Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed, Argue Forecasting Experts Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®). On April 30, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, “To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off. “These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.” Prof. Armstrong and colleagues originally undertook their audit at the request of the State of Alaska. The subsequent study, “Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public Policy Forecasting Audit,” is by Prof. Armstrong, Kesten G. Green of Monash University in Australia, and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is scheduled to appear in the September/October issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces....
Law firm vows to sue if U.S. links climate to polar bear's survival A Sacramento law firm known for its conservative advocacy is poised to join the political melee over the fate of the polar bear, vowing Wednesday to sue the government if global warming is cited as a threat to the species. The Pacific Legal Foundation's warning comes in response to a much-anticipated decision next week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on whether to protect Alaskan polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. The service faces a court-ordered deadline of May 15 for that ruling. At issue is growing debate over how aggressively government should act to protect wildlife threatened by climate change. In the case of the polar bear, neither side disputes that the Arctic is changing. But they disagree about the effect on polar bears. A similar issue was decided last month when the California Fish and Game Commission rejected a petition to protect the American pika in response to threats posed by climate change. Lots of evidence shows that the pika's high Sierra habitat will shrink as temperatures warm. But a decline in the pika's numbers has not yet been documented in California as a result. Reed Hopper, a foundation attorney, claimed polar bears are thriving and already adequately protected. "This listing of the polar bear really isn't about the polar bear," he said. "This is a political ploy on the part of activist groups to try to hijack global warming policy from the hands of Congress and to put it into the hands of the courts."....
Conservationists, developer reach major Calif. land deal A group of environmentalists and the owners of a large stretch of wilderness have reached a deal that would set aside the largest parcel of land for conservation in California history. After years of legal tussles, conservationists including the Sierra Club have agreed not to challenge proposed development on the sprawling Tejon Ranch north of Los Angeles in exchange for close to 240,000 acres, in a deal to be announced Thursday. At 375 square miles, the preserve of desert, woodlands and grasslands would be eight times the size of San Francisco and nearly the size of Los Angeles, said Bill Corcoran, the Sierra Club's senior regional representative. "There is, in my opinion, no other place like it in California - it's unrivaled in the diversity of native wildlife and plants," said Corcoran, who helped negotiate the deal. "Tejon is key to us because it's the only place where the Sierra Nevadas, the coastal range and Mojave Desert and Central Valley all meet." The Tejon Ranch Co. has been trying for years to develop three projects, or 10 percent of the 270,000 acre ranch, while appeasing environmentalists....
Al Gore And Climate Ka-Ching Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests? Except, as we recently noted, the trend in the world's oceans — as shown by measurements taken by a fleet of 3,000 high-tech ocean buoys first deployed in 2003 — is toward cooling. As Dr. Josh Willis, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in a separate interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoys' five years of observation. As Joseph D'Aleo, the Weather Channel's first director of meteorology, told National Review Online's Deroy Murdock that the slight warming trend "peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5%. Cooling began in 2002." He added: "Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them in 2003." In fact, Ryan Maue of Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies says 2007 "will rank as a historically inactive tropical cyclone year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole." In the past 30 years, Maue adds, only 1977 had less hurricane activity from January through October. Last September had the lowest activity since 1977 while the Octobers of 2006 and 2007 had the lowest activity since 1976 and 1977, respectively. So why the hype? Well, global warming is a growth industry designed to keep Earth and some bank accounts green. Gore himself joined the venture capital group, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers just last September. On May 1, the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund. The group announced another $700 million to be invested over the next three years in green-tech startup firms. But if the green technology business, uh, cools down, there will be no return on that investment. There would be no need for such investments if global warming wasn't a threat. So Gore just launched, among other things, a $300 million on an ad campaign to convince us it is so. We have a prediction all our own — that disastrous global warming will not occur. Then the greenies will take credit for preventing it and ask us if we're glad we spent trillions in fighting it. Al Gore will be laughing all the way to the bank....
