Since '01, Guarding Species Is Harder With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws. The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection. Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines. As a result, listings plummeted. During Bush's more than seven years as president, his administration has placed 59 domestic species on the endangered list, almost the exact number that his father listed during each of his four years in office. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago. In a sign of how contentious the issue has become, the advocacy group WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking a court order to protect 681 Western species all at once, on the grounds that further delay would violate the law. Among the species cited are tiny snails, vibrant butterflies, and a wide assortment of plants and other creatures....
Warming models baffled by a cooling ocean National Public Radio has an interesting report on global warming and the oceans...A few years ago scientists put 3,000 “robots” into the oceans of the world, which are all part of the Argos System to monitor world climate patterns. NPR says that “Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.” They go on: In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans. Got that? Since 2003 there has been no discernible warming of the oceans which defies the theories. In fact, Willis says: “There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant.” Of course when all your models tell you that there ought to be warming and you get “very slight cooling” that in itself is significant. Certainly, it is troubling. Oddly, while Willis tells NPR the cooling was "not anything really significant" the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said otherwise. "The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has cooled significantly since 2003." Two years ago Willis was dismissing the cooling as just "natural variability" implying that this would end very soon. But another two years have gone by and the data still shows a cooling trend. Even more oddly, a pdf of a paper prepared by Willis and others for Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33 says: "A new estimate of sampling error in the heat content record suggests that both the recent and previous global cooling events are significant and unlikely to be artifacts of inadequate ocean sampling." They wrote: "The decrease [in ocean temperature] represents a signficant loss of heat over a 2-year period amounting to one-fifth of the long-term upper-ocean heat gain between 1955 and 2003..." They emphasized "the cooling event is real". They also argued this heat probably is not being stored anywhere on earth but "could be the result of a net loss of heat from the Earth to space."....
Anger Over Culling of Yellowstone’s Bison This was not the Yellowstone National Park that tourists see. At first light on Tuesday, at the end of a closed road, past a boneyard of junk cars, trailers and old cabins, more than 60 of the park’s wild bison were being loaded on a semi-trailer to be shipped to a slaughterhouse. With heavy snow still covering the park’s vast grasslands, hundreds of bison have been leaving Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations. A record number of the migrating animals — 1,195, or about a quarter of the park’s population — have been killed by hunters or rounded up and sent to slaughterhouses by park employees. The bison are being killed because they have ventured outside the park into Montana and some might carry a disease called brucellosis, which can be passed along to cattle. The large-scale culling, which is expected to continue through April, has outraged groups working to preserve the park’s bison herds, considered by scientists to be the largest genetically pure population in the country. It has also led to an angry exchange between Montana state officials and the federal government over a stalled agreement to create a haven for the bison that has not received the needed federal financing....
Beaver Deceiver expert coming to Pitkin County Pitkin County is calling in a ringer to help solve the beaver problem along Brush Creek near the town of Snowmass Village. Beavers are cutting off water flowing to a historic agricultural ditch running through some 232 acres of county open space along Brush Creek. For years, and still in many parts of the state, the solution to beaver problems was violent: either killing off beavers or destroying their dams. But county officials said they’re are looking for better, long-term solutions. Enter Skip Lisle, owner of Beaver Deceivers International based in Grafton, Vt. The trick — and the goal of county officials — is to protect the beavers and their created wetlands as well as keep water flowing to agricultural ditches. That’s where “beaver deceiving” comes in, Lisle said. Beavers are “hard-wired” to react and dam up any flowing water, whether in a narrow culvert or an open field, Lisle said. He installs what he called a “flow device,” which essentially sneaks water around beaver dams. In narrow culverts, a common spot for human/beaver confrontation, Lisle installs a fencing system that keeps beavers away from the flowing water. In open fields, such as the area along Brush Creek, Lisle installs a pipe system that draws water from far upstream of a beaver dam and releases the water below, essentially fooling the beavers and limiting their dam building....
Bighorns facing smaller habitat Today, about 800 bighorns roam the arid backcountry from the U.S.-Mexico border to the San Jacinto Mountains. Peninsular bighorn sheep also live in Baja California, but they are not included in the population classified as endangered by the U.S. government. In the spring, visitors to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park can sometimes spot lambs nimbly trailing their mothers across rocky outcroppings in search of water. But the sheep's recent run of good fortune may be about to end, according to some advocates for bighorn recovery. They are concerned that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed trimming protected sheep habitat by more than 50 percent, from 844,897 acres to 384,410. In October, Fish and Wildlife Service officials said their 2001 map of the lands considered essential to Peninsular bighorn recovery – classified as “critical habitat” – grossly overstated the core area. They said their current proposal is based on a revised method for identifying the territory needed for the protection of bighorn sheep. For instance, the agency excluded high-elevation and densely forested areas because federal officials said bighorns typically do not live there....
