Save The Earth — Hug A Logger As environmental alarmists entertain themselves by turning off lights, their efforts sometimes lead to unintended consequences. A new study, for example, shows they may be warming the earth by saving trees. In the green scheme of things, trees are a good thing and deforestation is bad. We must plant as many trees as we can to suck up all that CO2, the pollutant that sustains all plant and therefore all animal life on earth. Old-growth forests must be protected from those nasty loggers. Trouble is, according to Thomas Bonnicksen, professor emeritus of forest science at Texas A&M University, forests left in "pristine" condition have too many trees and too many dead ones, both of which provide fuel for the devastating forest fires that ravaged California last year. Bonnicksen is also a visiting scholar at the California Forest Foundation and has authored a study available at its Web site (calforestfoundation.org). It shows that four large California wildfires produced 38 million tons of greenhouse gases through fire and subsequent decay of dead trees — 10 million from the fires themselves and 28 million from the post-fire decay. This is equivalent to the emissions from 7 million cars for an entire year. Bonnicksen says the four fires studied involved forests averaging 350 trees per acre where 50 an acre is considered normal. Some California forests, he says, have more than 1,000 trees per acre, with young trees growing under big trees, serving as "ladder fuel" and dead trees and woody debris on the ground. He advocates "thinning" the forests so they're less like time bombs waiting to explode. "Harvested trees can be turned into long-lasting wood products that store carbon," he notes, adding that it's important to remove trees destroyed by fires and insects "so that they don't decay and send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." So it just might be forest fires that are causing global warming, not the other way around, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently claimed....
New Mexico faces possibility of new wilderness designation It is the first day of spring 2008 and New Mexico rancher Tom Mobley has yet to push a blade of sediment from the dry earthen stock pond on his Dona Ana County ranch. “I started the request to clean this tank in October 2007 and I still don’t have the approval to do a thing,” he said, as he thumbed through a 16-page document he had received from the Las Cruces, NM, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office detailing the procedure he would have to follow upon receiving final approval for the work. The tank that Mobley is worried about happens to be located in one of a number of Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) scattered across part of the 2,400,000 acres of Dona Ana County. Because the location is in the WSA, the allowance to clean it does not follow normal BLM procedures for maintenance of such structures. Mobley must wait for the process, which includes interested party comments, to conclude. “This is one reason why ranching under wilderness designation in this country won’t work!” he concluded as he throws his hands up and heads out the door. Miles south of Mobley’s ranch in the Potrillo Mountains, rancher Dudley Williams is out early checking windmills before the wind comes up. “Can you imagine our dilemma trying to maintain these mills without having unrestricted access to them?” Dudley shakes his head. The Williams Ranch spreads over some 345 sections of country that runs nearly to the Mexican border on its southern extension. The ranch has over 95 miles of pipelines, 200 miles of fence, and 175 miles of roads. It also has a 150,000-acre WSA footprint overlaying it. A group of Dona Ana County ranchers and loyal allies mobilized and formed a group they call People for Preserving Our Western Heritage (PFPOWH). Their effort is aimed at countering the efforts of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA), which had positioned three paid staffers within the community, along with an extended organization that is tied to major environmental entities, for the purposes of securing their ideas of wilderness within the county. In draft legislation presented to the New Mexico congressional delegations in December 2007, PFPOWH introduced the concept of Rangeland Preservation Area(s) (RPA). This designation would elevate similar protective measures as wilderness, but also allow local conditions to be honored and considered....
Post-delisting wolf kills begin At least three wolves were killed by Wyoming residents over the weekend, after the animal was removed from the federal endangered species list. Large numbers of hunters reportedly prowled the state’s newly designated wolf predator area in Sublette County Friday, Saturday and Sunday, locals and outfitters said. At least two wolves were killed near an elk feedground in the Pinedale area, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Another was killed, also in Sublette County, by a rancher, a local predator board member said. The Star-Tribune received reports that a fourth wolf was possibly taken, also in Sublette County, but that kill has not yet been confirmed. All three of the confirmed wolf kills happened in the Cowboy State’s newly designated predator zone for wolves, where the animals can be shot on sight without limits, as long as the time, location and sex of each kill is reported to the Game and Fish Department within 10 days. Wolves in the state’s extreme northwest corner are now in the animal’s trophy game zone, and are still afforded some protection. Wolves in the rest of the state are considered predators, similar to coyotes. Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Game and Fish Department, said the two wolf kills reported so far both happened Friday, about one to two miles west of the Jewett feedground outside of Pinedale. Both were gray-black, one male and one female. One rancher outside the trophy game zone killed a wolf Friday on his private property, said Cat Urbigkit, a member of the Sublette County Predator Board....
