Rey expresses regret: Ag chief says Forest Service ‘dropped ball' on retardan Faced with possible jail time, U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey apologized Tuesday to a federal judge in Missoula for the Forest Service's delays in evaluating how wildfire retardant affects the environment. But Rey, the Bush administration's top forest official, insisted the agency has complied with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. Rey testified before U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in a watchdog group's lawsuit accusing the Forest Service of violating the nation's top environmental laws through its use of fire retardant. The hearing, which is scheduled to resume Wednesday, could result in Rey being jailed for contempt or placed on electronic monitoring. The Forest Service also could be prohibited from dropping anything but water on wildfires until it complies with the judge's earlier orders....
Agriculture chief not in contempt over fire study A federal judge has decided not to hold Agriculture Secretary Mark Rey in contempt over court orders requiring the U.S. Forest Service to study the environmental effects of a chemical fire retardant. U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy had threatened to send Rey to jail for being slow to respond to the court orders, accusing the Forest Service of trying to skirt environmental law. As agriculture secretary, Rey oversees the Forest Service. Although Molloy was critical of the agency for being slow, he said it ultimately filed the necessary documents. He added the threat of contempt helped spur the agency into action. After the hearing, Rey said he believed the agency made every effort to comply with the court orders....
Booming oil patch lights up North Dakota rangeland Landing lights for a long, remote runway. Christmas decorations left on all day, all night, all year. The scattered campfires of a large invading army that shows no sign of withdrawing anytime soon. Pick your metaphor for the landmark flares brightening the winter night over a broad expanse of western North Dakota rangeland. Thanks to record prices for oil and new technology that allows for easier extraction, the state's oil patch is booming again, creating riches for farmers, ranchers, retirees and speculators lucky or smart enough to own mineral rights in the Bakken Formation, a vast oil deposit stretching from the Dakotas into Montana and Canada. Nearly 60 drilling rigs are operating in western North Dakota now, the most since the last oil boom in the early 1980s, leaving the horizon littered in all directions with new wells marked by the bright, noisy flaring of escaping natural gas being burned off....
Instream flow bill good for trout, landowners It has been a long haul, but the Utah Legislature finally signed off on a bill that will allow fishing groups to protect and restore water flows in the name of trout. Various versions of HB117, which now awaits the governor's signature, have been around since 2003. Tim Hawkes, then a staffer for Trout Unlimited's national office based in Utah, picked up the battle for the instream flow bill in 2005. He worked hard with legislators, agricultural groups, state agencies and other water interests on the bill and was on the verge of seeing it passed in 2007 when it hit a snag over endangered species concerns. With those concerns addressed, Hawkes - now working at a law firm in Washington, D.C., but serving as a TU volunteer to get the bill passed - watched as the Instream Flow To Protect Trout Habitat bill sailed through the session this year. Hawkes says the bill does not change the definition or principles of water law, but allows for a 10-year pilot program that makes it possible for farmers or ranchers to lease all or part of a water right on a temporary basis to groups like Trout Unlimited....
Eminent domain change heads to governor The South Dakota House voted 54-16 Tuesday in favor of a bill that will speed the use of eminent domain by railroads to force the sale of rights of way. The Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad sought the measure, which will require the state Transportation Commission to rule on eminent domain cases within 90 days of applications. "This is a bill that would provide fairness in eminent domain cases and allow an important economic development project to move forward," Rep. Tim Rave, R-Baltic, said. DM&E officials say a few West River landowners who oppose the project have delayed it. The landowners, however, say DM&E itself has caused the delays. They also say the 90-day deadline for decisions cuts the time they have to prepare their case before the Transportation Commission....
