Monday, September 07, 2015

Burning Man 2015: The man burns and Burners break camp

Black Rock City erupted in cheering as the gigantic wooden man burned on Saturday night at Burning Man. Following fireworks and fire dancing, the man exploded in a ball of flame and collapsed into ashes after about 45 minutes. The vibration of music lasted through the night and well into the early morning. By sunrise, however, it was quite a different story. While some Burners had left earlier in the week due to high winds throughout the event, the bulk of 70,000 attendees were getting ready to leave by Sunday. Traffic on Pyramid Highway and Intersate I-80 was expected to be heavy Sunday and Monday, with varying degrees of backed-up traffic. “Today’s mission is to find a way back home,” said Bastian Ernst, who lives in San Francisco...more


A psychedelic send-off for 'the godfather of LSD': Susan Sarandon at Burning Man

Susan Sarandon led a very belated funeral procession for her dear friend, the 'godfather of LSD' Timothy Leary, at Burning Man on Saturday. Clutching his ashes on the march into a makeshift church, the 67-year-old actress - who was wearing a bridal gown - said she had wanted to lay Leary to rest where he would be surrounded by revelers who had taken the psychedelic drug to honor his memory. 'I think he'd be so happy,' Sarandon said of Leary, who died and was cremated in 1996. 'I think he would have loved the chaos. He would have loved it. And all these people honoring him with LSD.' Sarandon led a march to bring his ashes into the 'church', which was built as an art installation at the festival, according to USA Today. The church was set alight on Saturday after the Burning Man statue was burned. Sarandon told USA Today that the festival struck her as the perfect resting place for Leary when she visited it in 2014. This year she returned with her share of his ashes to ceremoniously say goodbye, as she camped with a collection of artists and helped build a 'Totem Of Confessions' with California photographer Michael Garlington. Most of Leary's ashes were sent into outer space in 1997, but Sarandon kept some...more


At Burning Man, you'll see lots of crazy driving: cupcake cars, an octopus, even a mobile phone

In the early years of Burning Man, the annual festival in the Nevada desert that celebrates what it calls "dreamers and doers," there were Art Cars: automobiles so baroquely decorated that the only rational reaction was to stop and gape. When the event migrated from a San Francisco beach to the Nevada desert in 1990, there were but a dozen such conveyances. The most iconic was “Oh My God!” -- a vintage VW festooned with knick-knacks. It was the brainchild of Harrod Blank, who later made the film "Wild Wheels." If the policy of letting people doll up their passenger cars had continued, the event, which began Tuesday and continues through Monday, would be inundated with customized Fords and Toyotas. As attendance grew, the dangers of that route became evident. So in the late 1990s, the Burning Man organization revised the rules. Art Cars were out; Mutant Vehicles were in. “A Mutant Vehicle,” Burning Man says, “is a unique, motorized creation that shows little or no resemblance to [its] original form, or to any standard street vehicle.” Burning Man does more than define what a Mutant Vehicle is. There are immutable rules governing every MV’s lighting, safety and sound. They must also be interactive (not just for the builders) and truly mutated: There must be a “wow factor.”...more

Sunday, September 06, 2015

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

The last straw

 by Julie Carter

John Wayne taught about every cowboy I know how to be fearless. It’s the movies, but they believe it anyway.

They will fight to get on a horse that clearly has blood in his eye and rope wild cattle that would love nothing better than run a horn through them or their horses. They will climb windmill towers in a blizzard wind and track cougars through the snow, fly crop dusters like a wild man, and generally undertake most any dangerous activity they can dream up.

On occasion, they will even go so far as to order their wives around.

When not endangering themselves, they love nothing better than to help their pards out along those same lines.

Butch was running a big working crew and had already put in a full day. With great concentration, sitting astride his cowpony, he was counting cattle out the gate.

“Butch,” came a voice from behind him. Butch went on counting; ignoring the idiot that would dare interrupt.

“Butch,” came the voice again and getting the same response as before.

This continued but Butch just kept counting. When the last cow got through the gate, Butch turned and said, “What do you want, Frank?”

Frank tossed a big rattlesnake onto Butch’s lap and the wreck was on.

When the horse was back under control, the snake shaken off and his heart rate back below the critical stage, Butch rode over to Frank. He gave him a mean squinty-eyed look and said, “I might not could whup you, but I could surely hit you up side the head with this saddle gun I have.”

Frank took this statement under thoughtful consideration.

The next week Frank was horseback counting cattle while Butch was slowly driving the feed truck along and putting out feed. Frank tossed another big snake in the front seat of the truck. Butch bailed out the other side, the truck continued on, and Frank beat a cowboy retreat for parts afar.

During the rather colorful discussion that followed somewhat later, it was determined that Frank would not give Butch any more snakes, no matter the circumstances.

At the next cattle working, Butch seemed to have misplaced his gloves. Nobody would admit to anything, even with Butch’s threats about what he’d do if he found out someone assisted the gloves in going missing.

At the break, Frank brought out a Banty rooster he had brought from home and carefully put him in the large cardboard box full of ear tags.

When they started working again, he fessed up to Butch about his gloves and told him they were in the ear tag box. The flapping sqawking rooster moment that followed when the box was opened was not nearly as good as the rattlesnake chaos, but it would do.

The next day Butch told Frank to saddle up the new bay colt and put some miles on him. He specifically told him to ride across the tank dam and show the colt how to do that, get him used to it. 

Frank rode the skittish, scared colt onto the dam -- fence on one side, water on the other-- when a big Canadian goose whose nest was disturbed by this intruder, raised up, flapped her wings and hissed loudly at Frank.

You can break a colt to tolerate a lot of things, but a mad momma goose on the fight is not one of them.

It had taken awhile, but it was in this moment, Frank had an epiphany. He was thinking maybe it was time to give Butch a break.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com

Wolves and People - Open letter to ONO Hearing Officers

MGW Impacts – Apache County Federal Hearing
Wolves and People
Open letter to ONO Hearing Officers
By Stephen L. Wilmeth


To the Office of the National Ombudsman officials overseeing Regulatory Fairness Hearing, September 9, 2015, Springerville, Arizona:

