Estate owners sue Greenpeace for prediction A group of real estate developers and property owners in La Manga del Mar Menor - a spit of sandy, low-lying coastal land and Murcia's premier beach resort - are threatening to take Greenpeace to court over its graphic predictions of what global warming may do to the area, which they say have caused house prices to plummet. The lawsuit, which the plaintiffs plan to present unless Greenpeace agrees to an out of court settlement of almost EUR 30 million in damages, comes more than six months after La Manga featured prominently in a photo book published by the environmental organisation that was intended to shock Spain into action on climate change. Along with photos of a dried up Ebro River in Zaragoza and a desert in an area of Valencia now filled with lemon and orange groves, the book, Photoclima, shows digitally modified photos of La Manga submerged in water with only the tops of hotels, apartment blocks and palm trees emerging from the blue Mediterranean. Greenpeace says the book is a graphic portrayal of the conclusions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has predicted that global warming will cause sea levels to rise around the world over the coming decades....
Global Warming Policies' Economic Chill Many Americans think that switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, buying environmentally friendly appliances and obeying a (100% recycled) bag of green living tips will be the extent of their contribution to curbing greenhouse gases. But the price tag to consumers could be a lot higher if some politicians have their way. In fact, U.S. households could expect a $2,900 annual hit to their family budget sooner than they think. That's just one figure causing concern as politicians race to address global warming. Therefore, it's worth noting that at the same time Americans are concerned about climate change, they are also very concerned about the sluggish economy and the impact it is having on the pocketbook. It is only fair, then, to view the two issues side by side. When cooler heads prevail, the reality is clear: There is weak public support for global-warming policies, which would end up costing the average family thousands of dollars. First, it's worth noting where Americans currently stand on global warming. According to Gallup, as much as 70% of the public during the late 1990s through 2000 said the environment should take priority over the economy. That number has dropped to just 49% this year....
Alaska Spending Millions to Relocate Villages Affected by Climate Change One of Alaska's most eroded villages is getting more than $3 million in state aid to help it relocate to higher ground as Alaska tries to cope with the effects of global warming. Tribal leaders in the tiny coastal community of Newtok will now be able to begin building a barge landing at their new site to bring in building materials and, wherever possible, existing structures from their storm-battered village nine miles to the north. The bulk of the $3.3 million, however, will go toward the design and possible partial construction of a road from the barge landing to a planned evacuation center. "It will boost the village site and speed up the relocation process," said tribal administrator Stanley Tom. The Yupik Eskimo community of 400 is among six remote villages tapped by the state for immediate attention because they are highly vulnerable to escalating erosion, storms and flooding linked to global warming. The state is investing nearly $13 million to protect the villages in the coming year....
Voters Waiting For Candidate Who Will Drill The recent spike in oil prices and unemployment is dramatically changing this presidential campaign — virtually overnight. The near $20 jump in oil to $140 a barrel, the unexpected half-point increase in the jobless rate to 5.5% (the biggest monthly increase in 20 years) and the resulting 400-point plunge in stocks has created a new campaign issue right before our eyes. Public worry No. 1 is now oil, jobs and the economy, with the inflationary woes of the U.S. dollar right underneath. The candidate who can connect with these issues will win in November. But so far neither Barack Obama nor John McCain is dealing with the new political reality. In fact, it's all about oil right now. The price has doubled over the past year, while the economy has slumped. But here's an eye-opener. Recent polling data from Gallup show that the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline prices has dropped from 34% to 20% over the past year. At the same time, support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57% from 41%. And the candidates remain blind to these shifts....
Ranchers: Fire proves canyon no place for Army Ranchers opposed to the Army's planned expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site say the wildfire that has blackened 42,000 acres of the training ground, plus private and state lands, is just a preview of the fire danger that would come from giving the Army more land and heavier weapons to use in the area northeast of Trinidad. "If this fire had broken out on private land, we'd have gotten on it sooner and knocked it down," said Lon Robertson, a Kim-area rancher and president of the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition. "Landowners down here know they have to work together to fight fire and they keep a closer eye on their land than the Army does." Robertson said the Army's plan to add another 414,000 acres to the training ground - plus have live artillery fire and other heavy weapons - will only increase the fire danger to surrounding landowners. "They use heavier weapons in training up at Fort Carson and look how often they have to suppress wildfires up there," he said. "We don't need that added danger down here."....