A Call for Criminal Inquiry on Mine Collapse The general manager and possibly other senior staff members at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where nine miners died last August, withheld information from federal officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face a criminal inquiry, the chairman of a Congressional investigation said Thursday. The chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, accused the company of concealing the extent of an earlier collapse in the mine that involved the same high-risk technique, retreat mining, that was being used when the disaster began. Mr. Miller said that if federal mine officials had known the extent of that earlier collapse, they would not have allowed the company to continue using the method, in which miners remove coal from the pillars that hold up the tunnels. Mr. Miller disclosed that he had sent a referral letter late last month to the Department of Justice asking it to investigate whether the mine’s manager, Laine W. Adair, on his own or in conspiracy with others in the company, concealed facts or made false statements to federal investigators about the condition of the mine before the disaster....
Warrant issued in deaths of 32 bison Authorities charged Thursday that an Austin, Texas, businessman, frustrated because a neighbor's bison were wandering onto his land near Hartsel, first threatened and then organized a hunt that led to 32 bison deaths. According to an arrest warrant, Jeffrey Scott Hawn wrote a letter to the hunters — members of the Aztlan Native Community of Gardner — on Feb. 25 telling them that he wanted them to "get started as quickly as possible." "You may hunt or remove them or you may remove them live and take them to the location of your choice," Hawn wrote. The 32 bison found dead in March belonged to longtime South Park rancher Monte Downare. Hawn owns a ranch near, but not adjacent to, the Downare ranch, according to officials. The warrant said Hawn is wanted on one count of felony theft, one count of felony criminal mischief and 32 counts of aggravated cruelty to animals, a Class 6 felony....
These broken fences will take a long time to mend It was, in the end, a contract killing, a contract massacre. And the Texas CEO who is alleged to have hired out the hit, it turns out, apparently tired of doing the job himself. The affidavit seeking the arrest of Austin corporate leader Jeff Hawn and signed on Thursday by Park County District Court Judge Stephen A. Groome reads like something out of an Old West novel - a feud between two large-spread ranchers that ends with one rounding up a posse to settle things in a fury of gunshots, blood and death. The dead, in this case, are 32 head of Fairplay rancher Monte Downare's prize bison, which his neighbor, Jeff Hawn, is now alleged to have shot and killed, or hired others to kill over several weeks dating back to late February. Jeff Hawn, who purchased his 362-acre ranch abutting Monte Downare's spread in 1995, is charged with a single felony count of theft, a single count of criminal mischief and 32 felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals. The story of the feud is long, one that culminated last February when Jeff Hawn allegedly reached his fill of Monte Downare's bison jumping or otherwise destroying his fences to graze on his property. What follows is culled directly from the arrest affidavit....
McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers. Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks. When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal. The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history. The swap involved more than 55,000 acres of land in all, including rare expanses of desert woodland and pronghorn antelope habitat. The deal had support from many local officials and the Arizona Republic newspaper for its expansion of the Prescott National Forest. But it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input....
Questions Submitted to the McCain Campaign Wednesday Answers are from Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign. 1. What led Sen. McCain to submit the legislation for the Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange in 2003? RESPONSE: At the request of the U.S. Forest Service, as well as many Northern Arizona communities, Senator McCain agreed to introduce the proposal to consolidate the largest remaining checkerboard ownership in the state to improve the management of forest lands and conservation of natural resources. The legislation also provided communities with an opportunity to acquire land needed for economic development, community services, and open space. And, perhaps most importantly to Senator McCain, in direct response to concerns raised by local communities, the final measure included requirements for responsible water use in the affected communities, which set an important precedent for the entire state. 2. Dr. Ruskin hired as lobbyists several former staff members and advisers to Sen. McCain. In what way did they influence Sen. McCain's thinking about the land exchange proposal?....
