Rios said he is not aware of any current discussions about condemnation of private land for a border wall. He said that authorities are reaching out to private landowners and seeking their cooperation and that forceful condemnation "is not even being considered right now."....
Appeals court halts big timber sale A federal appeals court has halted a large timber sale on the eastern end of the Uinta Mountains, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service failed to follow federal environmental laws in approving the project. The 26-page decision handed down late Monday by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court ruling that had upheld the project and rejected a lawsuit filed by the Utah Environmental Congress and the High Uintas Primitive Council. The appeals court ruled that the Forest Service had failed to use the "best available science" in granting approval for the Trout Slope West project, which took in 18,500 acres in the Vernal Ranger District of the Ashley National Forest and had a projected yield of 9.2 million board feet of lumber. "We're thrilled to have yet another victory that halts logging on this tremendous scale in high-elevation old-growth forests," said Kevin Mueller, executive director of the Utah Environmental Congress. The court declined to rule on the other challenges in the lawsuit, including the impacts the project would have on water quality and the Colorado River cutthroat trout. But in ruling that the Forest Service had failed to use the best available science, the appeals court rejected the district court's approval of the timber project.
Forest drops tree-thinning proposal A Forest Service plan to thin trees on about 180 acres in the Crazy Mountains north of Big Timber has been withdrawn, following an appeal by the Native Ecosystems Council and WildWest Institute. The Big Timber Ranger District said Tuesday that the project proposed as a way to control the spread of bark beetles in Douglas fir will undergo a broader analysis, and a new decision may be issued this fall. The Big Timber Canyon Vegetation Treatment Project called for thinning Douglas fir, by helicopter. "Small forest health projects like this one have been done for years on national forests without significant impacts," but the Forest Service faces increasing court action as the agency goes about its work, and "we need to ensure our analysis can withstand that type of challenge," said Bill Avey, the district ranger. Jeff Juel of WildWest said the project was objectionable because part of it involved removing trees from an area of old-growth timber. "They were focusing on logging old growth, and it looked like a timber sale more than an actual (fire) fuel reduction. Getting those purposes mixed up is not a good idea."....
Column - Making the case for trees It is rare when the entire Colorado congressional delegation can find agreement on a matter of importance. So it was disappointing that there was so little notice recently when the delegation unanimously protested budget cuts by the U.S. Forest Service, cuts that threaten the health of Western forests, including those in Colorado. Yes, officials here are worried about the upcoming fire season and the damage already inflicted by the mountain pine beetle and a variety of other insects and diseases. There is a very good reason for these concerns. The Forest Service cut $4.3 million from the Rocky Mountain region's budget, one that had been already greatly reduced by an increase in forest fires. Under existing federal policy, there appears to be no cap on how much can be spent putting out fires. Any excess costs can be covered either with a supplemental appropriation or by borrowing (or stealing) from other programs. Last year, the total fire-suppression expense was over $1 billion, a record in what is already a bad decade. Those fire-suppression expenses are the price for past management failures, but they are also squeezing out programs for such things as timber sales and reforestation. In 2006, fire costs were 41 percent of the national budget. Next year, they will consume 44 percent of the total....
Workshops to study 'travel management' in Lincoln National Forest Public workshops covering Travel Management on the Lincoln National Forest will kick off at the Guadalupe Ranger District on May 3, followed by a session May 7 in Ruidoso. The Travel Management Rule was issued by U.S. Forest Service officials in November 2005. The new rule requires that each National Forest designate a system of roads, trails and areas that will be open to motorized travel. The Lincoln National Forest has a travel management policy in place since 1987 that identifies roads and trails open to motorized use. Public input from the workshops will be used to identify potential changes to the travel system that better protect natural and cultural resources, address user conflicts and secure sustainable opportunities for public enjoyment of national forests, Forest Service officials say. The end product of the designation process will be a Motor Vehicle Use Map that will be published showing a system of roads, trails and/or areas designated for motorized use. Any motorized use outside of the designated system will be prohibited....