In an attempt to maintain civility on the matter of the extralegal expansion of the Mexican gray wolf (MGW) program in Arizona and New Mexico, many of us out here with duties, responsibilities, and investments in directly and indirectly impacted lands affected by the wolf appreciate your willingness to hold this meeting. Heretofore, any federal agency meeting that was held was an exercise in hierarchy condescension. It is quite obvious that no amount of pleading or local displeasure of the program had any effect on the agency’s action.
Their agenda was crystal clear from the onset. The wolves were coming, the wolves had legal status, and the rights of the wolves held dominion over any input voiced or submitted by the citizenry.
In the absence of any substantive congressional moderation of the wolf impact, one externality that has come from this societal war of attrition is the self education of the citizenry. Many people can not only quote verbatim from various laws, they can debate the spirit of the original intent. For example, they know that a major flaw of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the open-endedness of the cost for species salvation.
As a matter of interest, the estimated accrued expenditure for the MGW measured on a per acre basis in the recovery footprint (4.4 million acres) is $16.59. That is money taken from taxpayers and will never be returned.
Wolf prey is various, but any four legged ruminant is fair game. Wildlife is mobile and can theoretically disperse from wolf pressure. That is the clarion cry by the wolf advocates. Domestic livestock cannot. It is confined by fenced administrative boundaries. Since, there was never any habitat or prey based studies done that reflected the recovery area specifically, the impact to livestock must be a major cost and certainly one of high interest to your body of officials.
You have likely received some credible input on costs, but I will submit another model for the attempt to quantify the actual loss over time from predation of livestock compounded by joint agency livestock management. The factor of significance in the heart of the wolf recovery area, the calculated value of my data for net weaned calves for sale, is 64%. Based on that factor and rainfall, total returns to management (federal and private), capital and risk should run about $5.25 per acre annually. That suggests that, over the life of the program, the opportunity cost, the unharvested revenues resulting from the consequences of the wolf program and agency management, amount to about $3.25 per acre per year. Since the inception of the program, that now equates to $58.50 per acre. That is a monstrous tax imposed on the release area citizenry.
If Catron County, the land most affected by the release of wolves in New Mexico, had a population that would meet the minimum criteria in the federal review of the nation’s “most at risk counties”, it would be jump to one of the top three counties at highest risk. Factors of most concern in those counties relate to unemployment, the ratios of demographics (relative proportion of young to older age groups), shortfall of tax harvest, the opportunities for youth, the relative concentration of private enterprise jobs as a percentage of total jobs, and other factors.
In short, Catron County is one of the nation’s most at risk counties, and the overwhelming dominion of federal agency impact is the major contributory factor. The wolf is a major part of societal dismemberment in that county.
The recovery area is a major sink of regional and national treasury. The net losses to society and the sagging fortunes of its citizenry are staggering. A number equating to $75 per acre of loss in recovery area over the life of the program is likely conservative. When an economic multiplier affect is considered, the total loss approaches $450 per acre.
The subjective pleas from the citizenry for relief have gone for naught. Mental health concerns, the departure of family units, the stagnation of the economy, the loss of pets and livestock, the repeated requests for local land planning consideration, and even the simple suggestion the wolf is not a legal endangered species has failed to gain traction. It doesn’t matter what the local logic has been. It wasn’t adequate to alter the scope or the thrust of the program. The federal government has demonstrated it is oblivious to local needs. The wolf and its organic protection, the ESA, have held sway as the agency and the federal government’s priority.
People don’t matter.
What must matter, however, is the cost of saving the contrived MGW program through ESA. The total cost to the counties and to the nation has now likely passed the $2 billion mark and it shows no suggestion of moderating its meteoric explosive rise. Somebody ought to start noticing this cause celebré in the southwestern wilderness. Tax payers in the other 48 states must recognize that $2 billion here and $2 billion there start adding up to some serious billions for the existential gratification of having animals running around that don’t have the DNA to adapt to the world today.
A gigantic treasury sink exists. A gigantic raid on national wealth exists. A gigantic displacement of rural society is in progress. A gigantic hoax has been promulgated on this nation and it will never change or get better under the current habitat, prey base, and genetic capability of the main actor, the Mexican gray wolf.
Someone out there please listen … we’ll leave the light on for you.

Sincerely,

Stephen L. Wilmeth
Rancher from southern New Mexico
“In the annals of time, wolves and man have never existed as active coequal competing alpha carnivores. Only false science or worse will convince society to continue this madness.”

Baxter Black: T. Tommy and BAD NEWS


First, a little about T. Tommy; he likes Corrientes, carries a stock whip and is good help when you need a team ropin' partner, a good hand on a gather, isn't bad on a back hoe and is good to his dog.

I'm sure he has had many fine team roping horses. His arena is open to all and he always has some steers around to practice on.

He and I have many things in common, including that our 'build' is similar. To put it descriptively, we don't have a lot of meat on our bones. As we grow older we get stringier, looking more like a praying mantis or an old greyhound than the Michelin Tire man. We can still reach the stirrup but the saddle seat gets harder and harder to sit in, the older we get. We have no natural padding.

At the last branding we were comparing gripes and I showed him my solution to our problem. It involves leather string, a piece of wool fleece and one of man's greatest creations since rubber was invented, the coccyx cushion! Yes! It is designed to pad those who have broken their tailbone (which neither of us have.)

He climbed into my saddle and made a short circle. I could see the light in his eyes. A tear ran down his cheek, "It's so so...the relief I can it makes me I can sit tall in the saddle again!"

Well, Larry has known T. Tommy longer than I have and so is able to tell more stories about him than I can. Like the time he did a complete cartwheel from the back of his horse and lived to tell about it.


The Environmentalist Rhetoric Guide

By Jack Spencer

Market research surveys commissioned by one of the nation’s largest environmentalist groups advises activists to “talk about yourselves as conservationists — not environmentalists,” “do not make global warming/climate change the primary rationale for conservation,” “do not use the threat of ‘sprawl’ unless with core supporters,” and “do not focus on ‘green’ jobs as a primary rationale for conservation.”

These quotes are found in a pair of documents, one from 2004 and one from 2013, that expose what might be called the environmental movement’s political messaging intended for public consumption.

The documents are based on research commissioned by The Nature Conservancy, which is generally considered to be less strident than most environmentalist organizations. The older one is located on a website of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, among the “course documents” for “Communicating Conservation to Citizens: Communications Course 2009.”

Here are a few excerpts from the documents:

From the 2004 document — “Do talk about yourselves as ‘conservationists’ — not ‘environmentalists.’  This bears repeating. Voters are more likely to view themselves as ‘conservationists’ than ‘environmentalists.’ Moreover, in the focus groups, there was a decided skepticism about the agendas of some ‘environmental groups’ who engage in land preservation.”

From the 2013 document — “Do not make global warming/climate change the primary rationale for conservation. While scientists clearly link global warming to increasingly extreme weather events that affect the safety of people and communities, it is not yet perceived similarly by the public. The most politically polarizing rationales for conservation are those that position climate change as the primary reason for engaging in conservation. Republicans and Independents rated these messages significantly lower than other rationales in support of conservation.”...

From the 2004 document, and stressed again in the 2013 document — “Do talk about water first and foremost. Water cannot be stressed enough, and really it doesn’t matter how you say it. In fact, voters prioritize water as a critical reason to purchase and protect land, no matter how it is expressed: vast majorities of those polled see it as ‘very important’ to buy land to protect drinking water quality (84 percent); improve the water quality in our lakes, streams and rivers (75 percent); protect lakes, rivers and streams (72 percent); and protect watersheds (66 percent).”...