Putting Up The 'For Shale' Sign Exxon Mobil is selling its gas stations because there's no money in it. Meanwhile, two GOP congressmen do what John McCain should do — change their position on drilling in ANWR. Despite the pain at the pump for consumers, the retail side of the gasoline business isn't that profitable, if at all. Gas station owners have known this all along. Most now hope they get enough traffic at their stations to make money on auto repairs or food and drink sales. Exxon Mobil, proclaimed by the no-drill demagogues to be the poster child for gas gouging, recognizes this as well, deciding to unload its 800 company-owned stations and an additional 1,400 dealer-operated locations to distributors. Still, Democrats will say Exxon and its unindicted co-conspirators still make obscene profits. The fact is that American oil companies in 2007 had an 8.3% profit margin, compared with 8.9% for all U.S. manufacturing. The cigarette and beverage companies' profit margin was 19.1%. Drug companies made 18.4%. Nobody complains about profits made by politically connected ethanol producers such as Archer Daniels Midland. Since February 2006, the congressionally mandated use of heavily subsidized and energy-inefficient ethanol has caused the price of corn, wheat and soybeans to increase more than 200%. Isn't this price-gouging?....
Tribes get New Mexico mountain summit listed as protected A state committee has approved a proposal from five American Indian tribes to give central New Mexico's Mount Taylor temporary protection as a cultural property at a contentious meeting. The state Cultural Properties Review Committee voted 4-2 Saturday in Grants for an emergency listing of more than 422,000 acres surrounding the mountain's summit on the state Register of Cultural Properties. The Navajo Nation, the Acoma, Laguna and Zuni pueblos, and the Hopi tribe of Arizona asked the state to approve the listing for a mountain they consider sacred to protect it from an anticipated uranium mining boom, according to the nomination report. The listing lasts for a year, after which the committee is to determine if it should be listed permanently....
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Especially When Your Neighbor is an Endangered Frog A Forest Service proposal to fence cattle out of a sensitive stretch of creek in the Klamath Basin to protect the Oregon spotted frog seems to have tentative support from both ranchers and environmentalists. Last month, conservation groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, and the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center sued, arguing that federal environmental laws require the Forest Service to halt grazing when it “results in loss of species viability or creates a significant trend toward federal listing.” The decision to build the fence responds to this suit. “This is welcome news for the Oregon spotted frog,” said Noah Greenwald, science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Once an abundant species throughout the Northwest, the frog now has so few remaining populations that every one counts.” On Wednesday, representatives of the Center for Biological Diversity and Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics toured Jack Creek along with the Forest Service and the local rancher who runs cows on the allotment. They were there to look over the Forest Service’s solution to the problem: A three-and-a-half-mile-long fence that will exclude cattle from the frog’s breeding grounds in Jack Creek, while allowing the rancher to continue to utilize 90 percent of the allotment for cattle grazing. The Forest Service is also planning additional steps to restore frog habitat, including reintroduction of beaver, which build dams and create pools necessary for the frogs to thrive, clearing encroaching saplings from meadows, and repairing damaged stream banks. In response to the fence proposal, the conservation groups have temporarily set aside their motion for a preliminary injunction against grazing. “I believe this is the first frog fence in the United States,” said James Johnston of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics....
At the Time, They Said He Was Crazy Back in the 1980s, it became an article of faith among well- meaning "environmentalists" that grazing cattle on arid Western lands serves to "destroy fragile ecosystems." Western ranchers presented evidence that desert plants developed in an ecosystem that needs large ungulate grazers to churn their seeds into the soil, to fertilize wetlands, to carry moisture into arid valleys and thus benefit tortoise populations - which is why more tortoises are found on grazed land than ungrazed. The ranchers argued that grazing prevents the buildup of excess tinder that can make range fires more frequent and severe, that game species profit from the ranchers' water improvements and efforts at predator control. The forces seeking to remove mankind from the land scoffed at such arguments. They canceled grazing "permits" left and right. The U.S. Forest Service ordered that Nevada rancher and private property rights advocate Wayne Hage, in one example, could use "only hand tools" to trim back trees clogging the canals that had brought water to his 125-year-old, 700,000-acre Pine Creek Ranch in central Nevada. In 1991, Wayne Hage sued. On Friday, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Loren A. Smith ruled Mr. Hage was right, and the Forest Service was wrong. The judge awarded more than $4.2 million to the plaintiffs, ruling the U.S. Forest Service committed an unconstitutional "taking" of his water rights during their decades-long dispute over livestock grazing. Judge Smith also ordered the government to pay back interest to the family of a man considered one of the leaders of the 1980s "Sagebrush Rebellion" - an additional $4.4 million. And the government is also ordered to pay the Hage family's legal costs - another $4 million....