Oklahoma Officials Arrest 29 In Drug Operation A push last week by Oklahoma law enforcement resulted in 29 arrests on drug-related offenses, as well as the seizure of various drugs and weapons. The District 16 Drug Task Force, which covers LeFlore and Latimer counties, participated in Operation Byrne Drugs 2 as part of a national week of stepped-up drug enforcement efforts, according to a news release from District Attorney Jeff Smith’s office. In a phone interview Monday, Smith said the District 16 task force had the most arrests last week of any of the 19 tasks forces in the state, as well as the largest amount of drugs, money and firearms confiscated. Agencies assisting the task force included the LeFlore and Latimer County sheriff’s departments, police departments from Poteau, Panama, Shady Point, Spiro, Pocola, Howe, Heavener and Arkoma, as well as the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement, the Choctaw Nation Tribal Police and the Oklahoma National Guard Air Raid unit....Is this the same Forest Service that is always complaining about a shortage of law enforcement types to protect our Federal lands? If there really is such a shortage, why are they involved with drug raids on non-federal property?
Energy firms offer millions to improve wildlife habitat Three energy producers are offering to contribute $36 million to improve wildlife habitat and preserve wildlife migration routes around their gas drilling sites in the Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming. The companies offered the money as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management crafts a plan based on their proposal to allow year-round drilling on parts of the anticline. Currently, gas development is restricted by seasonal closures to protect wildlife that spend the winter in the area and sage grouse that nest in the spring. Conservationists have voiced opposition to dropping the seasonal restrictions, saying year- round development would disturb wildlife even more than now and cause more air pollution, among other impacts. The $36 million offer from Questar Corp., Ultra Resources Inc., and Shell Exploration and Production Co. comes relatively late in the lengthy bureaucratic process for considering such proposals....
Conservation group, gas firm reach a compromise A conservation group that challenged a natural gas drilling plan that had received federal approval decided to try another way to protect a wilderness-quality area in the Uinta Basin: a phone call. On Monday, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance announced they had reached an agreement that would protect a citizen-proposed wilderness area near the White River while also assuring natural gas development in the vicinity would continue. Anadarko will proceed with planned infill development in the Natural Buttes natural gas field, while SUWA will have assurances that Anadarko won't pursue its Bonanza development north of the White River, about 40 miles south of Vernal. "This was a very sensible way to solve this amicably," said Anadarko's Houston-based spokesman John Christiansen. The dispute over the Bonanza development followed the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's February approval of the project based on an environmental assessment. SUWA appealed the decision to the state director of the BLM in Utah. Then, SUWA reached out....
Higher Wildfire risk in West, South The West and Southeast face an increased wildfire risk this year because of ongoing drought and an expected hotter than average summer, the National Interagency Fire Center reported Tuesday. The center identified broad swaths of those regions - including all of Florida - and central Alaska as having increased chances of catching fire. "One of the things that strikes me is the breadth of the fire season, stretching from Florida and Georgia all the way up to Alaska," said Rick Ochoa, national fire weather program manager at the center. The National Wildland Fire Outlook report predicts the wildfire danger for May through August. It is based on past and expected weather patterns combined with the predicted amount and dryness of fire fuels and their potential to ignite. This year's map looks similar to last year, said Tom Wordell, wildland fire analyst at the center. In 2006, a record 9.8 million acres burned, 2,300 buildings were destroyed, fire suppression costs totaled $1.4 billion, and 24 wildland firefighters died....
Nez Perce sign water rights deal A landmark $193 million-dollar water rights settlement to resolve claims by the Nez Perce Tribe in North Idaho has been signed nearly three years after it was negotiated. Federal, state and tribal officials signed the complex consent decree that was issued by Idaho's 5th District Court over the weekend, and it will be implemented after the terms are published in the Federal Register, probably in about three weeks, the Lewiston Tribune reported Tuesday. The Nez Perce agreed to drop most of their claims to water in the Snake River basin in exchange for about $83 million, 11,000 acres of land now managed by the Bureau of Land Management and salmon conservation measures, including requirements for water releases from dams to aid migrating fish. "The entire process was fraught with deep emotion for the Nez Perce people as we came to grips with the magnitude of the decision to try and settle our claim to the water in that area that our people have inhabited for thousands of years," Tribal Chairwoman Rebecca A. Miles said in a prepared release....