2004 — “Do not use ‘endangered species’ as interchangeable with wildlife — voters view them differently. While voters are broadly supportive of protecting wildlife, the focus groups demonstrated that ‘endangered species’ is a more polarizing term. Voters can point to examples where environmental regulations have held up important projects in order to protect what many deem to be obscure and unimportant species.”

2004 — “Do not say ‘open space.’ ‘Open space’ is not one of the better terms to use in the vocabulary of conservation, and ‘urban open space’ is even worse. In the focus groups, voters perceived ‘open space’ as empty land, not near them, and did not necessarily see how they benefited from it or could use it. ‘Urban open space’ was perceived as a bench between skyscrapers, or an abandoned lot.”



 

AWR knows little about forest bill -- but a lot about lawsuits

by



...The AWR playbook is always the same. Last month they stopped a fire fuel reduction project near Red Lodge and a collaborative stewardship project near the Clark Fork River. Both lawsuits claimed the USFS failed to address economics and impacts to certain species. Of course, they also seek attorney fees.

Undoing the work of collaborative projects is nothing new to this group. Three years ago, AWR got a District Judge to stop a timber sale in the Swan Valley because they felt it didn’t include enough lynx habitat analysis. The project was endorsed by wilderness groups, state agencies and two retired Forest Service chiefs. Even though the plan included 10 years of lynx research and the court admitted the project “complied with lynx critical habitat standards” it still ruled for additional analysis.

...Montanans should be alarmed current laws allow groups like this to profit from obstruction. The funds to pay AWR don’t come from designated agency budgets—they come from individual forests—taking away tax dollars that could be used for important projects that benefit all of us instead of just Garrity and his attorneys.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation suggests using these funds to improve forest health and wildlife habitat, and to create more access and recreation opportunities on public lands. Frivolous lawsuits have nearly eliminated logging from forest management. Forests have suffered and much of the current wildfires are the result.

David Allen is president and CEO of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Erin Brockovich joins the Navajo Nation against EPA

Erin Brockovich is joining Navajo Nation's political battle against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The famed environmental activist will visit Navajo Nation on Sept. 8 to view the affects of a devastating EPA mining leak and could potentially testify on Capitol Hill later this month.  Navajo leaders are prepping a massive lawsuit against EPA officials for their handling of an Aug. 5 mining accident in Colorado. The leak dumped 3 million gallons of contaminated water into Animas River and ultimately the San Juan River — one of the Navajo Nation's primary water sources.  "I am deeply concerned with the actions of the U.S. EPA and I stand by the Navajo Nation," Brockovich said in a statement. "The U.S. government needs to clean up the mess they caused." Brockovich gained national fame in 2000 as the source of inspiration for the blockbuster film "Erin Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts. The film chronicled her time as a legal clerk in the 1990s, when she helped investigate illness in a poor California town that was tied to groundwater pollutants.  It led to a $333 million settlement against Pacific Gas and Electric — at the time, the largest settlement ever in a direct action lawsuit...more

Duke Researcher: Owning A Car ’80 Percent’ Riskier Than Owning A Gun

Like a sledge hammer falling on a glass table, Duke Researcher Chris Conover has dropped scholarly methods and results on the anti-gun rhetoric regarding gun ownership versus car ownership to show that owning a car is “80 percent” riskier than owning a gun, as it relates to the lives of others. Conover is Research Scholar at the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University. Writing in Forbes, Conover pointed to myriad arguments put forth by gun control groups on the topic–all of them contending that the level of gun deaths vs the level of car deaths show gun ownership most dangerous. Breitbart news previously reported that such arguments have been put forth by The Economist, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, among others.  But Conovor shows that those making these claims are basing them on the number of deaths–gun-related deaths vs car-related deaths–without taking into account how many tens of millions more guns there are than cars in this country...more

Malnourished two-year-old found being breastfed by dog

A malnourished two-year-old boy has been rescued by Chilean police after he was found being breastfed by a neighbour’s dog. A witness saw the dog, called Reina, feeding the boy on Thursday at a mechanic’s workshop in the desert port of Arica, more than 1,000 miles north of the capital, Santiago, according to police. The boy was also suffering from a skin infection and lice infestation, according to 24Hora.cl...more 

Ranch Radio Song Of The Day #1482

Our gospel tune today is This World Is Not My Home by Jim Reeves.  This version of the song is on the 2015 CD The New Gospel Recordings

https://youtu.be/j6GAH0V7asg

Saturday, September 05, 2015

Feds Spend $236,517 for Cellphone Game to Teach 11-Year-Old Kenyans How to Use Condoms

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending over $200,000 to create a mobile game that will teach young teens in Kenya to use condoms. The game also seeks to “educate very young adolescents” about HIV and “harmful gender norms.” “The overall goal of the proposed project is to contribute to reductions in HIV incidence among youth in sub- Saharan Africa,” according to the NIH grant. “The objective of our proposed study is to advance that goal by developing, building and pilot-testing an interactive electronic game for preadolescents that will be informed by socio-behavioral and pedagogical theories, evidence-based practice, and unique formative research on youth sexual culture in sub- Saharan Africa.” The primary goal of the project is to “design and develop a mobile phone game for young Kenyans ages 11-14 focused on increasing age at sexual debut and condom use at first sex.”...more

Sexual debut?  That's not what I called it and I'm pretty sure there wasn't any pedagogical theory to explain it.

I know the gov't is inefficient, but $200,000 for phone sex?  

11 Year Old Thwarts Home Invasion With A Gun, Cops Criticize Mother

An 11-year-old boy shoots an almost 17-year-old who had broken into his home, saving his 4-year-old sister and scaring away another burglar. The burglars repeatedly tried to break into the home, finally succeeding on their third attempt. The mother apparently purchased the handgun because of several previous attempted break-ins of her home. One can only imagine the relief that the mother had that her children were safe. Yet, the reaction from police and authorities was to question why the gun was so easily accessible. Police Sargent Brian Schellman told KTVI in St. Louis: “Just seems at this point that any one can pull the trigger on a weapon. Its very scary.” Missouri is a state with a so-called “safe storage law,” one that imposes criminal liability when a minor under 18 gains access to a negligently stored firearm. But no one seems to ask what would have happened if the children hadn’t been able to protect themselves...more

