Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average." China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them. And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past. The ice is back. Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year....
U.S. Senate Report Debunks Polar Bear Extinction Fears The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. This report details the scientists debunking polar bear endangerment fears and features a sampling of the latest peer-reviewed science detailing the natural causes of recent Arctic ice changes. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs.” The alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. And the methodology of these computer models is being challenged by many scientists and forecasting experts. Canadian biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor, the director of wildlife research with the Arctic government of Nunavut: “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor said. “It is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.”....
Feds may drop park gun ban Park rangers, retirees and conservation groups are protesting a plan by the Interior Department to reconsider regulations restricting loaded guns in national parks. The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates, meanwhile, are hailing the review as the first step to relax a decades-old ban on bringing loaded firearms into national parks. The Interior Department announced Friday that it will review gun laws on lands administered by the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The department will draw up new rules by April 30 for public comment, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said in a letter to 50 senators who requested the review....
Bison slaughter could approach '04-05 figure The bison death toll continues to climb for Yellowstone National Park, as park officials say they plan to slaughter an estimated 180 animals captured Monday to prevent the spread of disease. The bison were captured on the north end of the park near the town of Gardiner -- not far from Yellowstone's famed Roosevelt Arch. More capture operations were planned today near Gardiner and in the West Yellowstone area, where a herd of about 180 bison has lingered outside the park for days, state and federal officials said. A 2000 agreement between Montana and the federal government says the animals must be captured if they leave the park and enter areas where they could encounter cattle. Many bison carry the disease brucellosis. It can cause pregnant livestock to abort their calves and suffer other health problems....
Protest over bison policy shut down Law enforcement officials removed a man Monday from an impromptu perch erected at a bison capture facility near West Yellowstone to protest bison management policies. The bipod, as it was called, was atop two poles and included a blue tarp and a sign that said: "I called, I wrote and no response ... This is my response." "It will be down by the end of the day," Christian Mackay, executive director of the Montana Department of Livestock, said earlier Monday afternoon. "It's nothing we haven't dealt with in the past." A few hours later, the man was removed and officials were preparing to disassemble his structure, said Marna Daley, a spokeswoman for Gallatin National Forest. The protester has not been identified. The incident happened while about 180 bison were captured along Yellowstone National Park's north border Monday and state officials on the western border were preparing to do the same. All of the bison caught are expected to be sent to slaughter....
Officials brush aside worry over wolf kills State wildlife officials dismiss warnings by critics of Wyoming's wolf management plan of the imminent slaughter of up to two-thirds of the state's wolves after the animal loses protection under the federal Endangered Species Act next month. A core part of Wyoming's wolf management plan is dual classification of wolves in Wyoming - as a protected trophy species in the state's northwestern corner and as a predator species in the rest of the state. In the areas where wolves are classified as predators, they can be shot on sight and without limits, provided that kills are reported within 10 days. Critics say that plan will lead to mass wolf killing. But Bill Rudd, Cheyenne assistant division chief of the state Game and Fish Department, doubts that will happen. Rudd said the department will manage the trophy wolf population conservatively at first. He said the goal is to keep wolves from being listed as an endangered species again....
Indian tribes exercising water rights For decades, ranchers and farmers across the West have tapped into rivers and streams on or near Indian reservations. Now, as drought conditions plague big parts of the region, they're concerned their access to those sources could dry up. Although the U.S. Supreme Court gave tribes the primary rights to streams on their reservations in 1908, until recently, 19 tribes in the West had not exercised those rights. This year, tribes in Montana, New Mexico, Idaho, Nevada and California are on the verge of securing their claims. That could result in less water, or higher water prices, for non-Indian agricultural producers and communities downstream, according to Victor Marshall, an attorney who represents irrigators in New Mexico's San Juan Valley. Marshall acknowledges that Indian tribes have more water coming to them. But he argues the amounts they are seeking are more than they can realistically use on the reservation....
