Saturday, November 01, 2003
NEWS ROUNDUP
NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Coalition calls for removal of reintroduced wolves The Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition is pointing to the slaughter of dozens of sheep near Burgdorf as a reason to remove reintroduced wolves from the state. Sheep rancher Mick Carlson said he discovered last month that 55 of his sheep were killed by wolves, more than a dozen more were maimed and as many as 30 were still missing after a wolf attack. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has confirmed the attack, and Carlson estimates his loss at more than $10,000. "It is overwhelming to view sheep carcasses and see how cruel and vicious this ordeal was," Carlson said. He said that only four of the 55 sheep killed were eaten, and the rest were killed for sport...Column: Liar, Liar Forests on Fire, Why Logging Exacerbates Loss of Lives and Property...California's Fontana Pass and Grand Prix Fires have been blamed on arson. Still George W. Bush and those in the U.S. Congress who benefit from the timber industry's chainsaw windfall, capitalize on people's fear of fire and proclaim a need for suppression, thinning, threat reduction and management. They then grant enormous logging contracts to cut down trees in national forests where logging is otherwise illegal. The logging is not done in areas where lives and property would be spared, thinning small trees around homes, but rather in backcountry, valuable, old-growth forests...The Forest Service gives away our trees to multinational corporations to liquidate for free, simultaneously asking taxpayers to subsidize those corporations by paying for the roads and infrastructure necessary to cut down our trees. This government give-away to a few, greedy corporations costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually and destroys the soil, air and water that only intact forests can provide. In addition, this may cost citizens and taxpayers trillions of dollars in lost and damaged publicly owned land and property assets. The Forest Service does not begin to assess the very real human health cost of dirty air, soil, and water. It's a shameless shakedown of the American taxpayer...This is the nastiest diatribe from the left I have seen so far--we win one victory and they are really howling!...Scorched land in California could give way to mudslides, flooding Tens of thousands of people living in and around Southern California mountains scarred by deadly wildfires could face added dangers of mudslides and flooding in the months to come as the state's rainy season sets in, officials say. "The risk is huge," said Peter Wohlgemuth, a hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service. "If you get Noah's flood coming after these fires, a pile of sand bags isn't going to help much." The firestorm that roared through the San Bernardino Mountains burned away layers of vegetation - twigs, leaves and moss - leaving vast areas of top soil exposed. As a result, the ground is more susceptible to erosion and will retain much less water when the rainy season arrives, sending sheets of storm runoff racing toward the valleys below...Earlier fiascos spawned fire control center Simultaneously fighting 10 wildland fires is like being a commander on an aircraft carrier. Planes land and take off constantly. There's intelligence to gather, mouths to feed and an occasional torpedo coming at your bow. Now imagine this command post with dozens of agencies -- state, local, federal -- representing an anxious mix of jurisdictions across Southern California. This is the place they call "South Ops" -- Southern Operations -- a walled compound in San Bernardino where key decisions are made on deploying firefighters, evacuating people, setting priorities and saving lives. It is a quasi-military operation run by a bunch of guys who have fought scores of fires together, and it attempts to bring some coherence to a system that could otherwise turn into anarchy...Risk vs. reward: Amid the flames, a heated debate about fire retardants Air crews have doused Southern California hills and canyons with near-record amounts of fire retardants, just weeks after an environmental group sued the U.S. Forest Service demanding better studies of the chemicals' effects. Some air tanker bases have gone through nearly as much of the red-tinged flame retardant in the last 10 days as they normally use in an entire year, dropping about 2 million gallons since Oct. 21, fire officials say. Studies done so far on flame retardants, which are composed largely of the same chemicals used in fertilizers, indicate very limited risk, as long as high concentrations aren't dropped into water, according to federal scientists...Bush to visit state amid controversy As California's biggest fire continued to burn Friday, President Bush announced plans to visit Southern California next week as controversy grows about his administration's handling of the state's vulnerability to catastrophe. Though details of Bush's trip aren't final, this visit will be far different in tone from his last one three weeks ago. Then, he was scooping up money for his re-election campaign and conducting a choreographed meeting with Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, the focus will be the most destructive wildfires in state history...Editorial: Fire in the red zones This week's fires in Boulder and Douglas counties showed that Colorado's emergency response agencies learned important lessons from the 2002 Hayman fire experience, including improvements in evacuation and public warning systems. Although 11 homes burned near Jamestown, the damage could have been far worse. Kudos are due to cops, firefighters and others. But Colorado got lucky as wet weather dampened the flames. The question is, what will happen next time a blaze ignites in the "red zones," where forests and communities meet? The fear haunts much of the West, as shown by California's deadly conflagrations. Congress is clumsily trying to solve part of the problem. A bill that recently passed the Senate, and was adopted earlier by the House, makes it easier for the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies to remove excessive deadwood, scraggly trees and other wildfire fuel. However, the House and Senate rejected amendments by U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Boulder Democrat, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, that would have required federal agencies to focus fire-prevention efforts in the red zones. The measure could leave Western communities vulnerable, even as federal agencies squander money and time on forests far from inhabited places...A Fiery Urban-Rural Interface This past week's cataclysm of fire will go down as one of the worst disasters in the history of Southern California, killing at least 20 people, destroying more than 3,300 homes and laying waste to more than three-quarters of a million acres. It is likely to happen again. According to scientists who study the urban ecology of the Los Angeles basin, more catastrophic wildfires are a near certainty, fed by sprawl, poor fire-prevention strategies, arsonists and local vegetation that, by its very nature, needs to burn...The fires of Southern California are probably the most spectacular of the many strange and sometimes terrible troubles that keep erupting in the West along the shifting border between what is wild and what is urban. In the argot of planners and ecologists, the contact zone between citified man and untamed nature is called the urban-rural interface. Across the West, it is a fringe where Americans keep being surprised -- and occasionally injured or killed -- by forces that somehow seem too cruel for people with children, dogs and minivans. In western Montana, where the rich build luxury subdivisions in high country, the interface is a place where grizzlies -- enjoying their status as endangered species -- are seen by day nibbling grass on golf greens and heard by night busting up garages that smell of garbage...Will the Mountains Rise From the Ashes? For Jim Bauer, it was a search for life in the valley of death. Charred remains of scrub jays and woodpeckers and rabbits littered the ground. The towering pines were gone, so were the oaks. Yet as the wildlife biologist moved through the eerie stillness of the smoldering state park in the mountains east of San Diego, he picked up a faint, telltale signal of hope. And then another and another. All told, seven of 11 deer outfitted with radio collars were alive in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. Just outside the park, two of six mountain lions equipped with transmitters were on the prowl. "Looking at that fire, I wouldn't have guessed that any survived," said Bauer, a wildlife biologist who is participating in a University of California, Davis study of lions, deer and bighorn sheep in the area. "Mountain lions need a huge chunk of country and when you have this fragmented and altered habitat to begin with, a big fire like this will have some impacts."...Conservation groups protest plans for Snake River land Two conservation groups are protesting a plan to transfer management of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land along the Snake River, saying it is too vague. Under the plan, the BLM would transfer 981 acres between Grand Teton National Park's southern boundary and South Park sometime within the next 15 years. The land would either go to another government agency or the BLM would retain ownership and allow another agency to manage the land. Although conservationists generally like the idea, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Wyoming Outdoor Council recently filed a joint protest...Bill's oil, gas emphasis worries environmentalists Environmentalists say provisions in an energy bill that lawmakers plan to complete soon would further Bush administration efforts to hand over public lands in the West to the oil and gas industry. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., and Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., helped write the provisions and say they are just trying to restore sanity to a process that is entangled in red tape. Anna Aurilio, U.S. Public Interest Research Group legislative director disagrees. "It's a number of different provisions that lumped together would lead to the conclusion that oil and gas development is the dominant use of federal public lands," Aurilio said. "There is clearly nothing multiple use about these provisions." Dave Albersworth, who handles Bureau of Land Management issues for The Wilderness Society agrees with Aurilio. "Wherever oil and gas exists, the intention is to make it the most important use," said Albersworth, a former Clinton administration official. "There is no overt place where that is stated, but if you read all of these provisions together they say that."...Utah governor creates task force to protect wild lands Gov. Mike Leavitt signed an executive order on Saturday that creates a task force to help resolve the status of Utah's unprotected wild lands in one of his final acts as governor. It was Leavitt's answer to outdoor retailers who days earlier renewed a threat to pull their big trade shows out of Salt Lake City. Industry officials complained the third-term Republican was failing to deliver a promise to restore some measure of protection for millions of acres of federal land in Utah. Leavitt, who will be sworn in Wednesday as chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, stood next to powder skis and climbing equipment inside a shop on Saturday to announce he was creating an ''Outdoor Recreation Economic Ecosystem Task Force.'' ''This is an effort to brand Utah as an outdoor capital of the world,'' Leavitt said. His successor, Lt. Gov. Olene Walker, said she would make certain the panel follows through on its mission within two years...Court action delayed in water rights dispute Settlement of the Nez Perce Tribe's sweeping water rights claims in the Snake River Basin may still be possible, even though the state's water judge gave up hope on negotiations in the spring and lawsuits are still pending. The tribe, state and federal government have signed an agreement to delay scheduled court dates in the Nez Perce's case while talks continue. They also have agreed to a general framework for reaching a settlement, but still have significant details to work out. A deal could accelerate resolution of the long-running effort to put more than 160,000 water rights in a priority order. That is expected to provide some certainty about future water availability in most of Idaho for farm production, fish recovery, power generation and general economic expansion...Saving Seeds Subjects Farmers to Suits Over Patent In 1998, Mr. McFarling bought 1,000 bags of genetically altered soybean seeds, and he did what he had always done. But the seeds, called Roundup Ready, are patented. When Monsanto, which holds the patent, learned what Mr. McFarling had sown, it sued him in federal court in St. Louis for patent infringement and was awarded $780,000. The company calls the planting of saved seed piracy, and it says it has won millions of dollars from farmers in lawsuits and settlements in such cases. Mr. McFarling's is the first to reach a federal appeals court, which will consider how the law should reconcile patented food with a practice as old as farming itself...Wyoming ranch offers elk, mule deer, more Spur Outfitters, which is based here, operates two hunting ranches that cover 110,000 acres in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. The ranches are run jointly as cattle operations and hunting venues, with Kyle York as the recreational enterprises manager for the ranches. York was raised on the Silver Spur Ranch at Encampment and is a graduate of the University of Wyoming with a degree in mathematics. The Silver Spur Ranch is known for its pronghorn antelope herd, which numbers more than 3,200 animals with a buck-doe ratio of 1-1. York takes about 12 antelope a season off his Wyoming pastures. Antelope bucks scoring in the low 80-inch class are seen frequently, with a ranch record buck of 87 inches. The ranch also has a large resident and transient elk population, and York limits his take to five bulls a year, but he also has permits to hunt adjacent public lands. A large Silver Spur bull elk will measure 315 B&C inches...DEQ will obey court order to study feedlots State officials will conduct 100 environmental studies on feedlots scattered around Montana in the next year. The studies, which the Department of Environmental Quality has given itself until 2005 to complete, come in response to the Oct. 3 order by Helena District Judge Thomas Honzel. The judge said the state didn't fully understand feedlot pollution before allowing some 100 feedlots to open. Honzel ordered the state to suspend the pollution permit for a Custer-area feedlot - the Cattle Development Center - and to complete a thorough environmental study on feedlot pollution statewide before issuing any other permits...Weiser Water Woes Investigation Some people near Weiser say a cattle feedlot in their neighborhood has made their drinking water unsafe. They also say the agencies responsible for keeping water clean have failed them. Joyce Winslow is going through a ritual she says she goes through every other day. Loading up empty jugs for a trip to town, for water...Trace-back system plan aims to protect animal ag State animal health officials, livestock industry groups and the federal government are working together to finalize a US Animal Identification Plan (USAIP), with a goal of creating a trace-back system that can identify all animals and premises potentially exposed to an animal with a foreign animal disease within 48 hours after discovery. The 48-hour trace-back goal requires records of an animal's (or herd's) origin and movement to other locations for its entire life. Current goals are to start implementing the plan with identification of livestock premises next summer, and have individual identification for cattle in commerce as well as other food animals and livestock in commerce identified by July 2006. The plan, as presented to the US Animal Health Association in late September, currently includes all domestic cattle, bison, swine, sheep, goats, deer and elk, horses, poultry, game birds, aquaculture, camelids like llamas and alpacas, ratites and other animals, whether they are intended for breeding stock, consumption or personal use...Battle lines drawn over 'sound' science More than three decades ago, the discovery of a salamander by her young daughter prompted Jeanette Sainz to suggest making the tiny critter the focal point of a school project. "I knew the salamanders had been here all my life," said Sainz, a Los Alamos rancher whose family has owned the land since the 1800s. "I thought it was a good science project." She contacted Santa Barbara-based scientists, and recalls they became excited because they didn't know the creature -- a California tiger salamander -- lived that far south. Years later, Sainz landed in the middle of a salamander war, as regulators charged that a new vineyard would destroy quickly disappearing habitat vital for the animal's survival. "I never thought the little devils would turn around and bite me," Sainz said...Legendary Floore's keeps dance hall roots intact About a year ago, the new owners of John T. Floore Country Store were sorting treasures from trash in a storeroom at the dance hall in Helotes. They hit a mother lode of memorabilia at the bottom of the heap - an old polished aluminum microphone on a tall stand with a rusted metal base. "There's no telling who might have sung on it - Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson - everyone who was anybody in its day," said Mark McKinney, managing partner of a small group of investors. "It probably was the old house microphone for years and got thrown out there when it wasn't useful anymore. "I wish I knew more about it." Others whose voices could have passed through the mike include Ernest Tubb, Elvis Presley, Bob Wills, Bob Dillon and Merle Haggard...On The Edge Of Common Sense: Overcoming bad cards part of character development One lazy summer morning I was relaxing in my scenic viewing point (a one holer), with the top Dutch door swung open, watching the ravens ride the air currents above the canyon that opened out below me. They soared and sailed, swooping over the ridge tops as the canyon walls fell beneath their dizzying descents. Just watching them made my stomach sink. I thought, wouldn't it be awful to be a bird and be afraid of heights. That morning I walked into the office and made the observation to my secretary. She twinkled and replied, "Like a claustrophobic mole." Overcoming the bad cards you get dealt in the game of life is part of character development, be it raven, mole or human...Cowboy justice served after 1904 rodeo “Take this trophy, then, and wear it with pride, and be proud of your skill as a rider.” Those words were spoken by Major S.J. DeLan as he awarded Rich Thomson the Rough Rider Championship belt on Aug. 29, 1904. For Thomson, the contest had been two days of cowboy against cowboy, cowboy against horse, and in the end cowboy against promoter. The award had been hard fought from the start. When O.L. Grimsley returned to town that August, people were skeptical. The previous year, Grimsley promoted the Rough Rider Championship and participated. He was declared “champion bronco buster” and managed to take all the event proceeds with him. Spectators hoped for a more honest contest in 1904...Pack rats a curiosity of life in the country Every old-timer and country-dweller has a few pack rat stories to tell. These curious, thieving, always-busy rodents are almost human in their thinking. I've often wondered how their IQ compares with the average human...