Justice Department to Require Warrants for Cell Phone Tracking Technology

The Justice De­part­ment said Thursday it will re­quire its law-en­force­ment agents to get a war­rant be­fore us­ing tech­no­logy that tracks the loc­a­tion of cell phone users by pos­ing as cell­phone towers. The cell phone-track­ing tech­no­logy, which sweeps up identi­fy­ing in­form­a­tion from every mo­bile device with­in range in or­der to find a tar­get device’s loc­a­tion, has been met with cri­ti­cism from pri­vacy ad­voc­ates who have raised con­cerns about the wide­spread data col­lec­tion it makes pos­sible. Some­times called Stin­grays after a pop­u­lar mod­el used by law en­force­ment, the cell-site sim­u­lat­ors op­er­ate by mim­ick­ing a cell­phone tower and es­tab­lish­ing con­nec­tions with nearby devices search­ing for a cell sig­nal. When devices con­nect to the sim­u­lat­or, they trans­mit identi­fy­ing in­form­a­tion. Po­lice can single out a device and use the dir­ec­tion and strength of the sig­nal to ac­quire its loc­a­tion. The Justice De­part­ment has his­tor­ic­ally re­mained highly se­cret­ive about the tech­no­logy, of­ten push­ing state and loc­al po­lice to stay si­lent about their us­age of the sim­u­lat­ors. Stin­grays do not re­ceive GPS in­form­a­tion, and may not be used to in­ter­cept com­mu­nic­a­tion to and from mo­bile devices, or the data stored on them, ac­cord­ing to the Justice De­part­ment. In ad­di­tion to re­quir­ing war­rants, the de­part­ment also set data-re­ten­tion and de­le­tion stand­ards, stip­u­lat­ing that all data must be de­leted once the tar­get of the cel­lu­lar sur­veil­lance has been iden­ti­fied and set­ting up audit­ing pro­grams to make sure the de­le­tion stand­ards are fol­lowed. The policy ap­plies to Justice De­part­ment law en­force­ment only, and does not ex­tend to state and loc­al po­lice. Ac­cord­ing to re­cords ob­tained by the Amer­ic­an Civil Liber­ties Uni­on, 53 agen­cies in 21 states and the Dis­trict of Columbia own and op­er­ate Stin­grays...more

Friday, September 04, 2015

Arizona files motion to intervene in lawsuit over wolf shootings

The state has filed a motion to involve itself in a lawsuit in which environmental groups allege that the U.S. Department of Justice is failing to prosecute those who illegally kill endangered Mexican gray wolves. The motion, filed in a case brought by WildEarth Guardians and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, declares Arizona as a party with an interest in the case. “The Mexican wolf issue is going better than it ever has,” said Mike Robby, who oversees the wolf recovery program for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “The challenges do not have to do as much with biology, rather the social pressures coming from environmental groups and cattle farmers alike.” The groups sued in July, saying a Justice Department policy that the agency can only prosecute those who kill wolves if officials can prove the person intended to kill an endangered species. That makes it easy for those who kill wolves to claim they thought a Mexican gray wolf was a coyote, the groups contend. The lawsuit said 48 wolves have been illegally killed since the reintroduction began...more

Forest Service spent record $243M last week on wildfires

The U.S. Forest Service spent a record $243 million last week battling forest fires around the country, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday. The agency has spent all the money Congress provided for fighting wildfires in the 12-month budget period, forcing it to borrow money from forest restoration work designed to reduce the risk of fires. That's happened in six of the past 10 years, Vilsack said. Vilsack said further transfers are likely and the agency expects to continue spending about $200 million per week on fire suppression during the coming weeks. The administration is pushing Congress to change how the government pays for fighting wildfires. It wants to treat some fires as federal disasters. The new disaster account would cover the cost of fighting the most damaging fires, which would reduce the pressure on other parts of the Forest Service budget. Republicans are working on proposals that would end the transfers, but they also want to make changes in federal law designed to speed up the pace of thinning projects on federal lands...more

FBI admits to spying on Burning Man

Federal agents spied on Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert in 2010, citing the need to collect intelligence and prevent terrorism, newly released documents reveal. However, they found no threats apart from festival-goers using 'illegal drugs.' Internal documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation were provided to investigative journalist Inkoo Kang in February 2013, but were just made public as the 29th annual festival got under way. Some 70,000 people were expected in attendance at Black Rock City, a temporary camp in the remote desert of Nevada. An August 19, 2010 memo from the FBI to all field offices says the Bureau would work with the local authorities to “aid in the prevention of terrorist activities and intelligence collection.” Another memo, a week later, says the Bureau was contacted by a security company hired by Burning Man to do a threat assessment. The FBI said it had “no intelligence indicating any outside threats, domestic or international,” to the event. To the Bureau’s knowledge, the greatest threats during the festival were “crowd control issues and use of illegal drugs by participants.” Even so, the Bureau’s Las Vegas office sent an unspecified number of agents to attend Burning Man, citing the “ongoing war on terrorism and potential for additional acts of terrorism” in the US. The agents filed a report on September 27, noting that the festival passed “with no adverse threats or actions.” The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued almost 300 citations and arrested 8 people at the 2010 event, attended by more than 50,000 ‘Burners’...more

FBI admits to spying on Burning Man

Federal agents spied on Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert in 2010, citing the need to collect intelligence and prevent terrorism, newly released documents reveal. However, they found no threats apart from festival-goers using 'illegal drugs.' Internal documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation were provided to investigative journalist Inkoo Kang in February 2013, but were just made public as the 29th annual festival got under way. Some 70,000 people were expected in attendance at Black Rock City, a temporary camp in the remote desert of Nevada. An August 19, 2010 memo from the FBI to all field offices says the Bureau would work with the local authorities to “aid in the prevention of terrorist activities and intelligence collection.” Another memo, a week later, says the Bureau was contacted by a security company hired by Burning Man to do a threat assessment. The FBI said it had “no intelligence indicating any outside threats, domestic or international,” to the event. To the Bureau’s knowledge, the greatest threats during the festival were “crowd control issues and use of illegal drugs by participants.” Even so, the Bureau’s Las Vegas office sent an unspecified number of agents to attend Burning Man, citing the “ongoing war on terrorism and potential for additional acts of terrorism” in the US. The agents filed a report on September 27, noting that the festival passed “with no adverse threats or actions.” The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued almost 300 citations and arrested 8 people at the 2010 event, attended by more than 50,000 ‘Burners’...more

What’s Really Melting: Obama’s Alaskan Lies

President Obama’s hike up the rapidly melting Exit Glacier today has run into some unfortunate buzzkill: reality. The hike is supposed to be the high point of this week’s trip to Alaska, undertaken for the purpose of dramatizing global warming. The media pitch is that Exit Glacier has been rapidly retreating for decades because of global warming. Sadly for the President’s play acting, though, the National Park Service  previously reported that Exit Glacier has been exiting since at least the early 1800s — before the Industrial Revolution even got underway...more

Mount McKinley has new name and 10 feet less

The recently renamed mountain, Denali, is 10 feet shorter according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), although it keeps being the highest mountain in the US. Formerly known as Mount McKinley, the mountain now measures 20,310 feet at its highest point. As a part of the USGS program to update the elevations of the mountains in Alaska and elsewhere, the team of the agency collected data from Denali through actual ground measurements. Since June 15 one climber from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and three climbers from the private survey company CompassData Inc., spent 14 days examining the structure using Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment...more