California Hotels Replace Bible With Gore's Book Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming. They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as ``green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont. ``I'm not your traditional Birkenstocks and granola type of guy,'' said Stefan Muehle, general manager of the Orchard Garden, who said green measures are reducing energy costs as much as 25 percent a month. ``We're trying to dispel the myth that being green and being luxurious are mutually exclusive.'' The Gaia and Orchard are seeking to be the first hotels in California certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, which has authenticated 800 buildings across the U.S. and has about 6,000 in the process, including 30 hotels. San Francisco and other cities offer financial incentives to lessen water and energy use and reduce carbon dioxide emissions....
Ranchers worry as too-few April showers leave California dry After a dry winter that left the Central Valley's sheep and cattle with parched rangeland to graze, projections for summer water supplies are running as low as this year's rainfall. The forecasts spell trouble for California ranchers, who say they expect to lose millions in revenue this year after spending more to feed animals who may not grow as big as their owners want and therefore won't fetch premium prices when they are sold. Mike Blasingame, a fifth-generation rancher in the Fresno County foothills, said the unusually parched spring has left the calves he buys from throughout the country less natural grass to eat. He fattens them up during California's mild winters before selling them to large slaughterhouses in the Midwest. "My business is all about the gain," said Blasingame. "How much can they gain is if there's nothing out there for them to eat?" he said. With grass in short supply before the hot summer months, many ranchers supplement their livestock with hay, which becomes expensive and scarce when a whole region is dry at the same time....
Interior Official Quits Ahead of Hearing An Interior Department official accused of pressuring government scientists to make their research fit her policy goals has resigned. Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, submitted her resignation letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, a department spokesman said Tuesday. MacDonald resigned a week before a House congressional oversight committee was to hold a hearing on accusations that she violated the Endangered Species Act, censored science and mistreated staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. MacDonald was recently rebuked by the department's inspector general, who told Congress in a report last month that she broke federal rules and should face punishment for leaking information about endangered species to private groups. Interior Department spokesman Hugh Vickery confirmed MacDonald's resignation but declined to comment further. Environmentalists cheered the departure of MacDonald, who they say tried to bully government scientists into altering their findings, often without scientific basis....
Corps Asked to Explain Pump Contract When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications - typos and all - from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract, a review of documents by The Associated Press found. The pumps, supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., and installed at canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, proved to be defective, as the AP reported in March. The matter is under investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. In a letter dated April 13, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., called on the Corps to look into how the politically connected company got the post-Hurricane Katrina contract. MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother, to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party. While it may not be a violation of federal regulations to adopt a company's technical specifications, it is frowned on, especially for large jobs like the MWI contract, because it could give the impression the job was rigged for the benefit of a certain company, contractors familiar with Corps practices say....
EU-U.S. summit call for "urgent" climate action The European Union and the United States agreed on Monday that global warming is an "urgent" priority, and President George W. Bush conceded he must work to convince Russia of the need for a missile shield in Europe. At a joint news conference in the Rose Garden, the European side said it felt progress was made on the issue, despite an absence of concrete steps the EU and the United States can take together to address the problem. "I really welcome the fact that there was progress in this meeting," said Barroso. "We agree there's a threat, there's a very serious and global threat. We agree that there is a need to reduce emissions. We agree that we should work together." Bush, who critics charged was late to recognize climate change as a problem, made clear he felt any agreement between the United States and Europe would have a limited impact as long as developing countries like China are not included. "The United States could shut our economy and emit no greenhouse gases, and all it would take is for China in about 18 months to produce as much as we had been producing" to make up the difference, he said. But Merkel retorted that the developed world must lead the effort to reduce carbon emissions. "If the developed countries with the best technologies do nothing, then it will be very tough to convince the others. Without convincing the others, worldwide CO2 emissions won't go down," she said....