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NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Coalition calls for removal of reintroduced wolves The Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition is pointing to the slaughter of dozens of sheep near Burgdorf as a reason to remove reintroduced wolves from the state. Sheep rancher Mick Carlson said he discovered last month that 55 of his sheep were killed by wolves, more than a dozen more were maimed and as many as 30 were still missing after a wolf attack. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has confirmed the attack, and Carlson estimates his loss at more than $10,000. "It is overwhelming to view sheep carcasses and see how cruel and vicious this ordeal was," Carlson said. He said that only four of the 55 sheep killed were eaten, and the rest were killed for sport...Column: Liar, Liar Forests on Fire, Why Logging Exacerbates Loss of Lives and Property...California's Fontana Pass and Grand Prix Fires have been blamed on arson. Still George W. Bush and those in the U.S. Congress who benefit from the timber industry's chainsaw windfall, capitalize on people's fear of fire and proclaim a need for suppression, thinning, threat reduction and management. They then grant enormous logging contracts to cut down trees in national forests where logging is otherwise illegal. The logging is not done in areas where lives and property would be spared, thinning small trees around homes, but rather in backcountry, valuable, old-growth forests...The Forest Service gives away our trees to multinational corporations to liquidate for free, simultaneously asking taxpayers to subsidize those corporations by paying for the roads and infrastructure necessary to cut down our trees. This government give-away to a few, greedy corporations costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually and destroys the soil, air and water that only intact forests can provide. In addition, this may cost citizens and taxpayers trillions of dollars in lost and damaged publicly owned land and property assets. The Forest Service does not begin to assess the very real human health cost of dirty air, soil, and water. It's a shameless shakedown of the American taxpayer...This is the nastiest diatribe from the left I have seen so far--we win one victory and they are really howling!...Scorched land in California could give way to mudslides, flooding Tens of thousands of people living in and around Southern California mountains scarred by deadly wildfires could face added dangers of mudslides and flooding in the months to come as the state's rainy season sets in, officials say. "The risk is huge," said Peter Wohlgemuth, a hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service. "If you get Noah's flood coming after these fires, a pile of sand bags isn't going to help much." The firestorm that roared through the San Bernardino Mountains burned away layers of vegetation - twigs, leaves and moss - leaving vast areas of top soil exposed. As a result, the ground is more susceptible to erosion and will retain much less water when the rainy season arrives, sending sheets of storm runoff racing toward the valleys below...Earlier fiascos spawned fire control center Simultaneously fighting 10 wildland fires is like being a commander on an aircraft carrier. Planes land and take off constantly. There's intelligence to gather, mouths to feed and an occasional torpedo coming at your bow. Now imagine this command post with dozens of agencies -- state, local, federal -- representing an anxious mix of jurisdictions across Southern California. This is the place they call "South Ops" -- Southern Operations -- a walled compound in San Bernardino where key decisions are made on deploying firefighters, evacuating people, setting priorities and saving lives. It is a quasi-military operation run by a bunch of guys who have fought scores of fires together, and it attempts to bring some coherence to a system that could otherwise turn into anarchy...Risk vs. reward: Amid the flames, a heated debate about fire retardants Air crews have doused Southern California hills and canyons with near-record amounts of fire retardants, just weeks after an environmental group sued the U.S. Forest Service demanding better studies of the chemicals' effects. Some air tanker bases have gone through nearly as much of the red-tinged flame retardant in the last 10 days as they normally use in an entire year, dropping about 2 million gallons since Oct. 21, fire officials say. Studies done so far on flame retardants, which are composed largely of the same chemicals used in fertilizers, indicate very limited risk, as long as high concentrations aren't dropped into water, according to federal scientists...Bush to visit state amid controversy As California's biggest fire continued to burn Friday, President Bush announced plans to visit Southern California next week as controversy grows about his administration's handling of the state's vulnerability to catastrophe. Though details of Bush's trip aren't final, this visit will be far different in tone from his last one three weeks ago. Then, he was scooping up money for his re-election campaign and conducting a choreographed meeting with Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, the focus will be the most destructive wildfires in state history...Editorial: Fire in the red zones This week's fires in Boulder and Douglas counties showed that Colorado's emergency response agencies learned important lessons from the 2002 Hayman fire experience, including improvements in evacuation and public warning systems. Although 11 homes burned near Jamestown, the damage could have been far worse. Kudos are due to cops, firefighters and others. But Colorado got lucky as wet weather dampened the flames. The question is, what will happen next time a blaze ignites in the "red zones," where forests and communities meet? The fear haunts much of the West, as shown by California's deadly conflagrations. Congress is clumsily trying to solve part of the problem. A bill that recently passed the Senate, and was adopted earlier by the House, makes it easier for the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies to remove excessive deadwood, scraggly trees and other wildfire fuel. However, the House and Senate rejected amendments by U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Boulder Democrat, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, that would have required federal agencies to focus fire-prevention efforts in the red zones. The measure could leave Western communities vulnerable, even as federal agencies squander money and time on forests far from inhabited places...A Fiery Urban-Rural Interface This past week's cataclysm of fire will go down as one of the worst disasters in the history of Southern California, killing at least 20 people, destroying more than 3,300 homes and laying waste to more than three-quarters of a million acres. It is likely to happen again. According to scientists who study the urban ecology of the Los Angeles basin, more catastrophic wildfires are a near certainty, fed by sprawl, poor fire-prevention strategies, arsonists and local vegetation that, by its very nature, needs to burn...The fires of Southern California are probably the most spectacular of the many strange and sometimes terrible troubles that keep erupting in the West along the shifting border between what is wild and what is urban. In the argot of planners and ecologists, the contact zone between citified man and untamed nature is called the urban-rural interface. Across the West, it is a fringe where Americans keep being surprised -- and occasionally injured or killed -- by forces that somehow seem too cruel for people with children, dogs and minivans. In western Montana, where the rich build luxury subdivisions in high country, the interface is a place where grizzlies -- enjoying their status as endangered species -- are seen by day nibbling grass on golf greens and heard by night busting up garages that smell of garbage...Will the Mountains Rise From the Ashes? For Jim Bauer, it was a search for life in the valley of death. Charred remains of scrub jays and woodpeckers and rabbits littered the ground. The towering pines were gone, so were the oaks. Yet as the wildlife biologist moved through the eerie stillness of the smoldering state park in the mountains east of San Diego, he picked up a faint, telltale signal of hope. And then another and another. All told, seven of 11 deer outfitted with radio collars were alive in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. Just outside the park, two of six mountain lions equipped with transmitters were on the prowl. "Looking at that fire, I wouldn't have guessed that any survived," said Bauer, a wildlife biologist who is participating in a University of California, Davis study of lions, deer and bighorn sheep in the area. "Mountain lions need a huge chunk of country and when you have this fragmented and altered habitat to begin with, a big fire like this will have some impacts."...Conservation groups protest plans for Snake River land Two conservation groups are protesting a plan to transfer management of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land along the Snake River, saying it is too vague. Under the plan, the BLM would transfer 981 acres between Grand Teton National Park's southern boundary and South Park sometime within the next 15 years. The land would either go to another government agency or the BLM would retain ownership and allow another agency to manage the land. Although conservationists generally like the idea, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Wyoming Outdoor Council recently filed a joint protest...Bill's oil, gas emphasis worries environmentalists Environmentalists say provisions in an energy bill that lawmakers plan to complete soon would further Bush administration efforts to hand over public lands in the West to the oil and gas industry. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., and Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., helped write the provisions and say they are just trying to restore sanity to a process that is entangled in red tape. Anna Aurilio, U.S. Public Interest Research Group legislative director disagrees. "It's a number of different provisions that lumped together would lead to the conclusion that oil and gas development is the dominant use of federal public lands," Aurilio said. "There is clearly nothing multiple use about these provisions." Dave Albersworth, who handles Bureau of Land Management issues for The Wilderness Society agrees with Aurilio. "Wherever oil and gas exists, the intention is to make it the most important use," said Albersworth, a former Clinton administration official. "There is no overt place where that is stated, but if you read all of these provisions together they say that."...Utah governor creates task force to protect wild lands Gov. Mike Leavitt signed an executive order on Saturday that creates a task force to help resolve the status of Utah's unprotected wild lands in one of his final acts as governor. It was Leavitt's answer to outdoor retailers who days earlier renewed a threat to pull their big trade shows out of Salt Lake City. Industry officials complained the third-term Republican was failing to deliver a promise to restore some measure of protection for millions of acres of federal land in Utah. Leavitt, who will be sworn in Wednesday as chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, stood next to powder skis and climbing equipment inside a shop on Saturday to announce he was creating an ''Outdoor Recreation Economic Ecosystem Task Force.'' ''This is an effort to brand Utah as an outdoor capital of the world,'' Leavitt said. His successor, Lt. Gov. Olene Walker, said she would make certain the panel follows through on its mission within two years...Court action delayed in water rights dispute Settlement of the Nez Perce Tribe's sweeping water rights claims in the Snake River Basin may still be possible, even though the state's water judge gave up hope on negotiations in the spring and lawsuits are still pending. The tribe, state and federal government have signed an agreement to delay scheduled court dates in the Nez Perce's case while talks continue. They also have agreed to a general framework for reaching a settlement, but still have significant details to work out. A deal could accelerate resolution of the long-running effort to put more than 160,000 water rights in a priority order. That is expected to provide some certainty about future water availability in most of Idaho for farm production, fish recovery, power generation and general economic expansion...Saving Seeds Subjects Farmers to Suits Over Patent In 1998, Mr. McFarling bought 1,000 bags of genetically altered soybean seeds, and he did what he had always done. But the seeds, called Roundup Ready, are patented. When Monsanto, which holds the patent, learned what Mr. McFarling had sown, it sued him in federal court in St. Louis for patent infringement and was awarded $780,000. The company calls the planting of saved seed piracy, and it says it has won millions of dollars from farmers in lawsuits and settlements in such cases. Mr. McFarling's is the first to reach a federal appeals court, which will consider how the law should reconcile patented food with a practice as old as farming itself...Wyoming ranch offers elk, mule deer, more Spur Outfitters, which is based here, operates two hunting ranches that cover 110,000 acres in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. The ranches are run jointly as cattle operations and hunting venues, with Kyle York as the recreational enterprises manager for the ranches. York was raised on the Silver Spur Ranch at Encampment and is a graduate of the University of Wyoming with a degree in mathematics. The Silver Spur Ranch is known for its pronghorn antelope herd, which numbers more than 3,200 animals with a buck-doe ratio of 1-1. York takes about 12 antelope a season off his Wyoming pastures. Antelope bucks scoring in the low 80-inch class are seen frequently, with a ranch record buck of 87 inches. The ranch also has a large resident and transient elk population, and York limits his take to five bulls a year, but he also has permits to hunt adjacent public lands. A large Silver Spur bull elk will measure 315 B&C inches...DEQ will obey court order to study feedlots State officials will conduct 100 environmental studies on feedlots scattered around Montana in the next year. The studies, which the Department of Environmental Quality has given itself until 2005 to complete, come in response to the Oct. 3 order by Helena District Judge Thomas Honzel. The judge said the state didn't fully understand feedlot pollution before allowing some 100 feedlots to open. Honzel ordered the state to suspend the pollution permit for a Custer-area feedlot - the Cattle Development Center - and to complete a thorough environmental study on feedlot pollution statewide before issuing any other permits...Weiser Water Woes Investigation Some people near Weiser say a cattle feedlot in their neighborhood has made their drinking water unsafe. They also say the agencies responsible for keeping water clean have failed them. Joyce Winslow is going through a ritual she says she goes through every other day. Loading up empty jugs for a trip to town, for water...Trace-back system plan aims to protect animal ag State animal health officials, livestock industry groups and the federal government are working together to finalize a US Animal Identification Plan (USAIP), with a goal of creating a trace-back system that can identify all animals and premises potentially exposed to an animal with a foreign animal disease within 48 hours after discovery. The 48-hour trace-back goal requires records of an animal's (or herd's) origin and movement to other locations for its entire life. Current goals are to start implementing the plan with identification of livestock premises next summer, and have individual identification for cattle in commerce as well as other food animals and livestock in commerce identified by July 2006. The plan, as presented to the US Animal Health Association in late September, currently includes all domestic cattle, bison, swine, sheep, goats, deer and elk, horses, poultry, game birds, aquaculture, camelids like llamas and alpacas, ratites and other animals, whether they are intended for breeding stock, consumption or personal use...Battle lines drawn over 'sound' science More than three decades ago, the discovery of a salamander by her young daughter prompted Jeanette Sainz to suggest making the tiny critter the focal point of a school project. "I knew the salamanders had been here all my life," said Sainz, a Los Alamos rancher whose family has owned the land since the 1800s. "I thought it was a good science project." She contacted Santa Barbara-based scientists, and recalls they became excited because they didn't know the creature -- a California tiger salamander -- lived that far south. Years later, Sainz landed in the middle of a salamander war, as regulators charged that a new vineyard would destroy quickly disappearing habitat vital for the animal's survival. "I never thought the little devils would turn around and bite me," Sainz said...Legendary Floore's keeps dance hall roots intact About a year ago, the new owners of John T. Floore Country Store were sorting treasures from trash in a storeroom at the dance hall in Helotes. They hit a mother lode of memorabilia at the bottom of the heap - an old polished aluminum microphone on a tall stand with a rusted metal base. "There's no telling who might have sung on it - Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson - everyone who was anybody in its day," said Mark McKinney, managing partner of a small group of investors. "It probably was the old house microphone for years and got thrown out there when it wasn't useful anymore. "I wish I knew more about it." Others whose voices could have passed through the mike include Ernest Tubb, Elvis Presley, Bob Wills, Bob Dillon and Merle Haggard...On The Edge Of Common Sense: Overcoming bad cards part of character development One lazy summer morning I was relaxing in my scenic viewing point (a one holer), with the top Dutch door swung open, watching the ravens ride the air currents above the canyon that opened out below me. They soared and sailed, swooping over the ridge tops as the canyon walls fell beneath their dizzying descents. Just watching them made my stomach sink. I thought, wouldn't it be awful to be a bird and be afraid of heights. That morning I walked into the office and made the observation to my secretary. She twinkled and replied, "Like a claustrophobic mole." Overcoming the bad cards you get dealt in the game of life is part of character development, be it raven, mole or human...Cowboy justice served after 1904 rodeo “Take this trophy, then, and wear it with pride, and be proud of your skill as a rider.” Those words were spoken by Major S.J. DeLan as he awarded Rich Thomson the Rough Rider Championship belt on Aug. 29, 1904. For Thomson, the contest had been two days of cowboy against cowboy, cowboy against horse, and in the end cowboy against promoter. The award had been hard fought from the start. When O.L. Grimsley returned to town that August, people were skeptical. The previous year, Grimsley promoted the Rough Rider Championship and participated. He was declared “champion bronco buster” and managed to take all the event proceeds with him. Spectators hoped for a more honest contest in 1904...Pack rats a curiosity of life in the country Every old-timer and country-dweller has a few pack rat stories to tell. These curious, thieving, always-busy rodents are almost human in their thinking. I've often wondered how their IQ compares with the average human...