More grazing wouldn’t have stopped Soda Fire, BLM says, but it can be a tool to reduce fuels

Ranchers repeatedly said that the Soda Fire would not have been so large had they been allowed to have their cattle graze more of the grasses that had grown thick with spring rains. “We’ll never stop all wildfires, but if we can utilize that grass before it becomes fuel, then we can stop those fires before they get catastrophic,” said Wyatt Prescott, executive director of the Idaho Cattle Association. “That’s why we say graze it, don’t blaze it.” Now ranchers will have to wait years to return their herds to the public land, and sage grouse might have to wait decades before the sagebrush ecosystem is recovered. But ranchers consistently overstate the potential to stop wildfires with more grazing, Bureau of Land Management leaders insist. They and firefighters said that extreme winds and other weather factors overwhelmed the fuel conditions on the 279,000-acre Soda Fire.  Studies conducted by the University of Idaho and others support the BLM’s argument, most notably studies done after the 2007 Murphy Springs Fire that burned more than 600,000 acres. The multiagency study team, headed by Karen Launchbaugh, of the University of Idaho, said the extreme conditions on that fire, similar to the Soda Fire, overwhelmed all else. “The team found that much of the Murphy Wildland Fire Complex burned under extreme fuel and weather conditions that likely overshadowed livestock grazing as a factor influencing fire extent and fuel consumption in many areas where these fires burned,” the team’s report said...more

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2015/09/04/3968896_more-grazing-wouldnt-have-stopped.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

French 'ranchers' kidnap park official to protest wolf attacks in Alps

Around 50 angry farmers have kidnapped the chief of a national park in the Alps, demanding he take action against repeated wolf attacks on their livestock. Farmers in France have grown exasperated in recent years after seeing their sheep repeatedly slaughtered by the rising wolf population in certain parts of the country. While the government has authorised for wolves to be killed in certain areas where attacks have taken place, farmers have grown frustrated that not enough is being done. On Tuesday evening a group of around 50 farmers took the extreme step of kidnapping the president of the National Park of Vanoise in the Alps along with the park’s director. They made the move to hold Guy Chaumereuil and Emmanuel Michau hostage against their will following a pubic meeting on the park's new charter. According to farmers there have been 130 deadly attacks against livestock this summer compared to 105 last year...more

Cattle raising, deforestation and ongoing tensions between conservation and development in the Amazon

Anthropologist Jeffrey Hoelle is as great an advocate of the Amazonian rainforest as the most ardent environmentalist. However, he argues, understanding the issues related to deforestation—or development, depending on how you look at it—requires a broad view that takes into account not only political and economic factors, but also the culture of the area. "Deforestation is a byproduct of a lot of other factors," explained Hoelle, an assistant professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara who conducts research in the remote state of Acre in Brazil. "But the principal reason people cut down the forest there is to prepare the land for cattle. To understand that, we have to understand the policies and economics, as well as the sensibilities of the people involved and how they are shared within the region." In his new book, "Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in Western Amazonia" (University of Texas Press, 2015), Hoelle examines the complex social and cultural forces driving the expansion of cattle raising in the Amazon. Through research featuring a complex and contradictory host of characters he describes as "carnivorous" environmentalists, vilified ranchers and urbanites with no land or cattle, he shows that cattle raising is about much more than beef production or deforestation. As Hoelle notes in his book, the opening of the Amazon to colonization in the 1970s brought cattle, land conflict and widespread deforestation. In Acre, rubber tappers fought against migrant ranchers to preserve the forest they relied on and, in the process, these "forest guardians" showed the world that it was possible to unite forest livelihoods and environmental preservation. Nowadays, many rubber tappers and their children are turning away from the forest-based lifestyle they once sought to protect and becoming cattle-raisers or even "caubois" (cowboys). According to Hoelle, culture is as common a driver of deforestation as politics and economics. "Our understanding in the U.S. of what it means to own cattle, and the desire of wealthy professionals to reconnect with the countryside or to buy a ranch or a farm—all these things are linked even in the Amazon," he said. "People are raising cattle there because it's worth more than the forest, but you can't separate that from what it means to be someone who—especially in the forest—is able to control or cultivate that," Hoelle continued. "It acquires an even greater significance in terms of masculinity and nature control." With "Rainforest Cowboys," he looks to show how the cowboy sensibility drives land changes and deforestation. "If you don't clear your land, it looks like you aren't using it and others can claim it," he said. "But also important is the idea that clearing your land shows you're a masculine person; you're developed; you're progressive compared to the Indians living in the forest. These ideas of nature connect with cowboy popular culture and music, and the frontier experiences of landowners to create a context in which raising cattle—and cutting down the forest—makes sense."...more

New Land Ownership Data Add Value to Many Policy and Research Questions



Whether they farm the land themselves or rent it out to others to farm, those who own agricultural land are taking measures to keep the land in their families. This is good news for those who worry about the United States losing agricultural land to competing pressures. At USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, we just released the findings from a survey of agricultural landowners conducted earlier this year. It confirmed some things we know already and generated lots of new information that farmers, policymakers, businesses and others will use to understand more about who owns farmland, who has and will have access to farmland in the future, what kinds of conservation and production decision landowners are making, and lots more. This is the first time this much information about agricultural landownership is available since NASS conducted a similar survey in 1999. We know from the Census of Agriculture that the United States has more than 900 million acres of farmland – two fifths of all our land.  The new survey, called the 2014 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) survey, tells us a lot about the 39 percent of farmland – some 354 million acres – that landowners rent out for agricultural purposes. An important set of information to come from this new survey relates to landowners’ future plans. TOTAL asked landowners what they plan to do with all their land, not just the land they rent out. Out of all U.S. farmland, about 10 percent, or 91.5 million acres, is expected to transfer to new ownership in the next five years, with the Northeast, Plains, and West regions transferring larger shares than the U.S. average or other regions. Almost half of the land transfer will take place through trust arrangements...more

Ranch Radio Song Of The Day #1481

Here's one for A-10, another one of those High Culture renditions that he is so fond of:  Jimmie Ballard - Chicken Plucker.  The tune is on the Movin' On CD put out by Collector Records. 

https://youtu.be/sVvMBWoIfVk

Thursday, September 03, 2015

Will Government Officials Be Held Accountable for Kate Steinle’s Death?