Satan's Dog George Brown has managed the Hoodoo ranch, a cow-calf operation near Cody, Wyo., for 40 years. His grandfather arrived in northwestern Wyoming in 1900. By that time, much of the American West’s gray wolf population had been decimated through private and federal bounties. By the mid-20th century the species had been all but wiped out in the lower 48 states. Brown, now 77, has a perspective on wolves that may seem a bit out of touch with a society that has largely celebrated the speedy return of a sizable gray wolf population to the northern ranges of the American Rockies. By Brown’s estimation, the only good wolf is a dead one. “That’s a pretty fair way to describe how I feel,” he said. Brown is a member of an aging ranching population where financial and social influences have taken a heavy toll. The reintroduction of the gray wolf in the mid ’90s was perceived by some as the return of a nearly forgotten threat to the ranching livelihood....
Senators hear Wyo Range support Time is running out on efforts to protect the Wyoming Range from oil and gas leasing, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal told U.S. senators Wednesday during testimony for the Wyoming Range Legacy Act. Freudenthal was one of five people to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests on Sen. John Barrasso’s bill. The bill would prohibit further leasing on about 1.2 million acres of mountainous land south of Jackson. Freudenthal said the Forest Service is feverishly speeding efforts to finish environmental studies that would finalize 44,000 acres of additional energy leases. Those leases were sold, but the Interior Board of Land Appeals found the environmental studies used to justify the sale were insufficient and ordered a supplemental environmental impact statement before the federal government could complete the sale....
Study: Contaminent levels high in parks Pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants are raining down on national parks across the West and Alaska, turning up at sometimes dangerously high levels in lakes, plants and fish. A sweeping, six-year federal study released Tuesday found evidence of 70 contaminants in 20 national parks and monuments - from Denali in Alaska and Glacier in Montana, to Big Bend in Texas and Yosemite in California. The findings revealed that some of the Earth's most pristine wilderness is still within reach of the toxic byproducts of the industrial age. "Contaminants are everywhere. You can't get more remote than these northern parts of Alaska and the high Rockies," said Michael Kent, a fish researcher with Oregon State University who co-authored the study. The substances detected ranged from mercury produced by power plants and industrial chemicals such as PCBs to the banned insecticides dieldrin and DDT. Those can cause health problems in humans including nervous system damage, dampened immune system responses and lowered reproductive success....
Bison Advocate Closes Trap; Forcibly Removed & Arrested The man who perched upon a platform suspended from the top of a pair of poles on public land inside the Horse Butte bison trap in protest of bison slaughter, Nathan Drake, 26, was forcibly removed and arrested Monday night by state and federal agents. He was charged with three misdemeanors: obstruction, trespassing, and resisting arrest. He was released on $5,000 bail, reportedly the highest yet for bison-related direct action protest. Montana Department of Livestock agents, Gallatin National Forest law enforcement and a Gallatin County sheriff were present and participated in the removal of the citizen. “The agents who made their way up to my perch with an eighty foot cherry picker were unconcerned with my safety,” said Nathan. “They cut my sleeping bag that was my protection from the Montana winter, took off my boots and threw them to the ground, attempting to freeze me out of my lock box. The sheriff and Forest Service agent cut my safety line, attached me to the cherry-picker bucket and threw me in it.”....
Feds target Crested Butte 'smoke shacks' U.S. Forest Service agents have scoured Crested Butte’s ski area in search of illegal “smoke shacks” after some skiers were busted for smoking pot in one of the shacks on Feb. 17, according to a report in the Crested Butte News. The shacks, from simple lean-tos to fully enclosed treehouses, are illegal structures, built on public land without permission. “I’m sure we’ve got a few… I know they’re probably all over just about every ski area in Colorado,” Crested Butte Mountain Resort Vice President Ken Stone told the town’s newspaper last week. In fact, just last spring, a Forest Service official ordered smoke shacks at Snowmass to be taken down. “It’s becoming an issue all over the place,” Jim Stark, winter sports administrator for the White River National Forest, told The Aspen Times at the time....No fun on federal land. They'll be tearin' down shacks and arresting folks right up 'til the pythons get us.