Incline Village woman pleads not guilty in felling of 3 trees An Incline Village woman charged with hiring a company to chop down three Ponderosa pines on public land next to her property pleaded not guilty Monday in federal court. Patricia M. Vincent, 58, was indicted on two federal charges in January for allegedly ordering the cutting of the 80- to 100-year-old trees in April 2007 to improve her view of Lake Tahoe. U.S. Magistrate Judge Valerie Cooke accepted Vincent's plea and set her trial for April 29. Vincent will remain out of jail on a personal-recognizance release. Vincent's lawyer, Scott Freeman, said the next step was to find out why Vincent was indicted in the first place. "We're going to be reviewing the charges to determine why this case is a criminal matter," Freeman said after the short hearing in U.S. District Court in Reno. "It's highly unusual for a case like this to be prosecuted." At the time the indictment was released, both the U.S. attorney's office and a spokesman for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency acknowledged that they had not seen such a case in recent history. Vincent was charged with one count of willingly injuring U.S. property and one count of stealing government property. She faces as many as 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted. In 2006, John Fitzhenry was fined $50,000 for poisoning three Jeffrey pines on his Lake Tahoe property....Well, at least she was released. She should be glad David Iglesias wasn't the US Attorney. And let's see, $17,000 a tree for poisoning three trees on your own property...a very reasonable fine by the feds, don'tcha think?
Purchase of vast watershed protects a pristine river The crown jewel of American rivers, the Smith River in Northern California, has been given new luster with the purchase last week of the vast Goose Creek watershed. Goose Creek is one of the Smith's largest tributaries, a vital feeder to the Smith's pristine flows for salmon and steelhead. The Western Rivers Conservancy helped the U.S. Forest Service purchase a 9,483-acre parcel that encompasses the watershed and adds the land to the Smith River National Recreation Area. Goose Creek enters the South Fork Smith River near the bridge for the Gasquet-Orleans Road, right at the line for legal steelhead fishing on the South Fork. Goose Creek is big enough to be called the Goose Fork of the Smith, and while the forest was logged virtually to water's edge in the past, fishery scientists call it "an incredible fish stream" that will now be protected forever. The Conservancy purchased Goose Creek land in several phases in the past six years. U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer (both California Democrats) and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, helped arrange for $3.1 million from the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to allow the Forest Service to close the deal....
San Juan Basin stakeholders group forms With a nudge from a U.S. congressman, a new stakeholders group has been formed to give voice to individuals affected by coal-bed methane drilling in the northern San Juan Basin. The group will hold its first open house early in March. U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa, asked U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials to create working groups after Salazar toured the HD Mountains east of Bayfield in 2006. Salazar heard concerns from many residents, especially regarding drilling in or near the 1½-mile Fruitland outcrop. The formation of a technical working group was included in the Environmental Impact Statement that was approved in April 2007. However, Matt Janowiak with the San Juan Public Lands Center in Durango said the group created, which was mostly comprised of energy-industry representatives, engineers and geologists, was too technical to represent private landowners and residents. "We identified what we would call core stakeholders last year, but what we're trying to do is see who and what other groups we would consider as part of that core," Janowiak said. "So we're opening it up to everyone to come in and say 'we're stakeholders in the San Juan Basin, too.'" Janowiak said the stakeholders group will include landowner representatives, elected officials and other less technically minded people....
U.S. officials monitoring fire that crossed over from Mexico A day-old forest fire in the San Rafael Valley crossed from Sonora, Mexico, into the United States toward the Huachuca Mountains on Sunday, a U.S. Forest Service official said. Reaching the Coronado National Forest were three fingers of blazing ground comprising 27.5 acres that had branched out from the nearby main body of fire, 350 acres, in Mexico, said Heidi Schewel, a fire information officer with the U.S. Forest Service. The fire crossed the border about seven miles southeast of Parker Canyon Lake on the western side of the Huachuca Mountains. The cause is under investigation. “We sent an engine and a chase truck into Mexico after we got permission, and they assisted in fire suppression,” Schewel said. The fire was burning on Saturday, visible to a number of people in southern Cochise County in the Hereford/Palominas area. The Forest Service has named the blaze the 103 Fire, because it is close to the 103 border marker....