In an attempt to hold government officials accountable for the shooting death of their 32-year-old daughter Kate, the Steinle family filed a lawsuit against three government agencies. The suit alleges that those agencies are in part responsible for Steinle’s death, but experts say the family has little chance at prevailing. “Unfortunately, prior lawsuits against cities over their sanctuary policies that were directly responsible for the murder of American citizens have been unsuccessful due to sovereign immunity,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.  Steinle was fatally shot in San Francisco on July 1 by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. Lopez-Sanchez is an illegal immigrant who had seven prior felony convictions in the U.S. and was deported to Mexico five separate times. He was released from a San Francisco jail in April under a city law barring the jail’s deputies from informing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of his release, despite the agency’s previous notification request. The Steinles filed the lawsuit in hopes that San Francisco and the other 200-some sanctuary cities will reform their policies, which the family claims are illegal, so that no one else will experience what happened to their daughter. The Steinles’ lawsuit alleges that the Bureau of Land Management and Immigration and Customs Enforcement—and San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi—directly contributed to Kate’s death by neglecting to oversee different aspects that led to her being shot. Their claim against the Bureau of Land Management is that the agency didn’t follow regulations in properly securing the gun Lopez-Sanchez stole and used to kill their daughter Mirkarimi, the sheriff implicated in the lawsuit, is accused of failing to detain Lopez-Sanchez. In a statement, Mirkarimi voiced sympathy for the family but says he was only following city policy. The lawsuit accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement of being aware that Mirkarimi had no plans to detain Lopez-Sanchez unless they obtained a court warrant, but the agency neglected to do so...more

In Trashing Land, the EPA Has Nothing on the Forest Service

by William Perry Pendley

Americans now comprehend fully the disdain the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has for truth-telling, the rights of others, and the environment.  Forget the last six spiteful years; the Colorado mine disaster suffices.  The EPA’s wanton malfeasance—experts warned of a catastrophic blowout—unleashed three million gallons of orange arsenic-, cadmium-, and lead-laden wastewater into an Animas River tributary trashing public, private, and tribal lands and waters in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and the Navajo Nation.  Even so, the EPA has nothing on the U.S. Forest Service.  
      
In documents filed days ago in a federal district court in Arkansas, the agency and its lawyers demand dismissal of a $5 million lawsuit against the United States for decades of tortious use and abuse of a Scot-Irish family’s farmland settled one hundred years before the Ozark National Forest’s creation made the Forest Service the family’s neighbor.  Worse yet, Conner Eldridge, the United States Attorney for Arkansas, argues that, because the Forest Service trespassed upon Matthew McIlroy’s farm for years, the government owns the land!  The assertion, which has no factual or legal support, is asinine, absurd, and in conflict with an admonition of the Supreme Court of the United States. 

In 1808, Mr. McIlroy’s family left Tennessee, crossed the Mississippi River, and homesteaded south of the Ozark Plateau’s Boston Mountains and north of the Arkansas River at Fly Gap, Beech Grove, and Cass.  Arkansas Territory was established in 1819; Arkansas won statehood in 1836; and the million-acre Ozark National Forest, which surrounded the McIlroy farmland, was proclaimed in 1908.  

In 1933, Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and put a camp in the Ozark National Forest near Cass.  After World War II, the CCC was discontinued, but in 1964 the newly created Job Corps took over the site.  Soon, Mr. McIlroy’s grandfather, W.C. McIlroy, discovered Job Corps students trespassing on and littering his property, damaging his fences, and destroying his hay; his objections went unanswered.  In 1971, W.L. McIlroy took over the farm and noticed the Forest Service had drilled a well on his property.  He protested, but agency officials said the well was on federal land, a lie repeated for decades.

In 1973, unbeknownst to W.L. McIlroy, the Job Corps used heavy equipment to tear down a 100-year old levee built upstream of the farm at the confluence of Mulberry River and Fane’s Creek to protect the farm and the Jobs Corps site.  The result was flooding and erosion downstream, alteration of the bed of Mulberry River due to silting and deposits of eroded rock, and destruction of 10 acres of farmland.  The Forest Service’s “mitigation” exacerbated the damage, widening the channel across the farm.

In 1998, when Mr. McIlroy took over the farm, he discovered a section of fence had been flattened and a sewage effluent line installed over it and across 50-60 yards of farmland to discharge waste into Mulberry River.  Then he found out the agency:  put a “temporary,” quarter-mile water line across his land that blocked entry to his farm; used the water well—even though a federal survey proved it was on the farm; brought heavy equipment onto the farm to blade dirt and drag drainage ditches; built a service road across the farm to access the well and the sewage effluent line and poured concrete on the road when it eroded; used the farmland for heavy equipment training—digging down to creek rock, causing serious erosion, destroying fences, and loosening livestock; and, dumped concrete and construction waste on its property near the farm, effluent from which washed onto the farm.

The Forest Service documented its “encroachment” but took no action.  In 2013, Mr. McIlroy filed a claim that the United States ignored, so in October of 2014, he sued.  As his case makes its way through the courts, he wonders whether his clansmen in William Wallace’s days ever saw greater abuses by “the King’s men.”

For more information: McIlroy v. United States of America


Caltrans proposes wildlife overpass on 101 Freeway

Mountain lions, bobcats and other wildlife would have less chance of becoming roadkill if the state adopts a plan to build a landscaped bridge over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills, supporters of the proposal said Wednesday. State agencies, elected officials and wildlife advocates urged the state to provide the much-needed link in an area where rampant development and highways have fragmented once-continuous habitat. The 165-foot-wide, 200-foot-long overpass near Liberty Canyon Road would connect the Santa Monica Mountains on the south with the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains. Building the nation’s largest wildlife overpass would be ambitious, said Seth Riley, a wildlife ecologist with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service. At the proposed site, the highway has 10 lanes of pavement, including exit lanes. “I don’t know anywhere where people have tried to put such a large wildlife crossing over such a busy highway in such an urban landscape,” said Riley, who has led the mountain lion study. Scientists long ago identified Liberty Canyon as the optimal location to build a wildlife passage because of the large swaths of protected public land on either side of the freeway. On Wednesday, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority released a long-awaited study by Caltrans concluding that a wildlife overpass was feasible. The projected cost would be $33 million to $38 million, according to the report. Proponents said they plan to seek most of the money from public coffers...more

I've previously posted on a Toad Road, a Bee Highway, Prairie Dog Peanut Butter, and Birdy Birth Control.  To those we can now add a Bobcat Bridge.