Cruelty charges weighed in hunters' killing of 32 bison Charges of aggravated cruelty to animals are being considered in the killing of 32 bison near Hartsel. Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said Friday that his office has determined the bison were owned by ranchers Monte and Tracy Downare and had wandered off their property. Last week, a group of hunters, who believed they had permission, began shooting and killing the animals. Several of the dead bison were found on the Hawn Ranch, near the Downares' ranch but not adjacent. Authorities have not located or spoken with the owner and caretaker of Hawn Ranch. Wegener said the bison were shot on the Hawn Ranch, other private property and Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands. Aggravated cruelty to animals is a Class 6 felony and is being looked at because of the way the carcasses were abandoned, the sheriff said....
U.S. shelters saddled with unwanted horses The forced closure of the last horse-killing facilities in the USA, done at the urging of animal rights activists, has caused a herd of unwanted horses in animal shelters nationwide, according to breeders, ranchers and horse rescuers. The surplus threatens to worsen if Congress passes a bill to ban the selling of unwanted horses to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. "It used to be I could take a horse that is unbreedable, untrainable, injured or unwanted and sell it for anywhere between $200 to $700," says Sheila Harmon, who has bred Arabian horses in Eagle, Idaho, for 28 years. "Now I have to pay a euthanasia fee to a veterinarian and a disposal fee to have the animal taken away." A ban on selling animals to a meat processor will "drive another nail in the coffin" of her business, Harmon says. Animal activists and some horse lovers say that's regrettable but that the issue is a moral one, not economic. Horses are pets, not an entree, says Julie Caramante of Habitat for Horses, a large horse rescue operation south of Houston.
Taking on the Western States Endurance Run Each year, on the last weekend in June, the world's toughest endurance runners gather in the former Olympic Village of Squaw Valley. Over the next 24 hours, they race each other over 100 miles of the historic Western States trail, through some of the most rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada. They climb more than 18,000 feet, and descend more than 23,000 feet while traversing deep canyons and high ridgelines before reaching the finish line in Auburn. It is one of the most grueling physical and psychological challenges many of them will ever face. If running 100 miles over unforgiving terrain through frequently ferocious weather conditions sounds crazy to you, rest assured that you're not alone. In fact, the contest was originally designed not for people, but for horses. Western States started out as the Tevis Cup, which originated when a bunch of old-time California cowboys decided to compare the toughness of their horses to legendary steeds from the days of the Pony Express. Riders who covered the 100-mile trail in a single day and night were awarded a silver belt buckle to recognize their accomplishment. For the first two decades of the Tevis Cup, the thought of anyone travelling the 100-mile trail on foot was inconceivable. Then in 1974, a 27-year-old cowboy named Gordy Ainsleigh learned that his horse was suffering from foot problems and was too lame to attempt the ride. Ainsleigh was a bit of a maverick — so instead of dropping out of the ride, he laced up his running shoes and lined up alongside nearly 200 horses to take on the trail singlehandedly. He not only finished the course, but did so faster than the 24-hour cutoff, earning a silver buckle. With Ainsleigh's effort, the 100-mile trail race was born....
Tulsa filmmaker captures the tales of the Tall grass Prairie There’s no way Ken Greenwood could have imagined that a reunion of cowboys who worked the Barnard Ranch would lead to an award-winning documentary years later. But it did. Greenwood recently received a Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum for his work on “Cowboys in Tall Grass.” He also received an Oklahoma Heritage Distinguished Service Award. “As a kid in the radio business I did some sensational things and no one said a thing. Now, to get all this, I don’t know how to handle it,” he said. The six-part documentary looks at Oklahoma’s rich Western heritage and some of its prominent figures. When the conservancy purchased the Barnard Ranch for inclusion in the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, many of the locals were opposed. So Greenwood helped set up a reunion of the cowboys who had worked the ranch and interviews with several of them were filmed. Years later, he salvaged what he could from those tapes and started his adventure of what would become “Cowboys in Tall Grass.”....