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
The case for wolves – in Central Park
After years of intense study, a western-based environmental equity organization is advancing a bold new proposal to reintroduce wolves into New York's Central Park.
"There's no reason why New Yorkers should not enjoy these magnificent creatures; after all, if there is to be environmental equity, we should do all we can to spread the joy wolves bring to the people who are most deprived," said a spokesman for the group.
According to a recent study, the benefits of wolf reintroduction into the park far outweigh the negatives.
"About the only negative we could come up with is that the wolves would have to be taken from the West, which means that wildlife officials would have to find new ways to decimate the cattle and sheep these wolves would no longer be able to slaughter," the spokesman said.
On the plus side, wolves in Central Park would have no cattle to eat, so they would be very effective in controlling the dog and cat populations. In no time at all, the city could repeal its "scooper-pooper" laws. Even though it is widely known that wolves never attack humans and never stray from their assigned wilderness area, there would likely be a noticeable decrease in other nocturnal predators in the area. Drug dealers, prostitutes, muggers and the like could find the wolves to be a challenge.
Preposterous? This idea is no more preposterous than the proposal advanced by a New Jersey couple in 1987 to convert the Great Plains into a "Buffalo Commons." It is no more preposterous than the New York Times recent renewal of the "Buffalo Commons" proposal. It is no more preposterous than a raft of radical environmental proposals developed by the eastern elite and imposed on their western neighbors.
Because most of the land in the West is owned by the federal government, supposedly for "all the people," radical green organizations have claimed the right to speak for "all the people" and dictate how the land should be used.
Wolf reintroduction into many western states, forced by radical green organizations, has caused great pain and hardship to people who have to contend with the reality of the wolf myths. But wolves are only a small part of the mounting pressure on people who live in the West. The radical eastern green elite don't want people to live in the rural West; they believe this land should be returned to its wilderness condition for the benefit of "biodiversity."
Their public-relations campaigns and political lobbying efforts have been enormously successful, even though their claims of eminent disaster from biological degradation are based primarily on half-truths and outright lies.
The people in New York City should decide how their parks are used – not an environmental equity group in the West. The people who live in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado should decide how their land is used, not radical green groups in New York or Washington, D.C.
The people in each state, each county and each community should decide, through their locally elected officials, how to use their own land and resources. Therein lies the rub: Most of the land in western states is not owned by the people who live there. It is owned by the federal government.
Now for a proposal that will make the radical green elite cringe: Return the land in each western state to the people who live in those states. The people who live in New York or Boston have no more right to dictate how Arizona land should be used than the people who live in Yeso, N.M., have a right to dictate how Central Park should be used.
The land and resources in each state should be controlled by each state; the federal government should get out of the land-management business. Period.
This is not a new proposal, of course. Western folks have been crying foul for years, with little interest or attention paid by people who live on the eastern side of the Mississippi. Eastern folks need to wake up and realize that if the federal government can control the use of land in the West, it can surely control the use of land in the East as well. And it's only a matter of time before the know-it-all, do-gooder elites' plans for biological preservation begin to push the people in the East as they have pushed the people in the West.
Perhaps the best way to get the attention of the apathetic easterners is to put a few wolves in Central Park and let them see, up close and personal, what magnificent creatures they are.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization and chairman of Sovereignty International.
Permalink
The case for wolves – in Central Park
After years of intense study, a western-based environmental equity organization is advancing a bold new proposal to reintroduce wolves into New York's Central Park.
"There's no reason why New Yorkers should not enjoy these magnificent creatures; after all, if there is to be environmental equity, we should do all we can to spread the joy wolves bring to the people who are most deprived," said a spokesman for the group.
According to a recent study, the benefits of wolf reintroduction into the park far outweigh the negatives.
"About the only negative we could come up with is that the wolves would have to be taken from the West, which means that wildlife officials would have to find new ways to decimate the cattle and sheep these wolves would no longer be able to slaughter," the spokesman said.
On the plus side, wolves in Central Park would have no cattle to eat, so they would be very effective in controlling the dog and cat populations. In no time at all, the city could repeal its "scooper-pooper" laws. Even though it is widely known that wolves never attack humans and never stray from their assigned wilderness area, there would likely be a noticeable decrease in other nocturnal predators in the area. Drug dealers, prostitutes, muggers and the like could find the wolves to be a challenge.
Preposterous? This idea is no more preposterous than the proposal advanced by a New Jersey couple in 1987 to convert the Great Plains into a "Buffalo Commons." It is no more preposterous than the New York Times recent renewal of the "Buffalo Commons" proposal. It is no more preposterous than a raft of radical environmental proposals developed by the eastern elite and imposed on their western neighbors.
Because most of the land in the West is owned by the federal government, supposedly for "all the people," radical green organizations have claimed the right to speak for "all the people" and dictate how the land should be used.
Wolf reintroduction into many western states, forced by radical green organizations, has caused great pain and hardship to people who have to contend with the reality of the wolf myths. But wolves are only a small part of the mounting pressure on people who live in the West. The radical eastern green elite don't want people to live in the rural West; they believe this land should be returned to its wilderness condition for the benefit of "biodiversity."
Their public-relations campaigns and political lobbying efforts have been enormously successful, even though their claims of eminent disaster from biological degradation are based primarily on half-truths and outright lies.
The people in New York City should decide how their parks are used – not an environmental equity group in the West. The people who live in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado should decide how their land is used, not radical green groups in New York or Washington, D.C.
The people in each state, each county and each community should decide, through their locally elected officials, how to use their own land and resources. Therein lies the rub: Most of the land in western states is not owned by the people who live there. It is owned by the federal government.
Now for a proposal that will make the radical green elite cringe: Return the land in each western state to the people who live in those states. The people who live in New York or Boston have no more right to dictate how Arizona land should be used than the people who live in Yeso, N.M., have a right to dictate how Central Park should be used.
The land and resources in each state should be controlled by each state; the federal government should get out of the land-management business. Period.
This is not a new proposal, of course. Western folks have been crying foul for years, with little interest or attention paid by people who live on the eastern side of the Mississippi. Eastern folks need to wake up and realize that if the federal government can control the use of land in the West, it can surely control the use of land in the East as well. And it's only a matter of time before the know-it-all, do-gooder elites' plans for biological preservation begin to push the people in the East as they have pushed the people in the West.
Perhaps the best way to get the attention of the apathetic easterners is to put a few wolves in Central Park and let them see, up close and personal, what magnificent creatures they are.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization and chairman of Sovereignty International.
Permalink
Friday, October 31, 2003
NEWS ROUNDUP
Area called ripe for a disaster The oil industry had the Exxon Valdez. Nuclear power had Three Mile Island. Wednesday, with flames menacing one of Southern California's most beloved mountain resorts, Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains risked becoming forestry's equivalent -- a disaster so overwhelming it could change U.S. environmental policy for decades to come. The area, filled with overgrown, diseased and dying trees, has gained a reputation in recent years as one of the worst examples of forest mismanagement in the West. If much of Lake Arrowhead or nearby Big Bear Lake ends up burning, fire experts said it could prompt rapid changes, including congressional orders for much more logging to thin out the nation's overgrown forests, a loss of public confidence in environmental groups that have resisted such logging, and billions more taxpayer dollars spent on fire protection...Gallegly proposes waiving law to battle fires Ten years ago, Rep. Elton Gallegly stood beside two California Air National Guard planes grounded by bureaucratic red tape and watched helplessly as the hills of Malibu burned in the distance. A similar scene played out in eerie fashion late last week. Once again, as wildfires raged across Southern California, two C-130 military planes that could have been used to put out the flames or at least keep them from burning out of control sat on the ground. In both cases, part of the problem was an arcane federal law that prohibits the use of military equipment to fight wildfires until all available commercial aircraft have been deployed. Gallegly and Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., are pushing for Congress to allow military firefighting equipment to be used as soon as possible to fight wildfires. They are sponsoring legislation that would waive a Depression-era provision in the Economy Act of 1932. The law, adopted to protect civilian jobs, requires that all commercial or private resources under government contract must be exhausted before military equipment can be used to fight wildfires...Column: Behind the Inferno In California, where overzealous environmentalism often trumps common sense, our forests are suffering from rampant disease and destruction. In just a matter of days, over 600,000 acres of Southern California's forests have been reduced to mere ashes due in part to overgrown forests that have been infected by the largest bark-beetle infestation in the last 50 years. Due to decades of mismanagement, the thinning of these forests remains largely unpracticed within our state, leaving forests that historically contained just 30 to 40 trees per acre, now filled with 300 to 400 trees per acre. As the events of this week have demonstrated, the gross mismanagement of our state's forests has literally created a perfect storm for wildfires... Our current forest policies have allowed 190 million acres of federal land to remain at a dangerously high risk of catastrophic wildfire, insect infestation, and disease. As a result, last year alone, American taxpayers spent over $1.6 billion fighting record-setting blazes due to overgrown forests. Furthermore, lengthy bureaucratic processes have added to this smoldering danger, as they have kept the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) from being able to fully manage our forests. Just recently, the USFS testified that while treatment of an important project was held up in a three-year, 800-step decision-making process, a record-setting wildfire eviscerated large swaths of landscape and caused enormous damage to the natural environment as well as to a number of communities. Despite the plea from the National Volunteer Fire Council to "reduce the threats from catastrophic wildfire, insect infestations and disease," federal land managers can only treat about 2.5 million acres out of 190 million each year due to these often unnecessary bureaucratic processes...Editorial: The Senate answers the fire call C hased by the terrifying fires in Southern California, the Senate hurried Thursday to approve legislation to reduce the threat of wildfire. Lawmakers agreed on a fire policy the day after a firefighter died and a congressman was among thousands of Californians who lost their homes. Yes, this bill was a long time coming. The West first called in this fire emergency more than four years ago. Since then, we have lost 24 million acres of forests -- and the lives of dozens of firefighters -- to catastrophic wildfires. Yet Congress is at last answering the fire call. The Senate legislation shaped this week is the right approach to thinning sick, brittle forests and reducing the threat of unstoppable fires like those raging in Southern California...Lizard defenders file suit over species' status Environmentalists in an ongoing battle with the government over the status of a desert lizard are taking the fight to court. On Thursday a coalition of environmental groups announced they filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration and Interior Secretary Gale Norton that accuses the government of illegally denying the flat-tailed horned lizard protection as a threatened species. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson...BLM director apologizes to employees for criticisms in Reno The head of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management apologized to her 10,000 employees nationally for her criticism a week ago of agency bureaucrats. ''I apologize for any embarrassment you and your families may have experienced because of things I said,'' Kathleen Clarke wrote in a letter and e-mail this week addressed to ''All BLM Employees.'' In an Oct. 20 speech at an oil and gas industry confernece in Reno, Clarke said she was demanding more accountability of her field managers to try to rein in an agency that lacked discipline under the Clinton administration...U.S. may ease beef ban The United States may let Canadian cattle and some fresh beef into the country early next year for the first time since a case of mad cow disease was found in May. Bill Hawks, an Agriculture Department undersecretary, said U.S. officials are proposing to allow in from Canada cattle that are 30 months old or younger. Meat allowed in would be from animals that age. The department is taking comments on the proposal until January...January trial set for suit against meatpacker federal trial is set to begin early next year in an eight-year legal battle between a meatpacking powerhouse and a group of cattlemen who accuse it of cornering the beef market. About 31,000 farmers and 4,000 feedlots from across the country sued IBP Inc., saying the company conspired to fix prices paid on the open market. A jury trial has been scheduled for Jan. 12, 2004, in Birmingham, Ala...Cowgirl boot camp No doubt about it: I'm a city slicker. What I wrangle is words on a computer screen; all I lasso is latte at my local Starbucks in Washington, D.C. I couldn't hoist a bale of hay if my life depended on it, and my red-lacquered nails are more at home in Paris than on the range. I've hardly ridden since I was spooked by a fall in my teens. Yet in my heart, I'm a cowgirl. Strong. Self-reliant. Free. Or I'd like to be. So would the 17 city and suburban women here with me at The Alisal Guest Ranch and Resort's first Cowgirl Boot Camp. We've been drawn to this 10,000-acre spread northeast of Santa Barbara by the promise of riding the range and learning to rope and fly-fish...Ranchers credit meaty diets for high beef prices A lanky Texan like Paul Genho never had much interest in celebrity doctors and their slim-down trends. Until now. Thanks to the toppled food pyramid approach advised by diet gurus such as Dr. Atkins and Dr. Agatson, red meat sales are up again, and the fattier the meat the better. "Beef is hot, beef is back," said Genho, manager of the 825,000-acre King Ranch, one of the country's top beef producers. "People are sick of chicken." Breed bulls are going for $40,000 and per-pound prices recently trading over a dollar a pound of live weight...