Green energy company fights for life after getting billions from feds

Abengoa, a renewable energy multinational company headquartered in Spain, has been a favorite of the Obama administration in getting federal tax money for clean energy projects. Since 2009, Abengoa and its subsidiaries, according to estimates, have received $2.9 billion in grants and loan guarantees through the Department of Energy to undertake solar projects in California and Arizona — as well as the construction of a cellulosic ethanol plant in Kansas. But in the space of less than a year, Abengoa’s financial health has become critical, leading investors to worry whether the company can survive. The company’s stock price on NASDAQ has swooned — from $29.32 on Sept. 2, 2014 to $5.62 on Tuesday...At last week’s close, Abengoa’s high-yield bondholders were scrambling amid concerns over company covenants. This came after news of Abengoa’s plans to increase capital. BloombergBusiness described Abengoa SA as “distressed,” and the company’s troubles are fueling speculation bankruptcy may be in the offing.  The investment management website microaxis.com recently listed Abengoa’s probability for bankruptcy at 76.9 percent...more

Three trillion trees - Study finds there are 7.5 times more trees than previously believed

A new Yale-led study estimates that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, about seven and a half times more than some previous estimates. But the total number of trees has plummeted by roughly 46 percent since the start of human civilization, the study estimates. Using a combination of satellite imagery, forest inventories, and supercomputer technologies, the international team of researchers was able to map tree populations worldwide at the square-kilometer level. Their results, published in the journal Nature, provide the most comprehensive assessment of tree populations ever produced and offer new insights into a class of organism that helps shape most terrestrial biomes. The new insights can improve the modeling of many large-scale systems, from carbon cycling and climate change models to the distribution of animal and plant species, say the researchers. "Trees are among the most prominent and critical organisms on Earth, yet we are only recently beginning to comprehend their global extent and distribution," said Thomas Crowther, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and lead author of the study. "They store huge amounts of carbon, are essential for the cycling of nutrients, for water and air quality, and for countless human services," he added. "Yet you ask people to estimate, within an order of magnitude, how many trees there are and they don't know where to begin. I don't know what I would have guessed, but I was certainly surprised to find that we were talking about trillions."...more

Officials say no plans to rename Mount Rainier as Mount Tacoma

Since President Barack Obama decided to rename Mount McKinley, why not also restore the Native American name of Mount Rainier, the iconic Washington state peak named for a British admiral who fought the Americans during the Revolutionary War? That’s what advocates in the long battle to rename Mount Rainier as Mount Tacoma or Tahoma want to know. “It’s a much more compelling argument to rename the mountain here than in Alaska,” said Bill Baarsma, former mayor of the city of Tacoma and president of the Tacoma Historical Society. “Why are we continuing to name this mountain after a British admiral that slayed Americans in the Revolutionary War?” Federal officials, though, say there are no plans to rename Mount Rainier and that Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s order changing Mount McKinley to its Koyukon Athabascan name of Denali was unique. “This was maybe a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” said Lou Yost, executive secretary of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which normally approves such renaming...more

SHOCK: As Americans Bought 170 Million Guns, Violent Crime Fell 51%

On August 28, the NRA presented ATF and FBI data showing Americans have purchased “170 million new guns” since 1991, and violent crime has fallen “51 percent.” This information squares with the findings of a Congressional Research Service (CRS) study covering the slightly shorter period of time from 1994 to 2009. For those years, CRS found that Americans purchased approximately 118 million firearms, and the 1993 “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” rate of 6.6 per 100,000 fell to 3.6 per 100,000 by the year 2000. It eventually fell all the way to 3.2 per 100,000 in 2011.  That is more than a 50 percent reduction in “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide.” Then, in 2009—the year the CRS study ended—Obama took office and gun sales began their climb to record levels, which made covering the gap between the 118 million guns that had been purchased by 2009 and the “170 million new guns” that Americans would own by 2015 an easy gap to bridge...more

Lawsuit: Western sheep operators colluded against workers

Two former shepherds from Peru are accusing key players in the sheep industry in the western U.S. of conspiring to keep wages low for foreign workers. Rodolfo Llacua and Esliper Huaman, represented by a Denver law firm called Towards Justice, are seeking to have their lawsuit treated as a class-action case seeking damages for current and former shepherds across the West. The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District court in Denver, targets the Salt Lake City-based Western Range Association and Casper, Wyoming-based Mountain Plains Agricultural Service. The companies place foreign workers with sheep operations.  "The amount they paid us never seemed right," Huaman said in a statement released by his lawyers. "Many fellow shepherds are still suffering under these low wages, and I hope that I can help benefit them through this complaint." Llacua and Huaman say in their lawsuit that the Western Range Association and Mountain Plains Agricultural Service, as well as ranchers who hire foreign workers through them, violated anti-trust laws by colluding to keep wages at the minimum levels required by the federal government. "We think that people working as shepherds should be fairly compensated, pursuant to regular market forces," said Nina DiSalvo, executive director of Towards Justice. Huaman is now working in Utah, while Llacua is in Colorado, she said. Stung into action recently by an earlier lawsuit brought by U.S. sheepherders who claimed the foreign worker program was keeping wages artificially low, the U.S. Department of Labor early this year proposed a new rule that would ramp up pay for the herders up to $2,400 a month by 2020...more

BACK IN TIME: Questions still linger about Roswell


By Bill Modisett

ROSWELL, N.M. On July 8, 1947, Lt. Walter Haut, public information officer at the Roswell Army Air Field, issued a press release that stated the air field was in possession of a “flying disc” it had gained through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers.


Thus began one of the most intriguing, perplexing incidents in the history of the West Texas-Southeastern New Mexico region. To this day, 68 years later, what really occurred near Corona, N.M., in 1947 has never been satisfactorily explained.

Haut’s news release, issued on the direct orders of Roswell base commander Col. William Blanchard, read as follows:

 “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County.

 “The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.

 “Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.”

The somewhat earth-shattering announcement that an actual “flying disc” had been located came as a not quite so surprising correction of sorts. About three hours after the first story was released, another story was issued that explained the “flying disc” was nothing more than the radar reflector from a wandering weather balloon that had been misidentified by the first people to see it.

Soon thereafter, Brigadier Gen. Roger Ramey went on a Fort Worth radio station to explain what, he said, had actually happened. A weather balloon, he said, had crashed on the ranch. It was nothing more. So the public’s concern about the “flying disc” that had crashed in New Mexico was supposedly resolved.

Or was it?

According to the story told by rancher William “Mac” Brazel, whatever crashed on his ranch that night occurred during a violent rainstorm, but the sound of the crash was not that of the typical thunder in the Roswell area. It was significantly different. As a result, the next morning Brazel and a young neighbor, 7-year-old Dee Proctor, went out checking for possible damage to fences or windmills.

 “No damage to fences or windmills could be found, but something quite unexpected arrested their attention: a field full of bits of pieces of shiny material unlike anything the veteran rancher had ever seen,” stated the book “Crash at Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a UFO” by Don Berliner and Stanton T. Friedman.

 “According to newspaper reports at the time, Mac gathered some of it up and hid it under a bush or in a shed. He kept a few pieces, one of which he took with him when he drove Dee the few miles back to the home of his parents, Floyd and Loretta Proctor, his nearest neighbors.”

During the next few decades, the military stuck to their official explanation for the crash although very few people apparently accepted it. Brazel had found weather balloons before and he knew and said that the debris on his ranch was not from a weather balloon.