Real-Estate Drop Has a Green Lining There's a green lining to the real-estate cloud: Developers are dropping plans to build on some choice pieces of land and instead are selling it for such uses as public parks and nature preserves. One of the big beneficiaries is Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco nonprofit group that specializes in buying land for conservation. The Trust often struggled during property-boom years to find sellers among land owners near urban centers. Now, U.S. property owners from Massachusetts to Hawaii are flocking to it. One of the latest examples involves a five-mile stretch of Hawaiian beach. Last summer, a unit of Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management LP was negotiating with a hotel chain to build a mega-resort development along Oahu's fabled North Shore. Its plan for as many as five new hotels with up to 3,500 rooms and condominium units had been one of the most intensely opposed in Hawaii in years. The Trust's financial muscle to make acquisitions is growing. Its planned budget for this year is $102 million, up from $90 million last year. With the real-estate slump, "We're trying to make lemonade out of lemons," says Will Rogers, president of the Trust. In addition to the Trust, the Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Va., is among the national groups working on similar deals. Their purchases tend to be larger -- involving thousands of acres. "Two to three years ago, local farmers and ranchers were eager to sell off their land and cash out," says the Nature Conservancy's Cristina Mestre. "Now, we're being approached en masse" to buy development rights....
Kids go into the wild Dude, just look at this. How cool is this?" Cameron Renteria, 9, is buzzing with excitement over a patch of sandy earth. It's shaded by a twisting juniper and ringed by rocks. It has just enough room for him and two friends to cram onto, unpack their peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and chatter with bravado about what they'll do if they encounter mountain lions and rattlesnakes. These boys and many of the 950 other schoolchildren who were bused up the monument recently to take part in Junior Ranger Day have had few, if any, opportunities to explore wild places. To them, nature is a little scary, quite foreign, but a very cool novelty. A term has been coined for the outdoors disconnect suffered by such children: nature-deficit disorder. The phenomenon is epidemic in a generation that spends more time indoors than out and is more familiar with YouTube and "Guitar Hero" than with tadpoles and pine cones. Getting children outdoors has become a national mission. There is now a Take Your Child to Nature Day. Congress is considering A No Child Left Inside Act that would make federal funds available for environmental education. The U.S. Forest Service has started a More Kids in the Woods initiative. A coalition called the Children & Nature Network has grown to more than 40 chapters that advocate for outdoor play and programs across the country. "I think this has finally reached a point in our general consciousness," said Mark DeGregorio, education program manager at Rocky Mountain National Park....
Bear mauling wasn't Utah's fault, state official says Last summer's fatal mauling of 11-year-old Samuel Ives by a black bear was a tragedy, but Utah officials believe the blame lies with the boy's parents and the federal government, not with the state. "It's not the state's fault," assistant Utah attorney general Reed Stringham told the Deseret News. "I hope that's the message that's been conveyed throughout this. It's a tragedy, but that doesn't mean the state is responsible." Rebecca Ives and Samuel's natural father, Kevan Francis, filed lawsuits in 4th District Court and U.S. District Court in March, arguing that the state and federal governments failed to warn campers that a bear had harassed campers in the same area a day before. Had they known that, they never would have camped there and their son would still be alive, they say. The state recently filed a response to the complaint in 4th District Court, stating that because of the Utah Governmental Immunity Act, the state is protected against this prosecution. The state argues that blame should be pinned on the United States of America and the USDA Forest Service, plus Ives and Mulvey....
U.S. man jailed for 20 years for eco-bombing plot A California man described by prosecutors as an "eco-terrorist" was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison on Thursday for plotting to blow up a federal forestry site, telephone towers and other targets. Eric McDavid, 29, was convicted by a federal jury in March after two co-conspirators, Zachary Jenson and Lauren Weiner, pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government. Weiner is due to be sentenced on May 15 and Jenson on August 7. McDavid's sentence of 235 months in a federal prison "should serve as a cautionary tale to those who would conspire to commit life-threatening acts in the name of their extremist views," U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said in a statement issued in Sacramento, California. Federal prosecutors said the three defendants planned to attack targets including the U.S. Forest Service Institute of Forest Genetics, the Nimbus Dam and Fish Hatchery, cellular telephone towers and electric power stations....