The fingerprint of a lonely profession A few hundred footsteps separate a two-track methane road in the Wyoming prairie and a stone obelisk that is a few feet taller than a grown man and twice as wide. But it seems a million steps away from the lonely lifestyle of a group of men whose boredom made them the first architects in the region. Creeping its toes to the edge of the sandstone altar stands what one Gillette man calls the “world’s greatest” sheepherder’s monument. The solitary figure’s only company, like the sheepherder who constructed it, is the wind that howls through its crevices in a pitch that resembles the faint cries of a man alone in the distance. Suppositions about the purpose for the meticulously assembled Rubik’s Cubes of stone that are spread across the region are as varied as the people who see them. Some say they are navigational markers. Others say they are predator deterrents. All suppose that boredom had much to do with it. Some monuments, like the “world’s greatest” that stands atop an altar of sandstone on the Gates-Yonkee Ranch, have more history than others — or at least their history has not yet passed with its owners. The massive pile of flat stones is a puzzle itself — not only in its almost snap-together design but in the rock itself. The gray stones coated with orange lichen bear no resemblance to the rocks scattered around its pedestal. Riss speculates that a lonely sheepherder constructed the structure carrying the stones one at time from distant hills. The solitary sentinel, which clings to its perch high above the grassy draw below, existed before the first homesteader claimed the land. It is an artifact from a time before people laid claim to the hills it lords over....
The mighty Warrior, who led one of history's last-ever cavalry charges One of the last great cavalry charges took place 90 years ago at Moreuil Wood. Brough Scott, whose grandfather led the field, tells the story of the special horse who fearlessly carried the general into battle. Warrior was ready. It was 9.30 on the morning of March 30, Holy Saturday, 1918. He had somehow survived four years of shell and bullet and privation, and Passchendaele, but now, in the little hamlet of Castel, not 10 miles south-west of Amiens, the horse faced his most dangerous mission of all. He would lead one of the last great cavalry charges in history - at Moreuil Wood, on the banks of the Avre river in France. Victory would not only secure the river bank, it would help stem the German Spring Offensive of 1918. Behind Warrior were the 1,000 horses of the Canadian Cavalry. If ever an animal was a symbol of indomitability for weary soldiers to follow, it was this short-legged, wide-eyed, star-foreheaded, independent-spirited but kindly gelding who, in January 1918 had been immortalised in the first of the portraits painted by Alfred Munnings as war artist to the Canadian Cavalry. Warrior was a survivor. In September 1914, his groom Jack Thompson had to gallop him 10 miles across country to escape encirclement by the advancing enemy. In 1915, a shell cut the horse beside Warrior clean in half, and a few days later another destroyed his stable, seconds after he had left it. On July 1, 1916, that fateful first day of the Somme, he and the Canadians were readied to gallop through a gap in the enemy line that never came. In 1917, only frantic digging extricated him from mud in Passchendaele, and only three days before March 30, 1918, a direct hit on the ruined villa in which he was housed left him trapped beneath a shattered beam. Yes, a survivor: but could he survive Moreuil Wood?....
Hundreds of bottles of booze with a bite seized in Palo Pinto Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents seized 411 bottles of illegal hooch Thursday at Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch in Palo Pinto County. But it wasn't your typical variety of moonshine: the bottles of vodka also contained 10-inch rattlesnakes. "In my 20 years with the TABC, I've never seen anything like it," Sgt. Charlie Cloud said Friday. TABC officials said they plan to file charges next week for the sale of alcohol without a permit and possession of alcohol with the intent to sell. Penalties for those charges include up to a year in the county jail and fines up to $1,000 upon conviction. There was no evidence that Popplewell was shipping the snake-infused alcohol from his business but Cloud said the investigation is ongoing. TABC officials said alcohol containing snakes or scorpions is popular in Asian cultures. An Internet search found operations selling Thai scorpion vodka, cobra whiskey, giant centipede whiskey, herbal gecko lizard wine and Mekong River eel wine....
Hospital bridles at horse in lift A Hawaiian hospital has restated its rules on pets after a man took a horse up in a lift in a bid to cheer up a sick relative with his favourite steed. Man and beast were stopped by security guards only after reaching the third floor, after apparently passing through the lobby unchallenged. The patient was allowed to see them but it turned out to be the wrong horse. A hospital spokeswoman said there was a visitation policy for dogs and cats, but not for horses. "We just hope people understand this is not a place for a horse," said Lani Yukimura at Wilcox Memorial Hospital. "It's a very dangerous thing. Our greatest concern is patient care." Security managed to remove the visitor and the horse with "just a few scuff marks", she added....