Albertans demand action on 'vile' well water When Fiona Lauridsen turns on her tap, the smelly water that flows out fizzes and burps. “The water coming out of my well is vile,” said Mrs. Lauridsen, who farms with her husband and family near Rosebud, Alta., a hamlet located about 100 kilometres east of Calgary. She and a small group of landowners and farmers travelled Tuesday to the Alberta Legislature to raise concerns about whether rampant oil and gas production around the country's fastest growing province may be poisoning their groundwater. The group, which is supported by the Alberta Liberals, is circulating a petition to urge the provincial and federal governments to act immediately. In Mrs. Lauridsen's case, she suspects that nearby coal-bed methane drilling – a source of natural gas – has led to her water problems. She said lab tests revealed high levels of methane....
Agents push bison back into park State and federal wildlife managers began hazing hundreds of bison back into Yellowstone National Park Tuesday ahead of a May 15 deadline, after which any bison outside the park likely will be sent to slaughter. For the first time in recent years, bison had been allowed to linger outside the park this spring, on U.S. Forest Service land about 10 miles north of West Yellowstone, Mont., said Melissa Frost with the Montana Department of Fish, Parks and Wildlife. Because they carry brucellosis, and ranchers are concerned it could be spread to cattle, the bison must be off that land and any private property outside the park so cattle can return to their summer ranges in the West Yellowstone Basin. "Any bison outside of the park after May 15 will likely be lethally removed," Frost said. State officials contend that when hazing the bison fails, they have no option but slaughter given the threat brucellosis poses to the cattle industry. Brucellosis causes cattle to abort. Widespread vaccination of bison is not considered feasible because of the potential cost and difficulty of vaccinating every bison....
Report: Drilling squeezes hunters, habitat Loss of wildlife habitat and fewer places for sportsmen to hunt in the West are blamed in a new report on Bush administration energy policies that spurred a boom in oil and gas drilling. Drilling on federal lands in five Western states doubled over the last decade, to more than 2,000 wells per year, according to the report to be released today by the Environmental Working Group and the National Wildlife Federation. That so-called "rush to drill" in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Colorado and New Mexico is squeezing hunters off public land and destroying crucial habitat for species including antelope, mule deer, elk and sage grouse, the report says. The environmental groups' report was based on comparisons of state wildlife agency habitat maps with BLM oil and gas lease sales. Their analysis showed the agency has leased 23 million acres of mule deer habitat, 18 million acres of antelope habitat, 17 million acres of sage grouse habitat and 13 million acres of elk habitat....Go here to read the report.
Officials tout CO2 injection Government and company officials and scientists on Tuesday urged more federal attention and funding for new technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide when burning coal, keeping the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. Witnesses at the joint hearing of two House Natural Resources subcommittees estimated that the technology could be in widespread commercial use in 10 to 15 years, but only if well funded and researched projects begin now. The technology would allow carbon dioxide to be captured and injected deep underground in geologic formations, where it would remain trapped. The issue is of great interest in Wyoming, the nation's leading coal producer. Carl Bauer, executive director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory, said that at its most rapid development the technology would be available in a decade, with broader commercial use in 15 to 20 years. For the technology to have significant impact on reducing greenhouse gases, several hundred to several thousand carbon capture and storage facilities would need to be built around the world, he said....
Pinon bill ready for Governor's signature Gov. Bill Ritter will sign a measure Thursday aimed at making it more difficult for the U.S. Army to use its eminent domain powers to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in Southeastern Colorado. The measure, HB1069, withdraws the state's permission for the Army to use eminent domain in expanding Pinon Canyon. No state has attempted this in the past. Introduced by Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, and Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, legislators hope the bill will force the Army to acquire land through easement agreements or outright purchases. The Army, which has said it plans to do that anyway, is looking to expand the 238,000-acre training site by as many as 418,000 acres. The governor will sign the measure at a bill-signing ceremony on the east steps of the state Capitol at 1:15 p.m. Thursday. Ranchers and other landowners from the area surrounding the site are expected to attend....