Nevada rancher wins property rights award A federal judge has awarded more than $4.2 million to the estate of late Nevada rancher and private property rights advocate Wayne Hage, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service committed a constitutional "taking" of his water rights during a decades-long dispute over livestock grazing on federal land. Calling the conflict a "drama worthy of a tragic opera and heroic characters," U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Loren A. Smith also ordered the government to pay back interest to the family of one of the leaders of the so-called "Sagebrush Rebellion" during the 1980s. Hage's lawyer estimates the interest dating to 1991 to be an additional $4.4 million, which he said would make it the largest award ever in such a case. "It sends a pretty important message to the government that if you screw with a small ranching family and put them out of business, you have to pay big bucks," said Lyman "Ladd" Bedford, a San Francisco-based lawyer who has argued the case since Hage first filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in 1991. Smith, based in Washington D.C., ruled that government restrictions severely reducing water flows to Hage's land "deprived them of the water they needed for irrigation, making the ranch unviable." However, Smith said the taking occurred when the Forest Service -- apparently motivated by "hostility" toward Hage -- made it impossible for him to maintain the irrigation ditches. Like in similar cases in the past, the judge said the cancellation of Hage's federal grazing permit as a result of overgrazing and trespassing did not in itself amount to a "taking" prohibited under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. That's because a grazing permit is "a license, not a contract or property interest," he said....
American Ranching Family Wins 17-Year Battle with the Federal Government An epic 17-year battle between an American ranching family and the federal government has ended in favor of the family. The estates of Wayne and Jean Hage can finally claim a Fifth Amendment precedent-setting property rights victory. Loren A. Smith, Senior Judge for the United States Court of Federal Claims issued his final opinion in Hage v. United States (Case No. 91-1470L), ending the decades-long battle by deciding that the federal government indeed took the private property rights of E. Wayne and Jean Hage and awarding them deserved compensation. The court ruled that the Hages owned the water rights, ditch rights of ways, and range improvements on the federal grazing allotments. The court made clear that the government has the right to authorize grazing, but does not have the right to prevent the plaintiff from accessing their water rights on federal lands. (Case #91-1470L, The Estate of E. Wayne Hage and the Estate of Jean N. Hage v. The United States, June 6, 2008.) "This decision is important to every American because it reaffirms our basic right to own property, whether you live in a major US city or rural America," commented Margaret Byfield, the Hage's third daughter and executive director of the Stewards of the Range organization which has supported the case since the beginning. Wayne and Jean Hage filed their takings case in 1991, claiming the U.S. Forest Service had denied their rights to graze their livestock on federal land and actively prevented them from accessing and maintaining their water rights. The family has endured 17 years of court hearings and trials, and has won at every level, including the final round. "This is clearly a victory for my parents, who never gave up," commented Ruth Agee, the second of the five Hage children. Wayne and Jean are both buried on the private meadows at Pine Creek Ranch, which will remain with the family. Pine Creek Ranch was established in 1865, and purchased by the Hage family in 1978. The private fee lands encompass 7,000 acres, but as the court points out, "To raise cattle economically in such an arid region, Plaintiffs depend upon access to large quantities of land, including federal land, and to the limited water supply." In 1979, one year after the family purchased the ranch trouble began with the Forest Service when the USFS allowed the release of non-indigenous elk on the Hage's Table Mountain allotment. The elk began competing with their cattle for forage and water. However, instead of controlling the elk, the Forest Service reduced and ultimately canceled the Hage's grazing permits. Years of harassment by the federal government followed, including over 70 "visits" from the Forest Service and 40 letters charging them with various violations, which many, the court noted, were "extremely minor infractions." The court further pointed out that the Forest Service made many unreasonable requirements. "In addition, the Forest Service insisted that Plaintiffs maintain their 1866 Act ditches with nothing other than hand tools." After the Forest Service canceled the remaining grazing permits in 1990, the family was forced to file their takings case known as Hage v. United States....
Court stops privacy for livestock database The Agriculture Department has suspended indefinitely the time until a database for its National Animal Identification System (NAIS) would become subject to Privacy Act safeguards. USDA had planned to make the records confidential effective June 9 but announced the postponement in the Federal Register June 10. The change was the result of a restraining order sought by freelance journalist Mary-Louise Zanoni against USDA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On June 4, the court ordered the department to suspend its effective date for applying Privacy Act safeguards to the records system, Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer said in a notice dated June 6. The dispute concerns access to files containing the names of farmers, ranchers and livestock companies. Data about their premises, locations and livestock movements are stored in the National Premises Information Repository, which is the initial step toward NAIS....
Disease resurfaces in Wyo cattle Two cows in Sublette County likely have been infected with brucellosis, state officials said Thursday. The discovery, which comes less than two years since Wyoming's cattle industry was declared "brucellosis-free," raises the possibility that it could lose that status again -- if the disease is found in another cattle herd within two years. The positive blood tests have so far been isolated to two black Angus cows from the same herd near Daniel, officials said. Blood tests are not a fool-proof method for determining whether animals are infected with brucellosis, but blood samples from these particular cows were put through a battery of six diagnostic tests apiece, all of which produced "strong" positive reactions. That indicates a high probability the animals were indeed infected with the disease, said State Veterinarian Walt Cook. The cattle were slaughtered, and tissues from the animals are in the process of being analyzed at the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie to confirm the blood tests, Cook said. It could take two weeks or more before the final results are available. Montana is expected to lose its brucellosis-free status in the coming days after a cow there tested positive for exposure to the bacterial disease, the second case in that state in just over a year....