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Area called ripe for a disaster The oil industry had the Exxon Valdez. Nuclear power had Three Mile Island. Wednesday, with flames menacing one of Southern California's most beloved mountain resorts, Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains risked becoming forestry's equivalent -- a disaster so overwhelming it could change U.S. environmental policy for decades to come. The area, filled with overgrown, diseased and dying trees, has gained a reputation in recent years as one of the worst examples of forest mismanagement in the West. If much of Lake Arrowhead or nearby Big Bear Lake ends up burning, fire experts said it could prompt rapid changes, including congressional orders for much more logging to thin out the nation's overgrown forests, a loss of public confidence in environmental groups that have resisted such logging, and billions more taxpayer dollars spent on fire protection...Gallegly proposes waiving law to battle fires Ten years ago, Rep. Elton Gallegly stood beside two California Air National Guard planes grounded by bureaucratic red tape and watched helplessly as the hills of Malibu burned in the distance. A similar scene played out in eerie fashion late last week. Once again, as wildfires raged across Southern California, two C-130 military planes that could have been used to put out the flames or at least keep them from burning out of control sat on the ground. In both cases, part of the problem was an arcane federal law that prohibits the use of military equipment to fight wildfires until all available commercial aircraft have been deployed. Gallegly and Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., are pushing for Congress to allow military firefighting equipment to be used as soon as possible to fight wildfires. They are sponsoring legislation that would waive a Depression-era provision in the Economy Act of 1932. The law, adopted to protect civilian jobs, requires that all commercial or private resources under government contract must be exhausted before military equipment can be used to fight wildfires...Column: Behind the Inferno In California, where overzealous environmentalism often trumps common sense, our forests are suffering from rampant disease and destruction. In just a matter of days, over 600,000 acres of Southern California's forests have been reduced to mere ashes due in part to overgrown forests that have been infected by the largest bark-beetle infestation in the last 50 years. Due to decades of mismanagement, the thinning of these forests remains largely unpracticed within our state, leaving forests that historically contained just 30 to 40 trees per acre, now filled with 300 to 400 trees per acre. As the events of this week have demonstrated, the gross mismanagement of our state's forests has literally created a perfect storm for wildfires... Our current forest policies have allowed 190 million acres of federal land to remain at a dangerously high risk of catastrophic wildfire, insect infestation, and disease. As a result, last year alone, American taxpayers spent over $1.6 billion fighting record-setting blazes due to overgrown forests. Furthermore, lengthy bureaucratic processes have added to this smoldering danger, as they have kept the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) from being able to fully manage our forests. Just recently, the USFS testified that while treatment of an important project was held up in a three-year, 800-step decision-making process, a record-setting wildfire eviscerated large swaths of landscape and caused enormous damage to the natural environment as well as to a number of communities. Despite the plea from the National Volunteer Fire Council to "reduce the threats from catastrophic wildfire, insect infestations and disease," federal land managers can only treat about 2.5 million acres out of 190 million each year due to these often unnecessary bureaucratic processes...Editorial: The Senate answers the fire call C hased by the terrifying fires in Southern California, the Senate hurried Thursday to approve legislation to reduce the threat of wildfire. Lawmakers agreed on a fire policy the day after a firefighter died and a congressman was among thousands of Californians who lost their homes. Yes, this bill was a long time coming. The West first called in this fire emergency more than four years ago. Since then, we have lost 24 million acres of forests -- and the lives of dozens of firefighters -- to catastrophic wildfires. Yet Congress is at last answering the fire call. The Senate legislation shaped this week is the right approach to thinning sick, brittle forests and reducing the threat of unstoppable fires like those raging in Southern California...Lizard defenders file suit over species' status Environmentalists in an ongoing battle with the government over the status of a desert lizard are taking the fight to court. On Thursday a coalition of environmental groups announced they filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration and Interior Secretary Gale Norton that accuses the government of illegally denying the flat-tailed horned lizard protection as a threatened species. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson...BLM director apologizes to employees for criticisms in Reno The head of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management apologized to her 10,000 employees nationally for her criticism a week ago of agency bureaucrats. ''I apologize for any embarrassment you and your families may have experienced because of things I said,'' Kathleen Clarke wrote in a letter and e-mail this week addressed to ''All BLM Employees.'' In an Oct. 20 speech at an oil and gas industry confernece in Reno, Clarke said she was demanding more accountability of her field managers to try to rein in an agency that lacked discipline under the Clinton administration...U.S. may ease beef ban The United States may let Canadian cattle and some fresh beef into the country early next year for the first time since a case of mad cow disease was found in May. Bill Hawks, an Agriculture Department undersecretary, said U.S. officials are proposing to allow in from Canada cattle that are 30 months old or younger. Meat allowed in would be from animals that age. The department is taking comments on the proposal until January...January trial set for suit against meatpacker federal trial is set to begin early next year in an eight-year legal battle between a meatpacking powerhouse and a group of cattlemen who accuse it of cornering the beef market. About 31,000 farmers and 4,000 feedlots from across the country sued IBP Inc., saying the company conspired to fix prices paid on the open market. A jury trial has been scheduled for Jan. 12, 2004, in Birmingham, Ala...Cowgirl boot camp No doubt about it: I'm a city slicker. What I wrangle is words on a computer screen; all I lasso is latte at my local Starbucks in Washington, D.C. I couldn't hoist a bale of hay if my life depended on it, and my red-lacquered nails are more at home in Paris than on the range. I've hardly ridden since I was spooked by a fall in my teens. Yet in my heart, I'm a cowgirl. Strong. Self-reliant. Free. Or I'd like to be. So would the 17 city and suburban women here with me at The Alisal Guest Ranch and Resort's first Cowgirl Boot Camp. We've been drawn to this 10,000-acre spread northeast of Santa Barbara by the promise of riding the range and learning to rope and fly-fish...Ranchers credit meaty diets for high beef prices A lanky Texan like Paul Genho never had much interest in celebrity doctors and their slim-down trends. Until now. Thanks to the toppled food pyramid approach advised by diet gurus such as Dr. Atkins and Dr. Agatson, red meat sales are up again, and the fattier the meat the better. "Beef is hot, beef is back," said Genho, manager of the 825,000-acre King Ranch, one of the country's top beef producers. "People are sick of chicken." Breed bulls are going for $40,000 and per-pound prices recently trading over a dollar a pound of live weight...
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NEWS ROUNDUP
NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Copters Halted as Fire Began Helicopter pilots with the San Diego Sheriff's Department wanted to conduct aerial water drops on the Cedar fire shortly after it was ignited Saturday but were prohibited from doing so by the U.S. Forest Service, sheriff's officials said Thursday. One sheriff's helicopter was flying back to an air base to pick up a "Bambi bucket" capable of dropping 100 gallons of water when the pilot was ordered to stay away from the fire, said Chris Saunders, a Sheriff's Department spokesman. Another sheriff's pilot said in an interview with The Times that he believed the fire could have been extinguished if an air assault was launched when the pilots volunteered to help and the fire was still relatively small. But an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which had initial jurisdiction over the blaze, said the Sheriff's Department's request to make water drops was denied out of concerns for the pilots' safety and the belief that the drops would have done little good. "We found out a long time ago that helicopters with little buckets are not effective in fighting brush fires like this," said Rich Hawkins, fire chief with the U.S. Forest Service. "No little helicopter with its little bucket would have done much good."...U.S. Rejected Davis on Aid to Clear Trees The Bush administration took six months to evaluate Gov. Gray Davis' emergency request last spring for $430 million to clear dead trees from fire-prone areas of Southern California. The request was finally denied Oct. 24, only hours before wildfires roared out of control in what has become the largest fire disaster in California history. Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), a leader in the effort to get federal assistance for fire prevention, questioned Thursday why the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not rule sooner. "FEMA's decision was wrong," Bono said. "The timing couldn't have been worse.... We knew this disaster was going to happen with certainty. It was only a matter of when, and we were trying to beat the clock with removing the dead trees." If Davis had received the denial earlier, Bono said, he would have had time to wage an appeal. FEMA spokesman Chad Kolton said the agency denied Davis' request for an emergency declaration because California was already receiving more than $40 million from the departments of Agriculture and Interior to deal with a bark beetle infestation that has damaged thousands of acres of forest in the San Bernardino Mountains...Could Russian 'waterbomber' save California? Congressmen say feds resisting massive jet that will douse wildfires A massive Russian jet capable of releasing more than 10,000 gallons of water in a single dump could help solve California's wildfire crisis, but the federal government continues to resist it, asserts two U.S. congressmen. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Casey Weldon, R-Penn., said at a news conference yesterday the Russian government repeatedly has offered the Ilyushin-76 'Waterbomber' - reportedly capable of dousing a fire the size of 10 football fields -to the U.S. Forest Service for its use but has been rebuffed each time. Rohrabacher spokesman Aaron Lewis told WorldNetDaily the federal government's response amid wildfires that have killed 18, consumed more than 718,000 acres and destroyed more than 2,400 homes is the same as it has been for the past decade...Forest Service proposes aerial spraying for weeds A proposal to weed out noxious and invasive plants infiltrating the Helena National Forest includes aerial and ground spraying of herbicides, as well as enlisting the aid of goats, sheep and insects. Only about 2 percent of the 975,000 acres that make up the Helena National Forest currently are infested with noxious weeds, including Dalmatian toadflax, common toadflax, knapweed, leafy spurge, ox-eye daisy and sulfur cinquefoil. However, forest officials are concerned that with a 14 percent estimated annual rate of spread, it won't be long before weed infestations go beyond the 22,668 acres they currently cover onto another 319,700 susceptible acres...Native Fish in Arizona River in Peril Native fish in the Gila River basin are on the brink of extinction and little is being done to help save them, according to a study by a team of biologists. Written by scientists from federal agencies, Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and the Nature Conservancy, the 20-page report said that Arizona's native fish population is under siege. "Arizona is on a path to have all of its native fish go extinct unless state and federal agencies start doing -- rather than just talking about -- their jobs," said Leon Fager, a longtime endangered-species biologist for the U.S. Forest Service. The study of a dozen threatened or endangered warm-water fish in the Gila River basin found that half of the species no longer exist in wild populations...Agencies call off wolf investigation Federal officials have halted an investigation into the possible death of a wolf on the national forest west of Augusta after a forensic lab determined the wolf's collar mostly likely was pulled off by another wolf. On Aug. 9, federal researchers discovered that the wolf's collar was emitting a mortality signal - a radio signal that is broadcast if the animal wearing the collar does not move for a certain period of time. Wilderness rangers later recovered the collar but found no wolf body in the area near the Prairie Reef Lookout Station on the Lewis and Clark National Forest...Forest tightens rules for off-roaders The Ashley National Forest has banned ATVs from straying off designated roads and trails in the last part of northern Utah forest that was open to "cross-country travel." Ashley Supervisor George Weldon issued an order earlier this month that bans motorized cross-country travel in the Vernal Ranger District, which includes the eastern part of the forest north of Vernal and south of Flaming Gorge. The restrictions -- which the forest may try to make permanent when it revises its master plan next year -- are needed "to halt the unacceptable impacts to natural resources on the forest," Weldon said...Senate Votes for a Measure to Thin Trees Prodded by the wildfires raging across California, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday in favor of President Bush's plan to allow the thinning of trees on as much as 20 million acres of federal land. The vote, 80 to 14, came after a day of intense debate on the measure, which the administration contends would reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fires. The bill, a bipartisan compromise, now goes into conference with the House, which has already passed similar legislation. The White House has said it supports both bills...San Francisco Endorses European Chemical Reforms San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 on Oct. 28 to adopt a resolution supporting a proposed European Union law to control hazardous chemicals. "San Francisco recently became the first city in the nation to adopt the Precautionary Principle as a guidepost for city policy," according to San Francisco Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. "Now by supporting REACH we can take another step forward in protecting our communities from toxics chemicals." The European initiative, called REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals), would shift the burden of proving the health and environmental safety onto companies that manufacture, use and import most major industrial chemicals...Conservationists call for basin-wide analysis of impacts to Columbia and Snake River salmon The federal government must examine federal dam operations and freshwater habitat in one comprehensive evaluation when determining how it will protect Columbia and Snake river salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act, conservation organizations and fishing businesses asserted in a legal brief filed today in federal district court in Oregon. The brief asks the judge to clarify his earlier decision that the federal government had improperly defined the so-called "action" and "action area" for its plan -- i.e., the activities that would be undertaken to protect salmon from the effects of the federal dam system and the area affected by these efforts...Editorial: Designation will stifle ag, growth If we're not careful, we could be preserving ourselves into extinction. We're talking about a proposal to list the California tiger salamander as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. This slimy 8-inch-long critter is perilously close to threatening agriculture and development in the Central Valley. Estimates place the critters on 1.1 million acres, which we think hardly makes them threatened. Let's face it, that's an area that's almost 1 1/3 times the size of Rhode Island, home to over 1 million people. As we all are well aware, ag is big business in Stanislaus County - in fact, it's a $1.37 billion industry. If the designation goes through, as much as one-third of the county's land, must of which is used for farming, could be affected...NPRC takes methane fears to BLM A conservation group protesting a decision by the Bureau of Land Management to allow coalbed methane drilling in southeastern Montana showed up unexpectedly at the state office Wednesday to meet with the director even though the meeting had been canceled the day before. As BLM staffers scrambled to find chairs for more than 20 members of the Northern Plains Resource Council, State Director Marty Ott welcomed the group in a conference room. He listened for about an hour as NPRC members politely vented their frustration with the process and aired concerns about coalbed methane development. "We feel it's the law (that) you need to take public comment," said Mark Fix, a Tongue River rancher and chair of NPRC's coalbed methane task force. Ray Muggli, another Tongue River rancher, said producers along the river drainage are being made the scapegoats for development. "Coalbed methane will never be taken care of in our lifetime," he said. "Soil is not a renewable resource." Damage from coalbed methane water "will be permanent in the valley" and will destroy production on clay soils, he said. Drilling for methane gas requires pumping to the surface large quantities of groundwater, releasing the gas held in coal seams. In Montana, the groundwater from methane drilling tends to run high in sodium, which can damage plants and soils... Environmentalists: BLM catering to oil The Bureau of Land Management has abandoned its role as a multi-use agency overseeing public lands and is catering to one of the richest businesses in the world, environmentalists said at a rally Wednesday. Members of Western Colorado Congress, a grass-roots environmental organization, rallied outside a day-long workshop involving the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and federal agencies at the Adam's Mark Hotel. The controversial workshop, focused on streamlining the application for permit to drill (APD) process, gained attention when environmental groups learned its invitation was sent out on BLM letterhead. The partnership between the oil and gas lobbying association and a federal agency bothered some constituents. "Landowners did not receive invitations," said Peggy Utesch. "Ranchers who hold grazing permits for federal lands weren't invited to share their concerns about increased gas drilling on federal lands...Utah to claim 20 roads The state has thrown down a glove in its fight over dirt roads. But environmentalists won't likely pick a fight. At least not this time. Gov. Mike Leavitt Wednesday unveiled a list of 20 roads crisscrossing federal land on which the state intends to seek ownership. "These roads are indisputably roads," Leavitt