Pacific Ethanol suffers a bigger-than-expected loss Pacific Ethanol Inc., a California biofuels darling that boasts political connections and an investment from Bill Gates, is short on cash and suffering from higher corn and plant construction costs, which threaten to derail the once-promising biofuels maker. The Sacramento company on Monday posted record-high sales but a larger-than-expected $14.7-million loss in the fourth quarter, reflecting a financial squeeze that has clouded prospects for ethanol producers nationwide. Pacific Ethanol reported the loss just days after it shored up its depleted coffers with a $40-million cash infusion from Lyles United, a company whose affiliates have provided construction services to Pacific Ethanol and had previously lent it funds. The Lyles investment provided a bit of good news for the company and helped remedy several violations of Pacific Ethanol's credit agreement with a group of lenders. The company recently postponed construction of its Imperial Valley ethanol plant, said it suffered from large construction cost overruns and admitted to having a "material weakness" in its financial controls -- problems it says it has since fixed. The company operates ethanol plants in Madera, Calif., and Boardman, Ore., and has a major interest in an ethanol production plant in Windsor, Colo. Two others have yet to come on line; a plant in Burley, Idaho, is in the start-up process and a plant in Stockton is set to open this year....
As Fight for Water Heats Up, Prized Fish Suffer It’s a simple fact of life across the rural West, as it is here in Montana’s mountain-ringed Big Hole River Valley. Flooding river bottoms to grow hay sustains the economy but means less water in the river for the prized wild trout population. The competition for water is not new, but it is intensifying as the climate here gets warmer and drier. “The biggest worry for trout is that smaller streams will simply run dry in late summer and temperatures in the remaining pools will exceed lethal levels,” said Steven W. Running, a climate scientist at the University of Montana in Missoula who is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Even if the stream has good flow 11 months of the year, fish have to survive the highest stress conditions in late summer. We could lose the populations in these smaller streams, and they won’t come back.” By all accounts, these kinds of changes in the West’s celebrated trout fisheries are happening quickly — faster, experts say, than in other parts of the country. A new report by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, based on research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows temperatures in the West the last five years increased by 1.7 percent, compared with 1 percent elsewhere. Floods, wildfires, livestock grazing and roads only make the picture worse. Some studies project the loss of Western trout populations in some regions could be more than 60 percent, and the loss of bull trout could exceed 90 percent by 2050. Salmon will also see a decline, up to 40 percent....
Petrified Forest park expansion stalled Government plans to more than double the size of Petrified Forest National Park appear to be in jeopardy because Congress has failed to come up with the cash to buy surrounding properties it approved for expansion in 2004. Without government funding, an irreplaceable treasure of dinosaur bones and Indian ruins may be lost as ranchers sell off their spreads for subdivision and development, according to David Gillette, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Petrified Forest is just one of 56 federal historic and recreation sites that "could lose land inside their borders to developers this year," according to a study to be released April 8, by the non-profit National Parks Conservation Association. The report, "America's Heritage: For Sale," identifies Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland as other examples. According to Helsel, Congress has appropriated $44.4 million for National Parks expansion purchases in 2008. The National Parks Service has a wish list of 1.8 million acres it would like to acquire, she said, at a projected cost of $2 billion. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., who chairs the Committee on House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, has proposed a mandatory spending program of $100 million annually over the next decade....
Forest roadwork may drive up state jobs U.S. Forest Service officials and environmentalists say the $4.7 million that Congress recently allocated for roadwork in the Northern Region national forests will provide a mini jolt of economic and ecological benefits. But with Montana, northern Idaho and North Dakota facing a critical road maintenance backlog of hundreds of millions of dollars on their national forests, the funding will only address the worst cases of crumbling roads and culverts damaging water quality and blocking fish passage. “This is a huge opportunity to get a jump on some of these needs that are affecting water quality and fish passage, but there's a long way to go,” said Fred Bower, the Forest Service's regional transportation planner in Missoula. Nationwide, the Forest Service has long struggled to keep up the 400,000 miles of roads that crisscross national forest land. The agency currently has an estimated $10 billion nationwide backlog of road maintenance needs. Congress' recent $39.4 million allocation was the first time it has set aside money specifically for decommissioning national forest roads. The funding, which is part of the Legacy Roads and Trails program, will be spent on road and trail decommissioning and maintenance, bridge repairs and the removal of fish barriers, especially in areas where forest roads are harming water quality and threatened or endangered species....The local NPS and FS employees can't go up on the hill and lobby for larger appropriations from Congress, but they are good at using the media to accomplish the same thing.
Colorado looks at new oil, gas regs After three months of debate over a preliminary plan, state officials Monday released a draft rewrite of Colorado's oil and gas regulations that yanked or modified parts that drew the most fire from the industry. The proposals will implement new laws requiring that decisions about oil and gas development give additional weight to public health, wildlife and the environment. Supporters say regulations must be updated in the face of an unprecedented, statewide natural gas boom. The industry warned that preliminary proposals released in January could drive up costs and dampen companies' interest in Colorado, where the industry generates billions of dollars in economic benefits and employs tens of thousands of people. State officials said they listened and made changes, including dropping a proposed application for drilling permits that the industry argued would add months to the approval process. Instead, the state has proposed expanding an existing form to include more information to evaluate the potential health and environmental impacts. "The industry talked about regulatory uncertainty and that time is money," said Mike King, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. King said the state also listened to landowners and communities near gas fields concerned about water quality. A new proposal would prohibit construction of oil and gas facilities within 500 feet of drinking water sources and impose conditions within a half-mile. The rules would apply in a 5-mile zone upstream from where the water enters a community system. Grand Junction and other communities protested gas leases that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved on federal land in their watershed. King said state officials "are adamant" that the draft rules would apply to federal land because of the state's jurisdiction over water and wildlife. King said the state is talking to federal officials and wants to work with them....