Timber payments in Iraq spending bill U.S. Senator Ron Wyden announced today that $400 million is included in the Senate's Iraq supplemental spending bill for the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, commonly known as the timber payments law. The bill, which includes all of the government's emergency supplemental funding for FY 2008, is expected to pass the Senate Appropriations Committee next Thursday, May 15. Once the Senate passes the Supplemental Appropriations bill it will need to be reconciled with the House of Representative's version, which is still under negotiation. It is no sure bet. Some version of the timber payments have been included in and then axed from bills several times during the past six months. Still, Wyden was optimistic something would pass both chamber of the federal legislature. "This funding could not come sooner for Oregon's rural schools and communities," said Wyden....
Air pollution in Wyo. community rivals that of big cities There isn't anything metropolitan about this tiny unincorporated town in southwest Wyoming, where a few single-family homes and a volunteer fire station stand against a skyline of snowcapped mountains. But Boulder, with a population of just 75 people, has one thing in common with major metropolitan areas: air pollution thick enough to pose health risks. "Used to be you could see horizon to horizon, crystal clear. Now you got this," said Craig Jensen as he gestured to a pale blue sky that he says is not as deeply colored as it used to be. "Makes you wonder what it's going to do to the grass, the trees and the birds." The pollution, largely from the region's booming natural gas industry, came in the form of ground-level ozone, which has exceeded healthy levels 11 times since January and caused Wyoming to issue its first ozone alerts. Now the ozone threatens to cost the industry and taxpayers millions of dollars to stay within federal clean-air laws....
Couple told to move off land or pay feds to stay Two residents of a scenic acre of mining claim-turned- pricey real estate down valley from Telluride have fought for more than a quarter of a century to clear up disputes over ownership of the land. But federal land managers have finally determined that they are trespassers and must go — or pay dearly to stay. "We are just flabbergasted," said Sally Siegel, a preschool teacher in Telluride. "To a rational person, this decision the BLM has come to makes no sense." Siegel and husband David Mattner have been living in a modest cabin up Fall Creek Road since the 1980s — before multimillion-dollar homes started popping up in the heavily wooded area. Siegel and Mattner entered into a rent-to-own contract with a previous owner before the property became theirs, for $40,600, in 1993. But that "owner" and a string of "owners" going back to 1954 never had a legal right to the property, according to the Bureau of Land Management. To soften the impact on Siegel and Mattner, a carpenter, the BLM is offering them a three-year permit to stay in their home while they work on finding land of equal value that they could swap with the BLM or to enter into a fair-market lifetime lease, along with back rent for the past 25 years....
Man who killed eagle loses ruling A member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who killed a bald eagle for use in his tribe's Sun Dance in 2005 must stand trial, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. A panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed a 2006 decision by U.S. District Judge William Downes of Wyoming that had dismissed a criminal charge against Winslow Friday of Ethete. In dismissing the charge, Downes had ruled that the federal government does no more than pay lip service to American Indian religious practices. Downes said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service generally refuses to grant permits allowing tribal members to kill eagles, even though federal regulations say such permits should be available. But the appeals court ruled that American Indians' religious freedoms are not violated by federal law protecting eagles or its policy requiring American Indians to get permits to kill eagles....
Judge sets hearing on wolf injunction A federal judge in Montana has rejected a request by the government to delay a lawsuit seeking to place the gray wolf back on the endangered-species list, saying that he's "unwilling to risk more deaths." At least 39 of the Northern Rockies' 1,500 gray wolves have been killed since they lost federal protection in March. That action placed wolves under the authority of state wildlife agencies in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. The three states have relaxed rules for killings wolves that harass or harm livestock. The states are also planning public hunts later this year - the first in decades. Environmental and animal rights groups sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week, claiming that the loss of federal protection threatens the wolf's successful recovery. They also asked for a court injunction to restore federal control over wolves while the case is pending....