New Web-based Smoke Management System Being Tested at K-State A new method of smoke modeling is being researched by a Kansas State University team led by Jay Ham, professor of agronomy. This new method could help manage the extent and impact of smoke plumes from the Flint Hills. Ham explained that there are two components to BlueSkyRAINS. "BlueSky" is a computer model developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service to predict the impacts of smoke from prescribed, wildland, and agricultural fires. "RAINS" (Rapid Access Information System) is a Geographic Information System product of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Forest Service merged the two products into BlueSkyRAINS....What a bunch of outhouse soup. They are using this program to track down all them "smoke shacks." NFOFL - No fun on federal land.
Council has a Battle Mountain on its hands Developer Bobby Ginn saw something no one else could see in the mine-polluted hills above this former railroad town. It was so clear to him that, more than three years ago, he plunked down $32.75 million for the 5,300 acres of steep forest and toxic mining claims. Since then, he has done everything he can to persuade the leaders of the small town of Minturn to share his vision for a private ski area, a golf course and 1,700 luxury homes on a mountainous parcel that nearby Vail Resorts once considered more suited to conservation than development. Tonight, the Florida-based chief of a billion-dollar-a-year resort real-estate-development firm will know how well he conveyed his dream when the Minturn Town Council renders a final vote on annexing land for the proposed resort, known as Battle Mountain. With four of seven council seats up for election in April, it happens now or the whole approval process begins anew....
Snowmobile group opposes wilderness expansion The state's largest coalition of snowmobile riders has decided to be a "voice in the wilderness." Colorado Snowmobile Association (CSA) president Janelle Kukuk said Monday that the group is opposed to the proposed 12,840-acre expansion of the Mt. Sneffels Wilderness Area, spearheaded by the Ridgway-Ouray Community Council (ROCC) and endorsed by both Ridgway and Ouray town and city councils, as well as Ouray County's Board of County Commissioners. CSA opposes wilderness designations on several principles, according to Kukuk, including the concept that wilderness effectively shuts out a large proportion of the population from recreating in an area. In a letter responding to ROCC member Al Berni, who invited CSA to comment on the proposal, Kukuk noted that wilderness areas are closed off to "the youngest, oldest and disabled." "Wilderness does not allow for any motorized and mechanized access," wrote Kukuk. "This includes wheelchairs and bicycles, so these methods that make traveling easier for so many are shut out. It makes a very exclusive group that has access to an area, and we feel that this is in direct contradiction to the multi-use mandate given to the federal land managers to uphold."....
Blogger levels heated threat against Sierra Club A string of red-hot wildfire seasons has claimed millions of Western forest acres and not a few homes and lives, and Mike Dubrasich reckons he's figured out at least part of the solution for future summers: “If you know a Sierra Club member, please feel free to set their home on fire.” That's the suggestion - “I'm suggesting it, but I'm not advocating it” - Dubrasich posted on his Web site last week. “Personally,” said Bob Clark, “I thought that was a little over the top.” Clark is a Sierra Club representative based out of Missoula, and he keeps a whole file of death threats in his office. Some have been forwarded to the FBI, some to the state attorney general, some to the Montana Human Rights Network. Dubrasich, of Lebanon, Ore., describes himself as a forester, a consultant and a blogger, among other things. His Web network - the Western Institute for Study of the Environment - includes 11 separate sites. Eight are what he calls “educational colloquia,” all about forests and fires and wildlife and paleobotany and rural culture. The others are a mix of news and commentary, clippings and first-person opinion pieces. It was one of those opinions - posted Feb. 20 on the “SOS Forests” portion of his site - that caught Clark's attention....