Letter - Expansion's costs In a recent Pueblo Chieftain, Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, is quoted by Charles Ashby in an article entitled, "Senate delivers Army a message." Sen. Morse stated, "Some of our citizens will pay a disproportionate cost to support our national defense. Some of our ranchers will pay that cost in having to sell their land. I’m not saying that is fair. It seems to me that patriotism is about accepting your cost even if it is disproportionate." How dare you make the Pinon Canyon expansion into a patriot vs. non-patriot fight! How dare you openly imply that we, the ranchers in SE Colorado, are not patriotic, because we want to keep our land! How dare you make us out to be un-American because we are not jumping at the opportunity to vacate our homes, our land and our lives and try to pick up the pieces somewhere else? According to Sen. Morse’s statement, if this is what patriotism is all about, then all of you in Colorado Springs and Pueblo should quit worrying about where the troops are going to live and where their kids are going to go to school. After all, you are all patriots, right? Then you will just give up your homes to the incoming troops and their families, quit your jobs so their spouses will have jobs and have your children vacate their school desks for their children. After all, " . . . patriotism is about accepting your cost even if it is disproportionate."....
Fears of eminent domain arising Officials say two words are striking fear in the hearts of Texas landowners who have been contacted in recent days about handing over their riverfront property for a massive border wall: eminent domain. That's the term for the government's power to condemn private land for public use, and some say it's being thrown around in South Texas, where federal authorities are actively planning to build more than 125 miles of fencing, officials say. "Right now, landowners are very, very reluctant to have this happen," said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo. Cuellar met with landowners last week in tiny Roma, in the Rio Grande Valley, where officials are eyeing numerous private tracts for the wall. He said officials with the Department of Homeland Security mentioned its condemnation authority "within the first 15 words" spoken to landowners in recent meetings in the district he represents. "Keep in mind we can take away your property through eminent domain," the officials said, according to Cuellar. State Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Democrat who represents Roma in the Legislature, said landowners in his district want Congress to halt the wall before their land is seized. But Border Patrol spokesman Xavier Rios said he is not aware of any current discussions about condemnation of private land for a border wall. He said that authorities are reaching out to private landowners and seeking their cooperation and that forceful condemnation "is not even being considered right now."....
Appeals court halts big timber sale A federal appeals court has halted a large timber sale on the eastern end of the Uinta Mountains, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service failed to follow federal environmental laws in approving the project. The 26-page decision handed down late Monday by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court ruling that had upheld the project and rejected a lawsuit filed by the Utah Environmental Congress and the High Uintas Primitive Council. The appeals court ruled that the Forest Service had failed to use the "best available science" in granting approval for the Trout Slope West project, which took in 18,500 acres in the Vernal Ranger District of the Ashley National Forest and had a projected yield of 9.2 million board feet of lumber. "We're thrilled to have yet another victory that halts logging on this tremendous scale in high-elevation old-growth forests," said Kevin Mueller, executive director of the Utah Environmental Congress. The court declined to rule on the other challenges in the lawsuit, including the impacts the project would have on water quality and the Colorado River cutthroat trout. But in ruling that the Forest Service had failed to use the best available science, the appeals court rejected the district court's approval of the timber project.
Forest drops tree-thinning proposal A Forest Service plan to thin trees on about 180 acres in the Crazy Mountains north of Big Timber has been withdrawn, following an appeal by the Native Ecosystems Council and WildWest Institute. The Big Timber Ranger District said Tuesday that the project proposed as a way to control the spread of bark beetles in Douglas fir will undergo a broader analysis, and a new decision may be issued this fall. The Big Timber Canyon Vegetation Treatment Project called for thinning Douglas fir, by helicopter. "Small forest health projects like this one have been done for years on national forests without significant impacts," but the Forest Service faces increasing court action as the agency goes about its work, and "we need to ensure our analysis can withstand that type of challenge," said Bill Avey, the district ranger. Jeff Juel of WildWest said the project was objectionable because part of it involved removing trees from an area of old-growth timber. "They were focusing on logging old growth, and it looked like a timber sale more than an actual (fire) fuel reduction. Getting those purposes mixed up is not a good idea."....