FWP OKs removal of 2 wolves Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has authorized the removal of two wolves from private land near the Middle Fork of the Dearborn River, west of Bowmans Corner. The two are in addition to three removed from the same pack last year. Wednesday night, officials confirmed a cow had been killed by wolves along the Rocky Mountain Front, and FWP authorized federal Wildlife Services to remove the radio-collared alpha male and one yearling from the Monitor Mountain pack. Late last year, Wildlife Services removed three wolves from the pack following a series of livestock incidents. As part of an incremental response, one wolf was killed on Dec. 8 and two wolves were killed on Dec. 10. This time, because the pack may have denned and have produced a litter, officials will try to protect the radio-collared alpha female and pups. There are also several yearlings with the pack....
Negotiators Agree on Farm Bill, but Bush Vows to Veto It House and Senate negotiators yesterday reached final agreement on a new farm bill that will spend close to $300 billion on nutrition, conservation, energy and farm subsidy programs over the next five years, but administration officials immediately announced that President Bush will veto it. "This bill increases subsidies to farmers at a time of record farm income," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. The negotiators "have done a disservice to taxpayers." The speedy reaction from the executive branch put the spotlight on congressional Republicans, many of whom support the legislation and might be hard-pressed to vote to uphold a veto in an election year. The package, the product of weeks of closed-door bargaining, is stuffed with plums for key constituencies. Dairy farmers will get as much as $410 million more over 10 years to cover higher feed costs, and negotiators tucked in an annual authorization of $15 million to help "geographically disadvantaged farmers" in Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa and Puerto Rico. The bill assures growers of basic crops such as wheat, cotton, corn and soybeans $5 billion a year in automatic payments, even if farm and food prices stay at record levels....
South Korean internet geeks trigger panic over US 'tainted beef' imports Tens of thousands of young internet-obsessed South Koreans, whipped into a frenzy by alarmist television programmes, a complex scientific paper on genetics and a hyperactive online rumour-mill, have held candlelit vigils protesting against imports of American beef. Believing that the meat carries a high risk of BSE and that Koreans are genetically predisposed to contracting the linked Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the online masses have taken to the streets, cursing America and demanding that their Government should act to avert catastrophe. Two features of the protests have caught the authorities, the Government and teachers offguard. The first is that, unlike the mobs that have contributed to South Korea's long history of street rallies, more than half of the demonstrators are below university age....
China eyes overseas land in food push Chinese companies will be encouraged to buy farmland abroad, particularly in Africa and South America, to help guarantee food security under a plan being considered by Beijing. A proposal drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture would make supporting offshore land acquisition by domestic agricultural companies a central government policy. Beijing already has similar policies to boost offshore investment by state-owned banks, manufacturers and oil companies, but offshore agricultural investment has so far been limited to a few small projects. If approved, the plan could face intense opposition abroad given surging global food prices and deforestation fears. However an official close to the deliberations said it was likely to be adopted. “There should be no problem for this policy to be approved. The problem might come from foreign governments who are unwilling to give up large areas of land,” the official said. The move comes as oil-rich but food-poor countries in the Middle East and north Africa explore similar options. Libya is talking with Ukraine about growing wheat in the former Soviet republic, while Saudi Arabia has said it would invest in agricultural and livestock projects abroad to ensure food security and control commodity prices....
Global free market for food and energy faces biggest threat in decades The global free market for food and energy is facing its biggest threat in decades as a host of countries push through draconian measures to hold down prices, raising fears of a new "resource nationalism" that could endanger world food security. India shocked the markets yesterday by suspending trading in futures contracts for a range of farm products in a bid to clamp down on alleged speculators and curb inflation, now running at 7.6pc. The move has been seen as a concession to India's Communist MPs - key allies of premier Manmohan Singh - who want a full-fledged ban on futures trading in sugar, cooking oil, and grains. As food and fuel riots spread across the world, a string of governments have resorted to steps that menace the free flow of food and key commodities. Argentina has banned beef exports, while Egypt and India have stopped shipments of rice....