said. "Every single road being submitted existed before 1976, can be traveled by car or truck and is not in a national park, wilderness area, wilderness study area or fish and wildlife refuge." Leavitt's catalogue of roads is the first volley in what is expected to be a litany of future fights over tens of thousands of dirt roads across federal lands - so-called "R.S. 2477" roads, in reference to an old mining statute that allowed states and counties to claim rights of way across federal lands. The law was repealed in 1976, but any road in place prior to that time would still qualify as a local right of way under the old law...Bush Administration Attacks Clean Water Safeguards, Sets Dangerous Precedent With Proposed Oregon Rule, Groups Say The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed "Oregon Rule," which would pave the way for federal dams to evade their Clean Water Act obligations, is a trial balloon for a broad national policy that would have devastating consequences for river ecosystems across the country, conservationists warned today. The proposed Oregon Rule would allow federal agencies to petition the EPA to weaken water quality standards that are needed to maintain river conditions that support healthy and thriving fish populations. Right now, many federal dams impair water quality to the point that fish populations are decreased and sliding toward extinction. If a federal dam operator petitions EPA, the Oregon Rule would require EPA to initiate a process to change standards to suit the dam -- even if lower standards would prevent restoration of healthy fish populations...Stuff of dreams goes up in smoke at movie ranch Some 50 years of film and television history went up in smoke this weekend when fire ripped across the 7,000-acre Big Sky Movie Ranch north of Simi Valley. Only ashen timbers, charred metal and thousands of memories remain of old sets scattered around the hillsides that have been home to countless productions, from "Gunsmoke" to "Fear Factor." For ranch managers and filming coordinators Don and Debra Early, who live on the property, the loss is deeply personal. While the main house they lived in was spared, the fire destroyed fences, barns and perhaps as many as 40 of their cattle, which remain missing. The Earlys still were tallying the damage Thursday, but they expect it to exceed $1 million...FDA says food from cloned animals safe to eat Milk and meat from cloned animals are safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration has tentatively concluded, a finding that could eventually clear the way for such products to reach supermarket shelves and for cloning to be widely used to breed livestock. The agency's conclusions are being released today in advance of a public meeting on the issue Tuesday in Rockville, Md. Agency officials said that after receiving public comments, they hope by late next spring to outline their views on how, if at all, cloning would be regulated, including whether food from cloned animals should be labeled. But if the preliminary conclusion stands, labeling would not be needed and there would be little regulation, said Stephen Sundlof, director of the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine...Brain disease reversed in mice By using genetic trickery, a group of British scientists has reversed a type of fatal brain disease, a finding that has implications for a family of deadly neurological disorders in people, cattle and deer. Researchers using laboratory mice say they were able to halt and actually reverse the disease process caused by an infectious agent known as a prion, according to their paper published Thursday in the journal Science. Prions are rogue proteins that attack the brain and are believed to be the cause of a family of diseases that includes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people, mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease in deer. People also can be infected with the human version of mad cow disease, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease...
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NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Copters Halted as Fire Began Helicopter pilots with the San Diego Sheriff's Department wanted to conduct aerial water drops on the Cedar fire shortly after it was ignited Saturday but were prohibited from doing so by the U.S. Forest Service, sheriff's officials said Thursday. One sheriff's helicopter was flying back to an air base to pick up a "Bambi bucket" capable of dropping 100 gallons of water when the pilot was ordered to stay away from the fire, said Chris Saunders, a Sheriff's Department spokesman. Another sheriff's pilot said in an interview with The Times that he believed the fire could have been extinguished if an air assault was launched when the pilots volunteered to help and the fire was still relatively small. But an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which had initial jurisdiction over the blaze, said the Sheriff's Department's request to make water drops was denied out of concerns for the pilots' safety and the belief that the drops would have done little good. "We found out a long time ago that helicopters with little buckets are not effective in fighting brush fires like this," said Rich Hawkins, fire chief with the U.S. Forest Service. "No little helicopter with its little bucket would have done much good."...U.S. Rejected Davis on Aid to Clear Trees The Bush administration took six months to evaluate Gov. Gray Davis' emergency request last spring for $430 million to clear dead trees from fire-prone areas of Southern California. The request was finally denied Oct. 24, only hours before wildfires roared out of control in what has become the largest fire disaster in California history. Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), a leader in the effort to get federal assistance for fire prevention, questioned Thursday why the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not rule sooner. "FEMA's decision was wrong," Bono said. "The timing couldn't have been worse.... We knew this disaster was going to happen with certainty. It was only a matter of when, and we were trying to beat the clock with removing the dead trees." If Davis had received the denial earlier, Bono said, he would have had time to wage an appeal. FEMA spokesman Chad Kolton said the agency denied Davis' request for an emergency declaration because California was already receiving more than $40 million from the departments of Agriculture and Interior to deal with a bark beetle infestation that has damaged thousands of acres of forest in the San Bernardino Mountains...Could Russian 'waterbomber' save California? Congressmen say feds resisting massive jet that will douse wildfires A massive Russian jet capable of releasing more than 10,000 gallons of water in a single dump could help solve California's wildfire crisis, but the federal government continues to resist it, asserts two U.S. congressmen. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Casey Weldon, R-Penn., said at a news conference yesterday the Russian government repeatedly has offered the Ilyushin-76 'Waterbomber' - reportedly capable of dousing a fire the size of 10 football fields -to the U.S. Forest Service for its use but has been rebuffed each time. Rohrabacher spokesman Aaron Lewis told WorldNetDaily the federal government's response amid wildfires that have killed 18, consumed more than 718,000 acres and destroyed more than 2,400 homes is the same as it has been for the past decade...Forest Service proposes aerial spraying for weeds A proposal to weed out noxious and invasive plants infiltrating the Helena National Forest includes aerial and ground spraying of herbicides, as well as enlisting the aid of goats, sheep and insects. Only about 2 percent of the 975,000 acres that make up the Helena National Forest currently are infested with noxious weeds, including Dalmatian toadflax, common toadflax, knapweed, leafy spurge, ox-eye daisy and sulfur cinquefoil. However, forest officials are concerned that with a 14 percent estimated annual rate of spread, it won't be long before weed infestations go beyond the 22,668 acres they currently cover onto another 319,700 susceptible acres...Native Fish in Arizona River in Peril Native fish in the Gila River basin are on the brink of extinction and little is being done to help save them, according to a study by a team of biologists. Written by scientists from federal agencies, Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and the Nature Conservancy, the 20-page report said that Arizona's native fish population is under siege. "Arizona is on a path to have all of its native fish go extinct unless state and federal agencies start doing -- rather than just talking about -- their jobs," said Leon Fager, a longtime endangered-species biologist for the U.S. Forest Service. The study of a dozen threatened or endangered warm-water fish in the Gila River basin found that half of the species no longer exist in wild populations...Agencies call off wolf investigation Federal officials have halted an investigation into the possible death of a wolf on the national forest west of Augusta after a forensic lab determined the wolf's collar mostly likely was pulled off by another wolf. On Aug. 9, federal researchers discovered that the wolf's collar was emitting a mortality signal - a radio signal that is broadcast if the animal wearing the collar does not move for a certain period of time. Wilderness rangers later recovered the collar but found no wolf body in the area near the Prairie Reef Lookout Station on the Lewis and Clark National Forest...Forest tightens rules for off-roaders The Ashley National Forest has banned ATVs from straying off designated roads and trails in the last part of northern Utah forest that was open to "cross-country travel." Ashley Supervisor George Weldon issued an order earlier this month that bans motorized cross-country travel in the Vernal Ranger District, which includes the eastern part of the forest north of Vernal and south of Flaming Gorge. The restrictions -- which the forest may try to make permanent when it revises its master plan next year -- are needed "to halt the unacceptable impacts to natural resources on the forest," Weldon said...Senate Votes for a Measure to Thin Trees Prodded by the wildfires raging across California, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday in favor of President Bush's plan to allow the thinning of trees on as much as 20 million acres of federal land. The vote, 80 to 14, came after a day of intense debate on the measure, which the administration contends would reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fires. The bill, a bipartisan compromise, now goes into conference with the House, which has already passed similar legislation. The White House has said it supports both bills...San Francisco Endorses European Chemical Reforms San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 on Oct. 28 to adopt a resolution supporting a proposed European Union law to control hazardous chemicals. "San Francisco recently became the first city in the nation to adopt the Precautionary Principle as a guidepost for city policy," according to San Francisco Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. "Now by supporting REACH we can take another step forward in protecting our communities from toxics chemicals." The European initiative, called REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals), would shift the burden of proving the health and environmental safety onto companies that manufacture, use and import most major industrial chemicals...Conservationists call for basin-wide analysis of impacts to Columbia and Snake River salmon The federal government must examine federal dam operations and freshwater habitat in one comprehensive evaluation when determining how it will protect Columbia and Snake river salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act, conservation organizations and fishing businesses asserted in a legal brief filed today in federal district court in Oregon. The brief asks the judge to clarify his earlier decision that the federal government had improperly defined the so-called "action" and "action area" for its plan -- i.e., the activities that would be undertaken to protect salmon from the effects of the federal dam system and the area affected by these efforts...Editorial: Designation will stifle ag, growth If we're not careful, we could be preserving ourselves into extinction. We're talking about a proposal to list the California tiger salamander as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. This slimy 8-inch-long critter is perilously close to threatening agriculture and development in the Central Valley. Estimates place the critters on 1.1 million acres, which we think hardly makes them threatened. Let's face it, that's an area that's almost 1 1/3 times the size of Rhode Island, home to over 1 million people. As we all are well aware, ag is big business in Stanislaus County - in fact, it's a $1.37 billion industry. If the designation goes through, as much as one-third of the county's land, must of which is used for farming, could be affected...NPRC takes methane fears to BLM A conservation group protesting a decision by the Bureau of Land Management to allow coalbed methane drilling in southeastern Montana showed up unexpectedly at the state office Wednesday to meet with the director even though the meeting had been canceled the day before. As BLM staffers scrambled to find chairs for more than 20 members of the Northern Plains Resource Council, State Director Marty Ott welcomed the group in a conference room. He listened for about an hour as NPRC members politely vented their frustration with the process and aired concerns about coalbed methane development. "We feel it's the law (that) you need to take public comment," said Mark Fix, a Tongue River rancher and chair of NPRC's coalbed methane task force. Ray Muggli, another Tongue River rancher, said producers along the river drainage are being made the scapegoats for development. "Coalbed methane will never be taken care of in our lifetime," he said. "Soil is not a renewable resource." Damage from coalbed methane water "will be permanent in the valley" and will destroy production on clay soils, he said. Drilling for methane gas requires pumping to the surface large quantities of groundwater, releasing the gas held in coal seams. In Montana, the groundwater from methane drilling tends to run high in sodium, which can damage plants and soils... Environmentalists: BLM catering to oil The Bureau of Land Management has abandoned its role as a multi-use agency overseeing public lands and is catering to one of the richest businesses in the world, environmentalists said at a rally Wednesday. Members of Western Colorado Congress, a grass-roots environmental organization, rallied outside a day-long workshop involving the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and federal agencies at the Adam's Mark Hotel. The controversial workshop, focused on streamlining the application for permit to drill (APD) process, gained attention when environmental groups learned its invitation was sent out on BLM letterhead. The partnership between the oil and gas lobbying association and a federal agency bothered some constituents. "Landowners did not receive invitations," said Peggy Utesch. "Ranchers who hold grazing permits for federal lands weren't invited to share their concerns about increased gas drilling on federal lands...Utah to claim 20 roads The state has thrown down a glove in its fight over dirt roads. But environmentalists won't likely pick a fight. At least not this time. Gov. Mike Leavitt Wednesday unveiled a list of 20 roads crisscrossing federal land on which the state intends to seek ownership. "These roads are indisputably roads," Leavitt said. "Every single road being submitted existed before 1976, can be traveled by car or truck and is not in a national park, wilderness area, wilderness study area or fish and wildlife refuge." Leavitt's catalogue of roads is the first volley in what is expected to be a litany of future fights over tens of thousands of dirt roads across federal lands - so-called "R.S. 2477" roads, in reference to an old mining statute that allowed states and counties to claim rights of way across federal lands. The law was repealed in 1976, but any road in place prior to that time would still qualify as a local right of way under the old law...Bush Administration Attacks Clean Water Safeguards, Sets Dangerous Precedent With Proposed Oregon Rule, Groups Say The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed "Oregon Rule," which would pave the way for federal dams to evade their Clean Water Act obligations, is a trial balloon for a broad national policy that would have devastating consequences for river ecosystems across the country, conservationists warned today. The proposed Oregon Rule would allow federal agencies to petition the EPA to weaken water quality standards that are needed to maintain river conditions that support healthy and thriving fish populations. Right now, many federal dams impair water quality to the point that fish populations are decreased and sliding toward extinction. If a federal dam operator petitions EPA, the Oregon Rule would require EPA to initiate a process to change standards to suit the dam -- even if lower standards would prevent restoration of healthy fish populations...Stuff of dreams goes up in smoke at movie ranch Some 50 years of film and television history went up in smoke this weekend when fire ripped across the 7,000-acre Big Sky Movie Ranch north of Simi Valley. Only ashen timbers, charred metal and thousands of memories remain of old sets scattered around the hillsides that have been home to countless productions, from "Gunsmoke" to "Fear Factor." For ranch managers and filming coordinators Don and Debra Early, who live on the property, the loss is deeply personal. While the main house they lived in was spared, the fire destroyed fences, barns and perhaps as many as 40 of their cattle, which remain missing. The Earlys still were tallying the damage Thursday, but they expect it to exceed $1 million...FDA says food from cloned animals safe to eat Milk and meat from cloned animals are safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration has tentatively concluded, a finding that could eventually clear the way for such products to reach supermarket shelves and for cloning to be widely used to breed livestock. The agency's conclusions are being released today in advance of a public meeting on the issue Tuesday in Rockville, Md. Agency officials said that after receiving public comments, they hope by late next spring to outline their views on how, if at all, cloning would be regulated, including whether food from cloned animals should be labeled. But if the preliminary conclusion stands, labeling would not be needed and there would be little regulation, said Stephen Sundlof, director of the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine...Brain disease reversed in mice By using genetic trickery, a group of British scientists has reversed a type of fatal brain disease, a finding that has implications for a family of deadly neurological disorders in people, cattle and deer. Researchers using laboratory mice say they were able to halt and actually reverse the disease process caused by an infectious agent known as a prion, according to their paper published Thursday in the journal Science. Prions are rogue proteins that attack the brain and are believed to be the cause of a family of diseases that includes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people, mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease in deer. People also can be infected with the human version of mad cow disease, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease...