Column - Making the case for trees It is rare when the entire Colorado congressional delegation can find agreement on a matter of importance. So it was disappointing that there was so little notice recently when the delegation unanimously protested budget cuts by the U.S. Forest Service, cuts that threaten the health of Western forests, including those in Colorado. Yes, officials here are worried about the upcoming fire season and the damage already inflicted by the mountain pine beetle and a variety of other insects and diseases. There is a very good reason for these concerns. The Forest Service cut $4.3 million from the Rocky Mountain region's budget, one that had been already greatly reduced by an increase in forest fires. Under existing federal policy, there appears to be no cap on how much can be spent putting out fires. Any excess costs can be covered either with a supplemental appropriation or by borrowing (or stealing) from other programs. Last year, the total fire-suppression expense was over $1 billion, a record in what is already a bad decade. Those fire-suppression expenses are the price for past management failures, but they are also squeezing out programs for such things as timber sales and reforestation. In 2006, fire costs were 41 percent of the national budget. Next year, they will consume 44 percent of the total....
Workshops to study 'travel management' in Lincoln National Forest Public workshops covering Travel Management on the Lincoln National Forest will kick off at the Guadalupe Ranger District on May 3, followed by a session May 7 in Ruidoso. The Travel Management Rule was issued by U.S. Forest Service officials in November 2005. The new rule requires that each National Forest designate a system of roads, trails and areas that will be open to motorized travel. The Lincoln National Forest has a travel management policy in place since 1987 that identifies roads and trails open to motorized use. Public input from the workshops will be used to identify potential changes to the travel system that better protect natural and cultural resources, address user conflicts and secure sustainable opportunities for public enjoyment of national forests, Forest Service officials say. The end product of the designation process will be a Motor Vehicle Use Map that will be published showing a system of roads, trails and/or areas designated for motorized use. Any motorized use outside of the designated system will be prohibited....
Oklahoma Officials Arrest 29 In Drug Operation A push last week by Oklahoma law enforcement resulted in 29 arrests on drug-related offenses, as well as the seizure of various drugs and weapons. The District 16 Drug Task Force, which covers LeFlore and Latimer counties, participated in Operation Byrne Drugs 2 as part of a national week of stepped-up drug enforcement efforts, according to a news release from District Attorney Jeff Smith’s office. In a phone interview Monday, Smith said the District 16 task force had the most arrests last week of any of the 19 tasks forces in the state, as well as the largest amount of drugs, money and firearms confiscated. Agencies assisting the task force included the LeFlore and Latimer County sheriff’s departments, police departments from Poteau, Panama, Shady Point, Spiro, Pocola, Howe, Heavener and Arkoma, as well as the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement, the Choctaw Nation Tribal Police and the Oklahoma National Guard Air Raid unit....Is this the same Forest Service that is always complaining about a shortage of law enforcement types to protect our Federal lands? If there really is such a shortage, why are they involved with drug raids on non-federal property?
Energy firms offer millions to improve wildlife habitat Three energy producers are offering to contribute $36 million to improve wildlife habitat and preserve wildlife migration routes around their gas drilling sites in the Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming. The companies offered the money as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management crafts a plan based on their proposal to allow year-round drilling on parts of the anticline. Currently, gas development is restricted by seasonal closures to protect wildlife that spend the winter in the area and sage grouse that nest in the spring. Conservationists have voiced opposition to dropping the seasonal restrictions, saying year- round development would disturb wildlife even more than now and cause more air pollution, among other impacts. The $36 million offer from Questar Corp., Ultra Resources Inc., and Shell Exploration and Production Co. comes relatively late in the lengthy bureaucratic process for considering such proposals....