Palm Desert 'Cave Man' Arrested A man barricaded himself in a cave near Palm Desert Wednesday before being arrested for trespassing, authorities said. Federal Bureau of Land Management officials contacted Riverside County sheriff's deputies shortly before noon about a suspect who was bivouacked in a cave roughly a mile south of the Palm Desert Visitor Center at Highway 111 and El Paseo Avenue, according to sheriff's spokeswoman Herlinda Valenzuela. She said Kenneth Bunzell, a 59-year-old transient, refused BLM rangers' orders to leave the cave, and sheriff's deputies were called in to assist....This was probably a "smoke cave." NFOFL
Argentina Blocks Beef Exports as Prices Increase, Clarin Says Argentina's government has blocked beef exports in a bid to persuade meatpackers and ranchers to lower domestic prices, Clarin reported. The government shut an export register while Agriculture Secretary Javier de Urquiza and producers negotiate a new price cap for March and April, the newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information. Domestic beef prices have risen 10 percent this year amid shortages to 4 pesos to 4.40 pesos ($1.27 to $1.39) a kilogram, more than the government's indicated price cap of 3.30 to 3.60 pesos, the newspaper said. Some ranchers are selling animals on the black market to avoid price and export limits, Clarin said. Former President Nestor Kirchner first started restrictions on exports in 2005 to stem inflation in the South American country.
R-CALF: Another Livestock Competition Study Will Be Too Little, Too Late In a letter sent this week to the leadership of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the House Agriculture Committee, R-CALF USA urged the chairmen to reject any suggestion that passage of competition reforms in the 2007 Farm Bill should be delayed in order to fund yet another study of the situation live cattle producers find themselves in today. During development of the 2002 Farm Bill, the Senate led a bipartisan effort to include a prohibition on packer ownership of livestock to reduce the erosion of competition occurring within U.S. livestock markets. The measure was passed by Senate conferees but House conferees took no action. Later, during the FY 2003 appropriations process, the prohibition on packer ownership of livestock was relegated to a multi-million dollar study to be managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Four years later, in January 2007, the study, known as the RTI study, was completed. Though the RTI study erroneously presumed that the prohibition on packer ownership of livestock would prohibit all forms of alternative marketing agreements, it nonetheless found a causal relationship between packer-owned livestock and decreased livestock prices. Specifically, the RTI study found that, “A 1 % increase in packer-owned hogs causes the cash/spot price to decline by 0.24%.” Currently, the Senate version of the Farm Bill once again contains the Prohibition on Packer Ownership of Livestock....
Cattle Brands: First Recorded Brand Richard H. Chisholm owned perhaps the first recorded brand, registered in Gonzales County in 1832. Richard H. Chisholm (1799 - 1855) and Hardina Taylor Chisholm (1812 - unknown) had three children, Mary Ann, Bradford A., and Glenn Thornton Chisholm. Glenn was the retail boss for Crockett Cardwell when he put his first herd of cattle together and drove them from DeWitt County, up the "Chisholm Trail" to St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1866. The Chisholms of DeWitt County claimed that the "Chisholm Trail" was named for Glenn Thornton Chisholm because he set the path on the first trail drive. Glenn Thornton Chisholm was accidentally killed by a freight wagon that rolled over him when a breast chain broke while he was going up a steep hill. He was buried by the wagon trail near Burnet, Texas, in March, 1868. The Chisholm Trail was the major route out of Texas for livestock. Although it was used only from 1867 to 1884, the longhorn cattleqv driven north along it provided a steady source of income that helped the impoverished state recover from the Civil War.qv Youthful trail hands on mustangsqv gave a Texas flavor to the entire range cattle industry of the Great Plains and made the cowboy an enduring folk hero. When the Civil War ended the state's only potential assets were its countless longhorns, for which no market was available—Missouri and Kansas had closed their borders to Texas cattle in the 1850s because of the deadly Texas feverqv they carried. In the East was a growing demand for beef, and many men, among them Joseph G. McCoy of Illinois, sought ways of supplying it with Texas cattle. In the spring of 1867 he persuaded Kansas Pacific officials to lay a siding at the hamlet of Abilene, Kansas, on the edge of the quarantine area. He began building pens and loading facilities and sent word to Texas cowmen that a cattle market was available. That year he shipped 35,000 head; the number doubled each year until 1871, when 600,000 head glutted the market....