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Thursday, October 30, 2003
Healthy Forests
Below are excerpts from Senator Harkin's speech on the Senate floor yesterday, and my comments.
Mr. HARKIN. I am somewhat amazed when we come out with legislation and it deals with sensitive environmental issues and we are told certain environmental groups have concerns and we will hear about the environmental issues so that somehow, if you are a member of an environmental organization, you are opposed to progress, you are opposed to jobs, you are opposed to doing things that might make life better for some people in certain areas. It is almost as if "environmentalist" is a bad word. I don't think it is. I think being pro-environment and being an environmentalist is a positive attribute.
When the enviro's introduce wolves in Iowa, put corn farmers out of business, deny Iowa citizens access to public property, and divert water from families in Des Moines to supply an endangered species, perhaps your outlook will change.
I compliment those in our country, many of whom work for nonprofit organizations. I have a number of letters from them that I will have printed in the RECORD. They toil endlessly, tirelessly, sometimes for no pay, sometimes for little pay, to ensure that future generations of Americans have a good, healthy environment, that those who like to hunt have areas in which we can hunt, where we have healthy wildlife areas.
No pay or little pay? Senator, please have your staff show you the Washington Post series on the Nature Conservancy. Those who are receiving no pay are folks who have been put out of work by the enviro's, and their friends in the Congress and the courts. Nonprofits? The nonprofits in the west are those formerly profitable businesses who couldn't survive under this nations' environmental and regulatory policies. Hunting? You've got to be kidding.
This is not a method of slowing down the bill or taking an undue amount of time, but it is ensuring that we do look at the bill carefully; that the public is generally aware of what is in the bill; that those who perhaps do not spend a lot of time looking at these things - and I am the first to admit this is not an area of my expertise, but as the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, charged with the responsibility of legislation that impinges upon our national forests that comes under our jurisdiction, I make sure I have good staff who understand the impact of forest legislation. And I have taken the time to study it myself to the extent I have had the time to do so.
Senator, you and Senator Bingaman put a hold on this bill and wanted to hold additional hearings and generally do whatever you could, at the behest of the environmental community, to delay this bill. You know, and I know, if not for the devastating fires in California, you would have kept this bill from coming to a vote. You didn't have to tell us this is not your area of expertise, your comments make that quite evident. We appreciate your attempt to "study it myself", but you really should make fast and frequent tracks back to your office and do some more homework.
I do not pretend to know all the ins and outs of forest legislation as much as my friend from Oregon, for example, who has spent his adult life working on this, or the Senator from Idaho and others who I know have put a great deal of time in this. But that does not lessen my concern about certain aspects of the bill and its impact on our environment. So we will have a discussion and we will have amendments. Preventing damage and injury to communities is of paramount concern to all of us, especially now with the tragic wildfires in California that show clearly the dangers these communities face. Of course, our hearts and our thoughts go out to all those families in those communities that are affected by these wildfires.
Senator you are the former chairman and current ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, "charged with the responsibility of legislation that impinges upon our national forests that comes under our jurisdiction". So why don't you know the in and outs? Why would you put a hold on a bill you don't understand? And why are you on the floor of the Senate discussing a bill you don't know the "ins and outs" of? We don't want your hearts and thoughts, we want to bring science based management to our public lands. Can you understand that?
The way the bill is right now, we could spend a lot of money going out and cleaning out the brush. And, by the way, I will have something to say about that. We are not talking about brush. We are talking about trees. It could be miles, tens of hundreds of miles, away from any community. So again I question whether that is where we want to put our resources.
Senator, I understand that in Iowa a farmer can live in a community and drive to his farm each day. That is generally not the way ranching in the west is done. There are ranch families living out there, Senator. I know, I know, your hearts and thoughts go out to them too.
Another problem I have with this legislation is the lack of protection for roadless areas, those areas of our national forests that have wisely been left free from most logging and roadbuilding to ensure their protection. In fact, this bill does not restrict roadbuilding at all - at all. So you could have permanent roads built anywhere under this bill.
Now we are finally getting to the crux of the matter. At least 20 people dead, more than 2,600 homes destroyed, three-quarters of a million acres burned, but that is not what's important. What's important is we not overturn the Clinton roadless program. Roads preclude wilderness designation. So let's do the enviro's bidding, protect the Clinton era policies, and to hell with the people and resources of the west. Thank you Senator Harkin.
That's enough fun, so let's turn to a professional. Senator Larry Craig took the floor right after Senator Harkin spoke. The following are excerpts from his speech:
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, before the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee sits down, I would be more than happy to include the protection of all the old growth in the Federal forests of Iowa in this bill, if it existed. Or maybe we could put a prohibition against wildfires in Iowa on public lands in this bill. And that is something we could accomplish because those two issues - the old growth, which I am sure the State of Iowa wished it had, and wildfires, which I know they would not want - do not exist in Iowa because no Federal forest lands exist there. In my State of Idaho, in the great State of Oregon, and in the Great Basin, West, as much as 60 and 70 percent of our lands within our State borders are public lands and are subject to this legislation...
Let me give a point the Senator from Iowa just made. He said you could log in 1,000-acre increments across the landscape. Not true. Nowhere in the bill does it exist. Let's go back to California today where fires are burning. Let's go to Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino forest where there is a complex of dead and dying trees of about 400,000 acres. You could log 1,000 acres there, and then if you chose to do another 1,000 acres near it, you get into the cumulative effect beyond the categorical exclusion and you have to do a NEPA process. That is what this legislation says. That is what the Senator from Iowa did not suggest. He cannot suggest something that does not exist.
Yes, it is true you do 1,000-acre logging increments, but when you get to a cumulative effect beyond the categorical exclusion, NEPA takes over. Therefore, you do the full public process that he admires and I admire because we believe the public ought to have a right to participate, but not ad nauseam through lawsuit after lawsuit for the purpose of delaying activity on the ground when there is bug kill and fuel loading and the public is at risk and the resources are at risk. That is what this debate must be about.
He implied that you could road on forever because this bill does not prohibit roading. You can't road today unless you go through a full NEPA process. It is not to suggest if you prohibit roading here or you do not prohibit it, therefore, roading will exist. That is not true. It does not exist today in current law. So do not imply that it does...
...It is like living near a fire that is ready to burn. All one has to do is drop a match, because the fuel loading that has gone on in these forested landscapes over the last 30 years is dramatic. Why? Because we put fire out. We got awfully good at eliminating fire and we did not replace the natural ecosystem's activities of fire with manmade activity. It is quite simple.
Along came the environmental movement in the 1960s. Along came the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Act in the mid-1970s, and we began progressively to slow our activities on the public lands that were offsetting nature's activities in some instances and the fuel load began to build.
In the mid 1980s, a group of forest scientists from all over the United States met in Sun Valley, ID, to explore the health of our national forests. They concluded that our forests in the Great Basin West were sick, dead, and dying, and that if we did not develop some form of activity to emulate fire, to thin and clean, we would someday in the near future begin to experience dramatic wildfires that would change the character of the landscape of the West. They were right. We did not listen. We could not listen. Why? Because there was a louder voice out there saying: Do nothing, do nothing, stay away; the only way to treat the public lands is to withdraw man from the lands, unless he or she tramples lightly upon them. We did just that, and all of our policies have driven us in that direction. During the Clinton years, we reduced logging on public lands by nearly 80 percent. We did not change any laws, just reused the regulations, headed in another direction with a different philosophy.
Aside from that, there is another interesting statistic. Instead of the average of 1 and a half million to 2 million acres a year in wildfires on our forested public land, we began to see 3, then 3 and a half, 2, then 4, then 5, then 6, and last year 7 million acres, and that graph is going straight up as more of these lands burn because the fuel load that builds on them is so great that all of our forested public lands have become like a kindling box, ready to burn with the touch of a match...
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Below are excerpts from Senator Harkin's speech on the Senate floor yesterday, and my comments.
Mr. HARKIN. I am somewhat amazed when we come out with legislation and it deals with sensitive environmental issues and we are told certain environmental groups have concerns and we will hear about the environmental issues so that somehow, if you are a member of an environmental organization, you are opposed to progress, you are opposed to jobs, you are opposed to doing things that might make life better for some people in certain areas. It is almost as if "environmentalist" is a bad word. I don't think it is. I think being pro-environment and being an environmentalist is a positive attribute.
When the enviro's introduce wolves in Iowa, put corn farmers out of business, deny Iowa citizens access to public property, and divert water from families in Des Moines to supply an endangered species, perhaps your outlook will change.
I compliment those in our country, many of whom work for nonprofit organizations. I have a number of letters from them that I will have printed in the RECORD. They toil endlessly, tirelessly, sometimes for no pay, sometimes for little pay, to ensure that future generations of Americans have a good, healthy environment, that those who like to hunt have areas in which we can hunt, where we have healthy wildlife areas.
No pay or little pay? Senator, please have your staff show you the Washington Post series on the Nature Conservancy. Those who are receiving no pay are folks who have been put out of work by the enviro's, and their friends in the Congress and the courts. Nonprofits? The nonprofits in the west are those formerly profitable businesses who couldn't survive under this nations' environmental and regulatory policies. Hunting? You've got to be kidding.
This is not a method of slowing down the bill or taking an undue amount of time, but it is ensuring that we do look at the bill carefully; that the public is generally aware of what is in the bill; that those who perhaps do not spend a lot of time looking at these things - and I am the first to admit this is not an area of my expertise, but as the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, charged with the responsibility of legislation that impinges upon our national forests that comes under our jurisdiction, I make sure I have good staff who understand the impact of forest legislation. And I have taken the time to study it myself to the extent I have had the time to do so.
Senator, you and Senator Bingaman put a hold on this bill and wanted to hold additional hearings and generally do whatever you could, at the behest of the environmental community, to delay this bill. You know, and I know, if not for the devastating fires in California, you would have kept this bill from coming to a vote. You didn't have to tell us this is not your area of expertise, your comments make that quite evident. We appreciate your attempt to "study it myself", but you really should make fast and frequent tracks back to your office and do some more homework.
I do not pretend to know all the ins and outs of forest legislation as much as my friend from Oregon, for example, who has spent his adult life working on this, or the Senator from Idaho and others who I know have put a great deal of time in this. But that does not lessen my concern about certain aspects of the bill and its impact on our environment. So we will have a discussion and we will have amendments. Preventing damage and injury to communities is of paramount concern to all of us, especially now with the tragic wildfires in California that show clearly the dangers these communities face. Of course, our hearts and our thoughts go out to all those families in those communities that are affected by these wildfires.
Senator you are the former chairman and current ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, "charged with the responsibility of legislation that impinges upon our national forests that comes under our jurisdiction". So why don't you know the in and outs? Why would you put a hold on a bill you don't understand? And why are you on the floor of the Senate discussing a bill you don't know the "ins and outs" of? We don't want your hearts and thoughts, we want to bring science based management to our public lands. Can you understand that?
The way the bill is right now, we could spend a lot of money going out and cleaning out the brush. And, by the way, I will have something to say about that. We are not talking about brush. We are talking about trees. It could be miles, tens of hundreds of miles, away from any community. So again I question whether that is where we want to put our resources.