Conservation group, gas firm reach a compromise A conservation group that challenged a natural gas drilling plan that had received federal approval decided to try another way to protect a wilderness-quality area in the Uinta Basin: a phone call. On Monday, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance announced they had reached an agreement that would protect a citizen-proposed wilderness area near the White River while also assuring natural gas development in the vicinity would continue. Anadarko will proceed with planned infill development in the Natural Buttes natural gas field, while SUWA will have assurances that Anadarko won't pursue its Bonanza development north of the White River, about 40 miles south of Vernal. "This was a very sensible way to solve this amicably," said Anadarko's Houston-based spokesman John Christiansen. The dispute over the Bonanza development followed the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's February approval of the project based on an environmental assessment. SUWA appealed the decision to the state director of the BLM in Utah. Then, SUWA reached out....
Higher Wildfire risk in West, South The West and Southeast face an increased wildfire risk this year because of ongoing drought and an expected hotter than average summer, the National Interagency Fire Center reported Tuesday. The center identified broad swaths of those regions - including all of Florida - and central Alaska as having increased chances of catching fire. "One of the things that strikes me is the breadth of the fire season, stretching from Florida and Georgia all the way up to Alaska," said Rick Ochoa, national fire weather program manager at the center. The National Wildland Fire Outlook report predicts the wildfire danger for May through August. It is based on past and expected weather patterns combined with the predicted amount and dryness of fire fuels and their potential to ignite. This year's map looks similar to last year, said Tom Wordell, wildland fire analyst at the center. In 2006, a record 9.8 million acres burned, 2,300 buildings were destroyed, fire suppression costs totaled $1.4 billion, and 24 wildland firefighters died....
Nez Perce sign water rights deal A landmark $193 million-dollar water rights settlement to resolve claims by the Nez Perce Tribe in North Idaho has been signed nearly three years after it was negotiated. Federal, state and tribal officials signed the complex consent decree that was issued by Idaho's 5th District Court over the weekend, and it will be implemented after the terms are published in the Federal Register, probably in about three weeks, the Lewiston Tribune reported Tuesday. The Nez Perce agreed to drop most of their claims to water in the Snake River basin in exchange for about $83 million, 11,000 acres of land now managed by the Bureau of Land Management and salmon conservation measures, including requirements for water releases from dams to aid migrating fish. "The entire process was fraught with deep emotion for the Nez Perce people as we came to grips with the magnitude of the decision to try and settle our claim to the water in that area that our people have inhabited for thousands of years," Tribal Chairwoman Rebecca A. Miles said in a prepared release....
California Hotels Replace Bible With Gore's Book Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming. They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as ``green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont. ``I'm not your traditional Birkenstocks and granola type of guy,'' said Stefan Muehle, general manager of the Orchard Garden, who said green measures are reducing energy costs as much as 25 percent a month. ``We're trying to dispel the myth that being green and being luxurious are mutually exclusive.'' The Gaia and Orchard are seeking to be the first hotels in California certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, which has authenticated 800 buildings across the U.S. and has about 6,000 in the process, including 30 hotels. San Francisco and other cities offer financial incentives to lessen water and energy use and reduce carbon dioxide emissions....
Ranchers worry as too-few April showers leave California dry After a dry winter that left the Central Valley's sheep and cattle with parched rangeland to graze, projections for summer water supplies are running as low as this year's rainfall. The forecasts spell trouble for California ranchers, who say they expect to lose millions in revenue this year after spending more to feed animals who may not grow as big as their owners want and therefore won't fetch premium prices when they are sold. Mike Blasingame, a fifth-generation rancher in the Fresno County foothills, said the unusually parched spring has left the calves he buys from throughout the country less natural grass to eat. He fattens them up during California's mild winters before selling them to large slaughterhouses in the Midwest. "My business is all about the gain," said Blasingame. "How much can they gain is if there's nothing out there for them to eat?" he said. With grass in short supply before the hot summer months, many ranchers supplement their livestock with hay, which becomes expensive and scarce when a whole region is dry at the same time....
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