Tex quits cows Most people in the White Mountains know him as "Tex." At 91, Tex Truelock is tough as a boot heel and sharp as a barbed wire fence. More than 60 years after he came to northeastern Arizona, he decided to get out of the cattle business for good. He summed up the reasons as only a Texas cattleman could: "Can't get help, there's no feed, costs have gone up, and the environmentalists." You could spend hours discussing the plight of cattlemen in the West, but that's about it. At noon on June 6 he told the photographer and me, "177 cows went out this morning." A mixture of grief and relief played on his face - grief to see the last of his mother cows go off in trucks, relief that the work was over. The "work" being a lifetime of roping, riding, branding, fence building, pulling wells, moving cattle, shipping cattle, repairing machinery, calving and doctoring, training colts, putting out salt and feed, chopping ice and all the other chores that make up the life of a rancher. That was in addition to working for wages to support a family. He looked at me, grinned and said, "I'm tired."....
Girls, Courtrooms and Heroes Stories where the good guys turn out to be bad guys, where the courtroom unearths corruption, where a town is forced to question its identity. They usually involve a girl who lives a little too fast with a father who exited early and an overworked and tired mother. They are girls who grow up fast and hard with bright smiles. In Ada, Oklahoma, it’s the story of the wrongly imprisoned Ron Williamson. A dead girl, a fallen baseball hero, dirty cops and an imprudent district attorney helped John Grisham hit the NY Times Bestseller List with An Innocent Man. Head north and a little west to Kalispell, Montana for the story of Dick Dasen, the seemingly altruistic businessman who fed the meth habits of young girls in exchange for sex. Turn straight down and east to Las Cruces, New Mexico to find the story of Cricket Coogler, most recently chronicled by Paula Moore in Cricket in the Web. Moore writes that Cricket was one of those girls. A waitress, a high school dropout, the daughter of a dead father and a hard-working mom, Cricket Coogler lived hard and fast for an seventeen year old girl in 1940s Las Cruces. She ran with political types from Santa Fe who were drawn to Las Cruces by the sparse and friendly law enforcement and the prolific illegal gambling. On March 31, 1949, the last night she was seen alive, she frequented no more than five bars in the company of three different men. Seventeen days later they found her body under a creosote bush in Mesquite, New Mexico....
'Pushed out' by bigger operation Doak Good had settled in comfortably in his rock and adobe house at Portales Springs, but his peaceful existence did not last long. In 1882 Jim Newman began bringing his cattle from Texas to Salt Lake and established the DZ Ranch near Arch, 11 miles east of Good’s place. The springs that fed Salt Lake only provided enough water to fill a few dirt troughs, so Newman’s cattle would drift over to the plentiful water at the lake, which was fed by the Portales Springs. Bad feelings developed and violence was bound to follow. After the fight with Gabe Henson, which he blamed on Newman, Good was afraid to stay by himself, and he picked up a transient boy about 14 years old to work for him. Old-time cowboy Col. Jack Potter had this to say about the new cowhand: “He was a hard-looking kid; had an old Stetson hat with the crown out, thrown away by some cowpuncher. He had long hair and it stuck out through the crown of the hat. He was dubbed by the cowboys as ‘Portales Bill,’ though I learned later his real name was McElmore.” Good gave him a few dogies or mavericks for his work, and it was commonly believed that he added to his herd by rustling other people’s cattle....
Single-horned beast appears A deer with a single horn in the center of its head -- much like the fabled, mythical unicorn -- has been spotted in a nature preserve in Italy, park officials said Wednesday. ''This is fantasy becoming reality,'' Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, told The Associated Press. ''The unicorn has always been a mythological animal.'' The 1-year-old Roe Deer -- nicknamed ''Unicorn'' -- was born in captivity in the research center's park in the Tuscan town of Prato, near Florence, Tozzi said. He is believed to have been born with a genetic flaw; his twin has two horns. Calling it the first time he has seen such a case, Tozzi said such anomalies among deer may have inspired the myth of the unicorn. The unicorn, a horse-like creature with magical healing powers, has appeared in legends and stories throughout history, from ancient and medieval texts to the adventures of Harry Potter. ''This shows that even in past times, there could have been animals with this anomaly,'' he said by telephone. ''It's not like they dreamed it up.'' Single-horned deer are rare but not unheard of -- but even more unusual is the central positioning of the horn, experts said....