Senator, I understand that in Iowa a farmer can live in a community and drive to his farm each day. That is generally not the way ranching in the west is done. There are ranch families living out there, Senator. I know, I know, your hearts and thoughts go out to them too.
Another problem I have with this legislation is the lack of protection for roadless areas, those areas of our national forests that have wisely been left free from most logging and roadbuilding to ensure their protection. In fact, this bill does not restrict roadbuilding at all - at all. So you could have permanent roads built anywhere under this bill.
Now we are finally getting to the crux of the matter. At least 20 people dead, more than 2,600 homes destroyed, three-quarters of a million acres burned, but that is not what's important. What's important is we not overturn the Clinton roadless program. Roads preclude wilderness designation. So let's do the enviro's bidding, protect the Clinton era policies, and to hell with the people and resources of the west. Thank you Senator Harkin.
That's enough fun, so let's turn to a professional. Senator Larry Craig took the floor right after Senator Harkin spoke. The following are excerpts from his speech:
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, before the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee sits down, I would be more than happy to include the protection of all the old growth in the Federal forests of Iowa in this bill, if it existed. Or maybe we could put a prohibition against wildfires in Iowa on public lands in this bill. And that is something we could accomplish because those two issues - the old growth, which I am sure the State of Iowa wished it had, and wildfires, which I know they would not want - do not exist in Iowa because no Federal forest lands exist there. In my State of Idaho, in the great State of Oregon, and in the Great Basin, West, as much as 60 and 70 percent of our lands within our State borders are public lands and are subject to this legislation...
Let me give a point the Senator from Iowa just made. He said you could log in 1,000-acre increments across the landscape. Not true. Nowhere in the bill does it exist. Let's go back to California today where fires are burning. Let's go to Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino forest where there is a complex of dead and dying trees of about 400,000 acres. You could log 1,000 acres there, and then if you chose to do another 1,000 acres near it, you get into the cumulative effect beyond the categorical exclusion and you have to do a NEPA process. That is what this legislation says. That is what the Senator from Iowa did not suggest. He cannot suggest something that does not exist.
Yes, it is true you do 1,000-acre logging increments, but when you get to a cumulative effect beyond the categorical exclusion, NEPA takes over. Therefore, you do the full public process that he admires and I admire because we believe the public ought to have a right to participate, but not ad nauseam through lawsuit after lawsuit for the purpose of delaying activity on the ground when there is bug kill and fuel loading and the public is at risk and the resources are at risk. That is what this debate must be about.
He implied that you could road on forever because this bill does not prohibit roading. You can't road today unless you go through a full NEPA process. It is not to suggest if you prohibit roading here or you do not prohibit it, therefore, roading will exist. That is not true. It does not exist today in current law. So do not imply that it does...
...It is like living near a fire that is ready to burn. All one has to do is drop a match, because the fuel loading that has gone on in these forested landscapes over the last 30 years is dramatic. Why? Because we put fire out. We got awfully good at eliminating fire and we did not replace the natural ecosystem's activities of fire with manmade activity. It is quite simple.
Along came the environmental movement in the 1960s. Along came the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Act in the mid-1970s, and we began progressively to slow our activities on the public lands that were offsetting nature's activities in some instances and the fuel load began to build.
In the mid 1980s, a group of forest scientists from all over the United States met in Sun Valley, ID, to explore the health of our national forests. They concluded that our forests in the Great Basin West were sick, dead, and dying, and that if we did not develop some form of activity to emulate fire, to thin and clean, we would someday in the near future begin to experience dramatic wildfires that would change the character of the landscape of the West. They were right. We did not listen. We could not listen. Why? Because there was a louder voice out there saying: Do nothing, do nothing, stay away; the only way to treat the public lands is to withdraw man from the lands, unless he or she tramples lightly upon them. We did just that, and all of our policies have driven us in that direction. During the Clinton years, we reduced logging on public lands by nearly 80 percent. We did not change any laws, just reused the regulations, headed in another direction with a different philosophy.
Aside from that, there is another interesting statistic. Instead of the average of 1 and a half million to 2 million acres a year in wildfires on our forested public land, we began to see 3, then 3 and a half, 2, then 4, then 5, then 6, and last year 7 million acres, and that graph is going straight up as more of these lands burn because the fuel load that builds on them is so great that all of our forested public lands have become like a kindling box, ready to burn with the touch of a match...
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Flushing Out Eco-Terrorism
An epidemic of eco-terror is rapidly spreading across America, and it is time for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether these criminal activities are being illegally bankrolled by tax-exempt money.
In August, fires set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) gutted a warehouse at an auto dealership and destroyed 20 Hummers and damaged 20 others at a California auto dealership, resulting in $2.5 million in losses.. Vehicles were spray-painted with slogans like “Fat, Lazy Americans.” In September, ELF "activists" torched six homes under construction and burned down an apartment complex in San Diego County.
All told, in August and September alone, ELF’s acts of eco-terrorism have cost individuals and businesses some $54 million, the most damage ever inflicted by eco-terrorism in a two-month period. The FBI has now declared ELF the nation’s most threatening homegrown terrorist organization.
A related group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), targets laboratories that conduct vital scientific research on animals. Walter Low, a researcher at a University of Minnesota laboratory, noted that a recent ALF attack on his facility “has set back two years research conducted there on Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.”...
Up In Smoke
...The post-mortem on the fires should lead to the most brutal review of the federal Endangered Species Act in its 30 year history. Nowhere more so than in southern California has more time and money has been invested in the idea that government bureaucrats (working with environmental activists, using the money scalped from landowners) can build a better nature than local governments and the market would otherwise deliver. The stubborn fact is California has never had fires of this magnitude. Now that the federal government is running a huge portion of land use, disaster strikes.
The core problem is that species protection prohibits many ordinary fire precautions. You cannot clear coastal sage scrub, no matter how dense, if a gnatcatcher nests within it--unless the federal government provides a written permission slip which is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. The same prohibition lurks behind every species designation, and can even apply to land on which no endangered species has ever been seen but about which allegations of "potential occupation" have been made.
The land that has passed into "conserved" status is at even greater risk of fire than private land that is home to a protected species because absolutely no one cares for its fire management policy. The scrum of planners, consultants, and G-11s that put together the plans should be monitoring these areas closely. Instead, they regulate and move on to savage the property rights of the next region.
THE MOST PRESSING QUESTION for the federal government after the fires are put out will be the number of acres of land burned which had already been set aside for species conservation purposes. Whatever that number is, it will be a challenge to the drafters of the plans to provide evidence that they had anticipated the conserved acres being charred. Of course they didn't, but that won't protect the guilty from intoning about the natural benefits of fire. In their acquisitiveness, the planners have focused only on locking up land against development, not in protecting it from devastating fire. The nakedness of their error is found in the very plans they developed, which lack comprehensive fire management programs and the means to carry them out...
Senate's Economic Horror Story? The Senate considers carbon dioxide caps on U.S. industry
With Halloween fast approaching, the Senate appears to be all tricks and no treats. Topping the list is the Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) proposal to cap carbon dioxide emissions. The “Climate Stewardship Act,” which was open for debate in the Senate on Thursday, October 29, seeks to address concerns about global warming. The problem is, the science behind global warming theory is far from complete, and the scientific community continues to identify uncertainties and problems with existing theories about global warming. On the other hand, the costs of measures such as the Lieberman-McCain proposal and the Kyoto Protocol are not inconsequential; passing such proposals is sure to be a trick, not a treat, for all consumers.
The Lieberman-McCain bill is an attempt to push the United States closer to implementing the Kyoto Protocol, a global warming treaty that seeks to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases primarily by reducing the use of fossil fuels. The Climate Stewardship Act takes a similar approach, seeking to cap emissions at 2000 levels from 2010 to 2015 (Phase I) and capping emissions at 1990 levels beginning in 2016 (Phase II). Perhaps the biggest trick in the legislation will be a proposal to eliminate Phase II and its more severe cutbacks in energy emissions. But with the administrative and enforcement mechanisms already established in Phase I, how likely is it that environmentalists and future Congresses will resist the urge to pass future legislation to implement Phase II?...
Worried Warriors?
"Have you got a minute for Greenpeace?" ask the enthusiastic young people who often waylay pedestrians on Washington, D.C.'s Farragut Square. Knowing a bit about the organization, I normally answer, "Not even a second." But the rainbow warriors might soon be facing several years to think about their actions.
A nonprofit watchdog organization, Public Interest Watch, after investigating Greenpeace's finances, recently filed a complaint with the IRS alleging that Greenpeace has "illegally solicit[ed] millions of dollars in tax-deductible contributions." As those young activists might say, "Uncool!"
Greenpeace has changed a great deal since its founding in the early 1970s. It began as a group dedicated to ensuring conservation by confronting people with the facts while maintaining a neutral position politically. It has now become a different beast entirely. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore left the movement after 15 years "to switch from confrontation to consensus… to stop fighting and start talking with the people in charge." However, he notes, "this would bring me into open and direct conflict with the movement I had helped bring into the world. I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid ideology… The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric."
Moore is not alone. Greenpeace began as several different organizations, most of which consolidated into Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International. However, one of the original bodies, Greenpeace Foundation, Inc., based in Hawaii, refused to do so. Like Moore, Greenpeace Foundation is openly critical of Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International, whom they accuse of deceptive fundraising tactics, anti-Americanism, and failure to do much for wildlife preservation (especially in the case of dolphins)...
Permalink
Flushing Out Eco-Terrorism
An epidemic of eco-terror is rapidly spreading across America, and it is time for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether these criminal activities are being illegally bankrolled by tax-exempt money.
In August, fires set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) gutted a warehouse at an auto dealership and destroyed 20 Hummers and damaged 20 others at a California auto dealership, resulting in $2.5 million in losses.. Vehicles were spray-painted with slogans like “Fat, Lazy Americans.” In September, ELF "activists" torched six homes under construction and burned down an apartment complex in San Diego County.
All told, in August and September alone, ELF’s acts of eco-terrorism have cost individuals and businesses some $54 million, the most damage ever inflicted by eco-terrorism in a two-month period. The FBI has now declared ELF the nation’s most threatening homegrown terrorist organization.
A related group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), targets laboratories that conduct vital scientific research on animals. Walter Low, a researcher at a University of Minnesota laboratory, noted that a recent ALF attack on his facility “has set back two years research conducted there on Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.”...
Up In Smoke
...The post-mortem on the fires should lead to the most brutal review of the federal Endangered Species Act in its 30 year history. Nowhere more so than in southern California has more time and money has been invested in the idea that government bureaucrats (working with environmental activists, using the money scalped from landowners) can build a better nature than local governments and the market would otherwise deliver. The stubborn fact is California has never had fires of this magnitude. Now that the federal government is running a huge portion of land use, disaster strikes.
The core problem is that species protection prohibits many ordinary fire precautions. You cannot clear coastal sage scrub, no matter how dense, if a gnatcatcher nests within it--unless the federal government provides a written permission slip which is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. The same prohibition lurks behind every species designation, and can even apply to land on which no endangered species has ever been seen but about which allegations of "potential occupation" have been made.
The land that has passed into "conserved" status is at even greater risk of fire than private land that is home to a protected species because absolutely no one cares for its fire management policy. The scrum of planners, consultants, and G-11s that put together the plans should be monitoring these areas closely. Instead, they regulate and move on to savage the property rights of the next region.
THE MOST PRESSING QUESTION for the federal government after the fires are put out will be the number of acres of land burned which had already been set aside for species conservation purposes. Whatever that number is, it will be a challenge to the drafters of the plans to provide evidence that they had anticipated the conserved acres being charred. Of course they didn't, but that won't protect the guilty from intoning about the natural benefits of fire. In their acquisitiveness, the planners have focused only on locking up land against development, not in protecting it from devastating fire. The nakedness of their error is found in the very plans they developed, which lack comprehensive fire management programs and the means to carry them out...
Senate's Economic Horror Story? The Senate considers carbon dioxide caps on U.S. industry
With Halloween fast approaching, the Senate appears to be all tricks and no treats. Topping the list is the Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) proposal to cap carbon dioxide emissions. The “Climate Stewardship Act,” which was open for debate in the Senate on Thursday, October 29, seeks to address concerns about global warming. The problem is, the science behind global warming theory is far from complete, and the scientific community continues to identify uncertainties and problems with existing theories about global warming. On the other hand, the costs of measures such as the Lieberman-McCain proposal and the Kyoto Protocol are not inconsequential; passing such proposals is sure to be a trick, not a treat, for all consumers.
The Lieberman-McCain bill is an attempt to push the United States closer to implementing the Kyoto Protocol, a global warming treaty that seeks to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases primarily by reducing the use of fossil fuels. The Climate Stewardship Act takes a similar approach, seeking to cap emissions at 2000 levels from 2010 to 2015 (Phase I) and capping emissions at 1990 levels beginning in 2016 (Phase II). Perhaps the biggest trick in the legislation will be a proposal to eliminate Phase II and its more severe cutbacks in energy emissions. But with the administrative and enforcement mechanisms already established in Phase I, how likely is it that environmentalists and future Congresses will resist the urge to pass future legislation to implement Phase II?...
Worried Warriors?
"Have you got a minute for Greenpeace?" ask the enthusiastic young people who often waylay pedestrians on Washington, D.C.'s Farragut Square. Knowing a bit about the organization, I normally answer, "Not even a second." But the rainbow warriors might soon be facing several years to think about their actions.
A nonprofit watchdog organization, Public Interest Watch, after investigating Greenpeace's finances, recently filed a complaint with the IRS alleging that Greenpeace has "illegally solicit[ed] millions of dollars in tax-deductible contributions." As those young activists might say, "Uncool!"
Greenpeace has changed a great deal since its founding in the early 1970s. It began as a group dedicated to ensuring conservation by confronting people with the facts while maintaining a neutral position politically. It has now become a different beast entirely. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore left the movement after 15 years "to switch from confrontation to consensus… to stop fighting and start talking with the people in charge." However, he notes, "this would bring me into open and direct conflict with the movement I had helped bring into the world. I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid ideology… The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric."