Bush kisses off Forest Service On Valentine's Day, the Bush administration sent the U.S. Forest Service a great big kiss. Or rather a great big kiss-off: The president's 2008 budget slashes the agency's spending by 8 percent, leading to the loss of 2,700 jobs and forcing the agency, which manages more than 3.5 million acres in Southern California, to narrow its focus to firefighting. This bad-news budget should come with a name change: the Forest Service now should be called the U.S. Fire Service. The shift would not be in name only, marking instead a radical break in national-forest history. Founded in 1905 to protect lands critical to the nation's welfare, the Forest Service acted in concert with its Organic Administrative Act (1897): "No national forest shall be established, except ... for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens." Over the next half-century, the agency replanted forests, upgraded grasslands, and restored watersheds, contributing to the growth and development of California, the Rocky Mountain region and the Pacific Northwest. These environmental ramifications and economic consequences were of a piece with founding Chief Gifford Pinchot's maxim: "the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run."....
Storms reveal secrets on Oregon's coast The storms that have lashed Oregon's scenic coast this winter have dredged up an unusual array of once-buried secrets: old shipwrecks, historic cannons, ghost forests - even strangely shaped iron deposits. The curiosities began showing up after December when Pacific storms pummeled the state, damaging thousands of homes and causing an estimated $60 million in damage to roads, bridges and public buildings. The storms also brought high seas, which caused beach erosion. Although sands commonly shift in winter, this season appeared especially dramatic. There were reports that up to 17 feet of sand eroded away at Arch Cape. Ghost forests are groves of tree stumps, some an estimated 4,000 years old, that were engulfed by the sea. Because of shifting sands, many have suddenly popped up. The stumps are especially impressive at Arch Cape, where locals say they haven't seen them for some 40 years, according to Tiffany Boothe of the Seaside Aquarium. "The forest floor is actually uncovered too. You can see the floor," she said. "There's like these mud cliffs. As your walking on it, it resembles clay. It's definitely not sand at all." Arch Cape also was where a pair of historic cannons were recently discovered by beachcombers. The origin of the cannons, each weighing between 800 and 1,000 pounds, is not known....
Rancher sees his kind as endangered species Rancher Tim Koopmann stands on a hillside nurtured by heavy winter rains, scanning his expansive property between Pleasanton and Sunol dotted with roaming cattle, majestic oaks and hovering red-tailed hawks. It takes more than a second before he reluctantly turns toward the humming of cars on the adjacent Interstate 680 and scrutinizes the explosion of commercial and residential development that has drastically transformed the serene open space of his childhood into the bustling urban center of the Tri-Valley. "All of this is new in my lifetime," says Koopmann of the growth in Dublin, Pleasanton and Livermore. "It makes me appreciate my property even more, ... all the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into this ranch." Koopmann, 55, is proud and protective of his not-so-little piece of rural heaven that today is penned in by the freeway, mega-mansions and an 18-hole municipal golf course. And, like a death-row inmate who receives the governor's pardon at the eleventh hour, Koopmann's appreciation is tangible when he talks of how he deftly averted a possible forced sale of the ranch in the late 1990s. By working in cooperation with local, state and federal officials, Koopmann has successfully established wildlife habitat easements on his 853-acre ranch, protecting the threatened California tiger salamanders, red-legged frog — and the threatened California rancher....