Can't Say 'No' To Canada's Tar Sands Oil At a time when saying anything good about fossil fuels is like declaring war on the environment, it may seem like wishful thinking to press for an expansion of U.S. oil refining capacity. Yet it is precisely this sort of thinking that is necessary if we are to make use of a vast, secure and reliable supply of fuel from Canada's oil sands. The tar sands hold an estimated 174 billion barrels of crude oil, making Canada's oil-sands deposits second only to Saudi Arabia in global reserves. The U.S. currently obtains 1 million barrels a day from Canada's tar sands, but with planned investments the daily supply could exceed 3 million barrels by 2015. But extracting heavy oil from tar sands and transporting it by pipeline for refining is a difficult and costly process. Producers are developing new drilling techniques to reduce the large volumes of natural gas and water needed to separate the oil from sand. And the oil companies, which have pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions in their operations, are making the needed investments to meet environmental regulations. Yet the greenhouse-gas issue overshadows all other considerations. The challenge is how to produce and refine enough oil to meet rising energy demand, while mitigating carbon dioxide emissions. Refiners have set a goal to improve energy efficiency 10% over the next decade, and one way they are making progress is capturing excess heat from their operations to produce additional electricity. An indication of change is the way oil companies now see unconventional sources of oil such as tar sands. Refineries throughout the Midwest and Gulf Coast are being retrofitted to accommodate the heavier oil. And companies are investing larger sums than ever in developing new technologies to reduce airborne and water emissions. Even though the companies are confident they can meet environmental requirements, opponents are determined to block the necessary permits. If our refineries can't take advantage of this secure source of oil from tar sands, other countries — notably China — will move in....
Green Fuel Plants Turning Rivers Brown In their haste to save the environment, “green” fuel enthusiasts are turning public waterways brown as some companies eager to get processing plants up and running quickly are failing to honor the conditions of their environmental permits. "What is being sold as green fuel just doesn't pencil out," California Representative Brian Bilbray, who spoke out against the $18 billion energy package recently passed by Congress that provides tax credits for biofuels, told the International Herald Tribune. According the National Biodiesel Board, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, even sensitive riparian ones. But scientists — and people living near biodiesel refineries — say that’s seriously understating its potential environmental impact. Some biodiesel plants are discharging glycerin, which is normally non-toxic and the principal biodiesel byproduct, into rivers and streams. "You can eat the stuff, after all," says Environment Canada researcher Bruce Hollebone, one of the world's leading experts on the environmental impact of vegetable oil and glycerin spills. "But as with most organic materials, oil and glycerin deplete the oxygen content of water very quickly, and that will suffocate fish and other organisms. And for birds, a vegetable oil spill is just as deadly as a crude oil spill."....
Parody Ad Takes Up Cause of Ringed Seals, Says Polar Bear Populations are Prosperous and Growing In light of environmentalist campaigns pressuring the Administration to list the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, the National Center for Public Policy Research, joined by Citizens United, has released for the Internet a lighthearted parody political ad to remind the public that the polar bears' situation isn't as dire as some environmental organizations are leading the public to believe. The ad, a parody of the wild charges and breathless style of many political campaign ads, lets the public know what is not always clear from environmentalist lobbying campaigns: The global population of polar bears is 22,000, about double what it was just four decades ago. "Many people will be surprised to learn there are 22,000 polar bears and their population has doubled," said David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "While obviously many aspects of our parody ad - such as the polar bears in suits, lobbying Congress - are complete fiction, the steady growth in the global polar bear population is real. We hope that people who view our parody ad seeking a laugh will remember that fact, and perhaps be inspired to look a little more deeply into the basis of environmentalist claims regarding the polar bear." The ad is being released in conjunction with a National Center for Public Policy Research policy paper, "Listing the Polar Bear Under the Endangered Species Act Because of Projected Future Global Warming Could Harm Bears and Humans Alike," by Peyton Knight and Amy Ridenour....
WTO rejects EU beef hormone ban but also raps US, Canada The World Trade Organisation on Monday ruled that the European Union, United States and Canada all failed to respect global trade rules in a long-running row over beef treated with growth hormones. The EU was at fault because its present justifications for an import ban -- which were revised after a previous WTO ruling -- were not backed up by scientific evidence, the WTO said. The US and Canada meanwhile did not follow WTO procedures strictly by maintaining retaliatory measures against Brussels, the global trade body found in a report. The case goes back nearly 10 years to 1998 when the WTO ruled Washington and Ottawa could slap higher tariffs on a list of EU products after it condemned Brussels for banning beef producing with certain growth-promoting hormones -- used by the US and Canada -- without a scientific assessment of the risk. The EU had contested these sanctions, saying that they were no longer justified because it had found a new scientific basis for banning hormone-treated beef and had updated its law in 2003. Brussels then filed two fresh complaints against the United States and Canada for maintaining their retaliatory measures....