Unhurried in Hachita



To appreciate Hatchita, a small town of about 30 people at the entrance to the bootheel of southwestern New Mexico, you must first appreciate the landscape that surrounds it. The two are entwined, one dependent on the other, like the towering yuccas that populate this land and the delicate yucca moths that pollinate them. Here is New Mexico in all its subtle beauty. Olive-green mesquite bushes, yucca blossoms the color of white smoke, brushy broomweed plants, and the occasional wildflower—all leaning slightly sideways from the steady nudge of the westerly wind, scattered across a valley whose reach is only halted by the Mexican border. To the south rise the Big Hatchet Mountains, crooked and imposing; to the west, the Little Hatchet, from which the town of Hachita derived its name...

There are more houses in Hachita today than people, and to understand why requires understanding the origins of Hachita, which in turn requires a trip out to the Little Hatchet Mountains.
Scattered among the low foothills are the sun-baked ruins of an old mining town. This was the first location to be called Hachita, sometime in the 1870s as part of the Eureka mining district. Miners here dropped into the earth and returned with silver, copper, and turquoise. An old headframe still stands, as do the walls of hardscrabble buildings, including a main house, a dance hall, and two powder magazines, double-walled to force an explosion to blow upward out the roof.

When the railroad arrived in the valley around 1901, bringing the possibilities of new economies, residents of Hachita built houses closer to the rails. This became “New Hachita,” while the mining camp was referred to as “Old Hachita.” As mining profits declined over the subsequent years, only the hardiest souls remained in the mountains—one old-timer lived here until the 1970s.

New Hachita did well enough to drop the “New.” A grade school and high school opened, and a two-story hotel, a giant mercantile store, and other businesses arose along Railroad Avenue, now Highway 9. (Today the yuccas follow suit, crowding against the highway as if waiting for the light to change.)

Proximity to the railroad and shipping pens made Hachita an important headquarters for area ranches. Those ranches are still around: the Hatchet Ranch, the Hurt Ranch, the Diamond A.

Lawrence Hurt is one of the owners of Hurt Cattle Company. He invites me to view a roundup, something I’ve not seen before. I arrive early that morning at a corral on his ranch; I know I’m in the right place when I see the pickup trucks, their windshields reflecting the spinning fan of the Aermotor windmill by the water tank. As the morning sun lifts itself over the Big Hatchet Mountains and the last vestiges of the night disappear in a red glow on the western horizon, Lawrence and the other men ride off on their horses into the rugged, raging beauty of the desert at dawn.

In the distance, I watch as a blue and white object maneuvers back and forth in the sky, gliding, then angling right, then left again: a Robinson R22 Beta II helicopter.

Hank Hays is at the controls. Hank has been working at the Hurt Ranch for 16 years now as, in the words of his tongue-in-cheek business card, a “Bovine Pursuit Specialist.” Hank previously flew helicopters in the US Border Patrol and cowboyed in his youth, so he came into this job familiar with both the terrain and the duties. During spring and fall roundups, he herds cattle from above—careful not to separate the calves from their mothers—letting them move safely to the corral. The helicopter saves time and money. What once took two dozen men three days can now be done by only a few in a matter of hours.



Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Judge blocks Endangered Species Act listing of lesser prairie chicken

The Western District Court of Texas vacated a 2014 “threatened” listing of the lesser prairie chicken Tuesday on the grounds that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) incorrectly determined that voluntary conservation action wouldn't be enough to protect the bird. The lesser prairie chicken was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act last March after FWS determined conservation efforts on the part of landowners and industry would not assuage the bird's population decline. According to the agency, the species' population has fallen 84 percent in the last 15 years due to habitat degradation and drought.  Permian Basin Petroleum Association, an oil and gas trade group, challenged the listing in court along with four New Mexico counties, claiming that the voluntary support was sufficient. Several other energy sector companies have come out in strong opposition of regulatory protections for the bird as well, claiming that land use restrictions throughout the bird's five-state Great Plains range would unduly burden energy exploration and extraction.  In his opinion, District Judge Robert Junell agreed with PBPA. “The Court finds FWS did conduct an analysis” of stakeholder participation, “however this analysis was neither ‘rigorous' nor valid as FWS failed to consider important questions and material information necessary to make a proper … evaluation,” Junell wrote in his decision...more

Texas judge halts 'threatened' listing of lesser prairie chicken 

...In a 29-page ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Junell found the Fish and Wildlife Service did not follow their own rule for evaluating conservation efforts when making listing decisions about the lesser prairie chicken. “This caused FWS to arbitrarily and capriciously list the LPC as a threatened species,” Junell wrote. The plaintiffs in the case were the Permian Basin Petroleum Association and four New Mexico counties. Defendants were the Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS Director Daniel Ashe, the Department of the Interior and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. The plaintiffs challenged whether the FWS followed its own rules, properly explained its decision and responded to the plaintiffs’ concerns. While the judge sided with the plaintiffs on the first claim, he ruled in favor of the defendants in the other two claims. The Fish and Wildlife Service has said the “threatened” listing last year was the result of a steep decline in the bird’s population in recent years. Five states are home to the lesser prairie chicken: Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. However, a recent aerial survey by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Association found an estimated 29,162 lesser prairie chickens, an increase from 19,643 in 2013 and 23,363 in 2014...

Sen. Lisa Murkowski fights for King Cove access road as Obama visits Alaska

As President Obama treks across Alaska this week, leading Republicans in Washington say they will continue to fight the administration over its refusal to approve a potentially lifesaving road in a remote corner of the state. The Interior Department in late 2013 rejected a plan to build a road to provide direct land access to King Cove, an Alaskan community of fewer than 1,000 people accessible only by air and water. The administration — which continues to defend its decision to block the road — and other opponents argue that construction would disturb pristine areas of the protected Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Supporters say Mr. Obama, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and other officials are putting lives in danger because residents of King Cove now must rely on air transport in the case of medical emergency. Two dozen residents have been transported off the island via medevac since Ms. Jewell rejected the 11-mile road plan, according to the office of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican. Ms. Murkowski now is trying to force the issue by including in Interior Department appropriations legislation provisions to build the road. Her bill would facilitate a land swap between Alaska and the federal government, setting aside other parts of the state as protected wilderness and removing barriers to the construction of the King Cove road. It’s unclear whether the provisions will survive budget negotiations. The push for the road has been renewed as Mr. Obama spends three days in Anchorage and tours other parts of the state...more

“King Cove is the perfect opportunity for conservationists to say, ‘You know what, there are times when we have to make allowances and put people first.’ It would really earn a lot of good will,” said Robert Dillon, spokesman for Ms. Murkowski.

Wilderness is the exact opposite, as it puts people on the bottom of the totem pole and is by legislative definition roadless.  Put a road through a Wilderness area? Don't expect the enviros to "put people first" because of the precedent it would set.