LMA asks Supreme Court to review horse slaugher ruling An Illinois law that closed a state horse processing plant, and the federal appeals court decision upholding the law, have effectively exempted 40,000 n 60,000 horses from humane slaughter. That is a key reason why the U.S. Supreme Court should hear the appeal of the decision by the plant, Cavel International, Inc., according to an “amicus curiae” (friend of the court) brief filed on Feb. 22 by Livestock Marketing Association. When the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld the Illinois law that closed the DeKalb, Ill., plant last year, it “failed to address the adverse impact” of the law, LMA’s brief said. As a result, “tens of thousands of horses…will die each year because they are at the end of their useful lives, (and) which will now die of neglect or be killed using procedures which are outside the protection accorded by the Humane Slaughter Act,” the brief said. Cavel slaughtered 40,000-60,000 horses annually, all under provisions of the Humane Slaughter Act, which only applies to U.S. plants. The court rulings “have provided an incentive for the export of horses to foreign slaughterhouses, and are contributing factors in an increase of equine neglect,” the brief said, citing news accounts on this topic. Agreeing to review the case “provides the (Supreme Court’s) last and only opportunity to restore the…Slaughter Act’s coverage in connection with horses.” The Appeals Court also said it upheld the Illinois law because the law was “somewhat tenuously supported by a legitimate state interest.” The amicus brief disagreed, saying “the de facto exemption” of the thousands of horses slaughtered by Cavel from provisions of the Humane Slaughter Act “more than outweighs” that somewhat “tenuous…state interest.”....
Rice and U.S. Beef Lobbyist Offer Reassurance in Seoul The largest food recall in U.S. history is reverberating abroad, and the White House is helping the meat industry counter the fallout in an important Asian market. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice included Andy Groseta, the chief of the nation's biggest beef lobby, in her six-person entourage at yesterday's inauguration of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul. Secretary Rice will focus on North Korea's nuclear-weapons program, but the administration wants progress on a free-trade pact that has been slowed by South Korea's 2003 ban of U.S. beef imports. Mr. Groseta, an Arizona rancher who presides over the million-member National Cattlemen's Beef Association, will help Wendy Cutler, assistant U.S. trade representative for Japan, Korea and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation affairs, answer South Korean officials' questions about U.S. beef processing and its safety. Japan and South Korea were the biggest foreign buyers of U.S. beef in 2003, topping Mexico and Canada. The two Asian nations implemented a ban on U.S. beef imports in late December 2003, when mad-cow disease -- which can cause a rare but fatal brain disease in humans -- was found in the U.S....
Riding Into History On Cracker's Back It's easy to forget, in the ribbons of highway and rows of two-car garage homes, that Florida was built by real horse power. For more than 400 years, a relatively small breed of horse carried people through the pines and palmettos of a wilder landscape, starting with armor-clad Spanish conquistadors and later missionaries, settlers, American Indians and cowboys who drove cattle across an open range. Monday, two little horses had no trouble looking the part of their ancestors as they prepared to carry riders 300 miles from Cockroach Bay Aquatic Preserve to Tallahassee. "These horses have been a major part of all phases of Florida history," James Levy, a state historian dressed in late 1800s garb, told a small crowd that gathered at the preserve to see the riders off. For centuries, descendants of Spanish horses pulled carts and plows and carried men into battle, Levy said. Levy, also executive director of the Florida Cracker Horse Association, said the trek is intended to remind people of the state's equine heritage and build support for a bill that would name the Cracker the official state horse....
Delta folks strap on the bunny ears and hop to a hare-raising record Here's a question: What do you call a line of 3,841 Utahns wearing bunny ears and hopping in unison? A. Crazy B. Saturday night at Donny Osmond's house C. A new world record As the proud folks in Delta will tell you, the correct answer is C. Residents of the west desert town learned this month that they'll be featured in the 2009 edition of the Guinness World Records book, out this fall. The category: "Largest Bunny Hop." Didn't think people keep records on this kind of stuff, did you? It all started early last year when Delta community leaders, looking for a special event to commemorate the city's centennial, decided to take aim at the world bunny hop record, set in 2006 by 1,880 people in Lake Geneva, Wis. Organizers chose the bunny in honor of Delta High School, whose mascot is the rabbit. (Not the most fearsome animal to name your football team after, but hey, the track team must love it.)....