Moore is not alone. Greenpeace began as several different organizations, most of which consolidated into Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International. However, one of the original bodies, Greenpeace Foundation, Inc., based in Hawaii, refused to do so. Like Moore, Greenpeace Foundation is openly critical of Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International, whom they accuse of deceptive fundraising tactics, anti-Americanism, and failure to do much for wildlife preservation (especially in the case of dolphins)...
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Beef Checkoff News
Stay Granted In Beef Checkoff
U.S. cattle producers must continue to pay the $1.00-per-head beef checkoff on each animal sold until the U.S. Justice Department can seek a Supreme Court review of a case challenging the program's constitutionality, according to the Cattlemen's Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the beef-promotion program.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Wednesday approved a request that will allow the Beef Checkoff Program to continue pending Supreme Court review.
"The government's motion to stay the mandate of this court is granted pending the filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court," the decision said. "The issuance of the mandate in this case shall be stayed to and including Jan. 27, 2004. If within that time there is filed with the Clerk of this court a certificate of notification by the Clerk of the Supreme Court that a petition for writ of certiorari has been filed, this stay shall continue until final disposition of the case by that court."...
Below is the Cattlemen's Beef & Promotion Board's compliance memo:
October 30, 2003
To: QSBC Execs/ Compliance Managers
From: Steve Barratt, Director, Collections Compliance, CBB
Subject: Checkoff Collections Cease
Please confirm with your collecting points that collections of the Federal beef checkoff assessment shall continue as usual.
The U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of USDA, requested a stay of Judge Kornmann's decision from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, MN while they work on an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted the stay until January 27, 2004. If a petition for writ of certiorari has been filed with the Clerk of the Supreme Court during this period, this stay shall continue until final disposition of the case by The U.S. Supreme Court. This means that the mandatory collection of beef checkoff assessments will continue as usual unless the Court and USDA direct us to stop.
Please keep in mind that we will continue to pursue non-compliance cases not precluded by the terms of the ruling. Thus, anyone who fails to remit assessments collected can still be subjected to sanctions set forth by USDA.
If you have any questions don't hesitate to call (303) 850-3453 or email me at sbarratt@beef.org.
Permalink
Stay Granted In Beef Checkoff
U.S. cattle producers must continue to pay the $1.00-per-head beef checkoff on each animal sold until the U.S. Justice Department can seek a Supreme Court review of a case challenging the program's constitutionality, according to the Cattlemen's Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the beef-promotion program.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Wednesday approved a request that will allow the Beef Checkoff Program to continue pending Supreme Court review.
"The government's motion to stay the mandate of this court is granted pending the filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court," the decision said. "The issuance of the mandate in this case shall be stayed to and including Jan. 27, 2004. If within that time there is filed with the Clerk of this court a certificate of notification by the Clerk of the Supreme Court that a petition for writ of certiorari has been filed, this stay shall continue until final disposition of the case by that court."...
Below is the Cattlemen's Beef & Promotion Board's compliance memo:
October 30, 2003
To: QSBC Execs/ Compliance Managers
From: Steve Barratt, Director, Collections Compliance, CBB
Subject: Checkoff Collections Cease
Please confirm with your collecting points that collections of the Federal beef checkoff assessment shall continue as usual.
The U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of USDA, requested a stay of Judge Kornmann's decision from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, MN while they work on an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted the stay until January 27, 2004. If a petition for writ of certiorari has been filed with the Clerk of the Supreme Court during this period, this stay shall continue until final disposition of the case by The U.S. Supreme Court. This means that the mandatory collection of beef checkoff assessments will continue as usual unless the Court and USDA direct us to stop.
Please keep in mind that we will continue to pursue non-compliance cases not precluded by the terms of the ruling. Thus, anyone who fails to remit assessments collected can still be subjected to sanctions set forth by USDA.
If you have any questions don't hesitate to call (303) 850-3453 or email me at sbarratt@beef.org.
Permalink
NOTE
Blogger shut down for maintenance a little after midnight, mtn time, so I didn't get all the news posted last night. Will try to catch up today.
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Blogger shut down for maintenance a little after midnight, mtn time, so I didn't get all the news posted last night. Will try to catch up today.
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RESOURCES COMMITTEE BACKGROUND MEMO
...GAO ANALYSIS. At the request of Congressman Scott McInnis, and Senators Larry Craig and Gordon Smith, the General Accounting Office (GAO) prepared a comprehensive report, entitled Information on Forest Service Decisions Involving Fuels Reduction Activities, providing a quantitative assessment of the impact of Forest Service appeals on forest management activities. The analysis was requested in order to gain a stronger understanding about the extent of the impact of administrative appeals on efforts to reduce the breadth and destructive incidence of catastrophic wildfire and massive pest and pathogen outbreaks. The report quantifies the number of administrative appeals filed against Forest Service hazardous fuels reduction projects, and provides other important details about the outcome of those appeals, the nature of the projects that were appealed, and the identity of organizations that most often file administrative appeals against forest healthy projects. The GAO analyzed the number of hazardous fuels reduction projects that were appealed and/or litigated during FY 2001 and FY 2002.
KEY FINDINGS.
1. 59% of Thinning Projects Appealed. In FY 2001 and FY 2002, opponents of forest thinning appealed 59% of all hazardous fuels reduction projects eligible for appeal under the Forest Service’s appeals statute. Of the 305 projects eligible for administrative appeal, 180 projects were challenged. Together, these projects covered nearly 1 million acres of at risk federal forestland. Each was delayed for at least 120 days, and sometimes months more. This 120-day delay is in addition to the years-long environmental analysis process that proceeds the appeals phase.
Environmental groups that loudly oppose legislative attempts at bringing the Forest Service’s appeals process more in line with that of the Bureau of Land Management have repeatedly downplayed the number of administrative appeals filed against forest management projects. With nearly 1 million acres worth of hazardous fuels reduction projects tied up in appeals during this two-year period, the GAO analysis crystallizes the fact that administrative appeals constitute a significant impediment to getting a handle on America ’s forest health and wildfire crisis.
2. Community Protection Projects Targeted by Greens. Even thinning projects proposed near communities are appealed more often than not. 52% of thinning projects proposed near communities in the so-called Wildland Urban Interface (84 of 163) were appealed during this 2-year period.
Environmental groups commonly argue that if the Forest Service would focus thinning projects on treating forestlands near communities, there would be less conflict and fewer administrative appeals. The GAO’s finding about the large number of administrative appeals filed against projects focused on protecting communities from the horrors of catastrophic wildfire casts the credibility of that assertion into plain doubt. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of environmental organizations as a whole show a pattern of obstruction, even towards projects focused on protecting homes and communities.
3. Environmental Appeals OVERWHELMINGLY Without Merit. Of the 180 wildfire mitigation projects appealed during the studied period, the reviewing officer “reversed” the decisions of a subordinate officer on only 19 occasions (10%).
This finding affirms the suspicion of many – namely, that administrative appeals are often frivolous objections by organizations with a philosophical bent against active forest management. Unfortunately, when the threat of wildfire is imminent or a large-scale insect outbreak is underway, a months-long delay during the consideration of an administrative appeal is just as damaging to the Forest Service as a defeat on the merits.
4. Environmental Groups are Chief Appellants of Forest Thinning. The overwhelming majority of administrative appeals analyzed by the GAO were filed by environmental advocacy organizations. Nationally, there were ONLY 7 organizations that filed more than 20 administrative appeals in this two year period: the Alliance for Wild Rockies, Ecology Center , Forest Conservation Council, Lands Council, National Forest Protection Alliance, Oregon Natural Resources Council, and the Sierra Club. Of the 432 appeals filed against the 180 projects, private individuals filed only 48 appeals, or 11% of the overall total.
5. ‘Analysis Paralysis’. The widespread filing of administrative appeals by environmental organizations has forced the Forest Service into an excessively cautious posture during the analysis and documentation phase preceding the administrative appeals process. The Chief of the Forest Service has dubbed this phenomenon “analysis paralysis.” The GAO’s findings show a clear pattern of the Forest Service taking time-consuming additional steps to “bullet-proof” analysis and documentation in those Regions where the agency has experienced the greatest number of administrative appeals. In Montana and Idaho, for example, where environmental groups and others appealed 90% of all projects eligible for appeal in this two-year span, the Forest Service went to the additional length of completing an Environmental Impact Statement (the most rigorous documentation process) for wildfire mitigation projects nearly 4-times as often as the next closest Region. In the South, by contrast, where 38% of projects eligible for appeal were actually appealed, the Forest Service completed ZERO Environmental Impact Statements on fire-prevention projects during this time-frame.
The threat of administrative appeals has forced the agency to be overly-focused on insulating its analysis and documentation from legal assault. Instead of conducting analysis sufficient to ensure that hazardous fuels reduction projects are implemented in an environmentally sensitive manner, the Forest Service’s environmental analysis increasingly take on the appearance of a legal brief, as the agency seeks to protect its decisions from hostile legal attacks and slick environmental lawyering. With 190 million acres of federal forestland at risk to catastrophic wildfire, this “bullet-proofing” phenomenon helps explain why the federal government treats just over 2 million acres a year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Congressional Research Service
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...GAO ANALYSIS. At the request of Congressman Scott McInnis, and Senators Larry Craig and Gordon Smith, the General Accounting Office (GAO) prepared a comprehensive report, entitled Information on Forest Service Decisions Involving Fuels Reduction Activities, providing a quantitative assessment of the impact of Forest Service appeals on forest management activities. The analysis was requested in order to gain a stronger understanding about the extent of the impact of administrative appeals on efforts to reduce the breadth and destructive incidence of catastrophic wildfire and massive pest and pathogen outbreaks. The report quantifies the number of administrative appeals filed against Forest Service hazardous fuels reduction projects, and provides other important details about the outcome of those appeals, the nature of the projects that were appealed, and the identity of organizations that most often file administrative appeals against forest healthy projects. The GAO analyzed the number of hazardous fuels reduction projects that were appealed and/or litigated during FY 2001 and FY 2002.
KEY FINDINGS.
1. 59% of Thinning Projects Appealed. In FY 2001 and FY 2002, opponents of forest thinning appealed 59% of all hazardous fuels reduction projects eligible for appeal under the Forest Service’s appeals statute. Of the 305 projects eligible for administrative appeal, 180 projects were challenged. Together, these projects covered nearly 1 million acres of at risk federal forestland. Each was delayed for at least 120 days, and sometimes months more. This 120-day delay is in addition to the years-long environmental analysis process that proceeds the appeals phase.
Environmental groups that loudly oppose legislative attempts at bringing the Forest Service’s appeals process more in line with that of the Bureau of Land Management have repeatedly downplayed the number of administrative appeals filed against forest management projects. With nearly 1 million acres worth of hazardous fuels reduction projects tied up in appeals during this two-year period, the GAO analysis crystallizes the fact that administrative appeals constitute a significant impediment to getting a handle on America ’s forest health and wildfire crisis.
2. Community Protection Projects Targeted by Greens. Even thinning projects proposed near communities are appealed more often than not. 52% of thinning projects proposed near communities in the so-called Wildland Urban Interface (84 of 163) were appealed during this 2-year period.
Environmental groups commonly argue that if the Forest Service would focus thinning projects on treating forestlands near communities, there would be less conflict and fewer administrative appeals. The GAO’s finding about the large number of administrative appeals filed against projects focused on protecting communities from the horrors of catastrophic wildfire casts the credibility of that assertion into plain doubt. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of environmental organizations as a whole show a pattern of obstruction, even towards projects focused on protecting homes and communities.
3. Environmental Appeals OVERWHELMINGLY Without Merit. Of the 180 wildfire mitigation projects appealed during the studied period, the reviewing officer “reversed” the decisions of a subordinate officer on only 19 occasions (10%).
This finding affirms the suspicion of many – namely, that administrative appeals are often frivolous objections by organizations with a philosophical bent against active forest management. Unfortunately, when the threat of wildfire is imminent or a large-scale insect outbreak is underway, a months-long delay during the consideration of an administrative appeal is just as damaging to the Forest Service as a defeat on the merits.
4. Environmental Groups are Chief Appellants of Forest Thinning. The overwhelming majority of administrative appeals analyzed by the GAO were filed by environmental advocacy organizations. Nationally, there were ONLY 7 organizations that filed more than 20 administrative appeals in this two year period: the Alliance for Wild Rockies, Ecology Center , Forest Conservation Council, Lands Council, National Forest Protection Alliance, Oregon Natural Resources Council, and the Sierra Club. Of the 432 appeals filed against the 180 projects, private individuals filed only 48 appeals, or 11% of the overall total.
5. ‘Analysis Paralysis’. The widespread filing of administrative appeals by environmental organizations has forced the Forest Service into an excessively cautious posture during the analysis and documentation phase preceding the administrative appeals process. The Chief of the Forest Service has dubbed this phenomenon “analysis paralysis.” The GAO’s findings show a clear pattern of the Forest Service taking time-consuming additional steps to “bullet-proof” analysis and documentation in those Regions where the agency has experienced the greatest number of administrative appeals. In Montana and Idaho, for example, where environmental groups and others appealed 90% of all projects eligible for appeal in this two-year span, the Forest Service went to the additional length of completing an Environmental Impact Statement (the most rigorous documentation process) for wildfire mitigation projects nearly 4-times as often as the next closest Region. In the South, by contrast, where 38% of projects eligible for appeal were actually appealed, the Forest Service completed ZERO Environmental Impact Statements on fire-prevention projects during this time-frame.
The threat of administrative appeals has forced the agency to be overly-focused on insulating its analysis and documentation from legal assault. Instead of conducting analysis sufficient to ensure that hazardous fuels reduction projects are implemented in an environmentally sensitive manner, the Forest Service’s environmental analysis increasingly take on the appearance of a legal brief, as the agency seeks to protect its decisions from hostile legal attacks and slick environmental lawyering. With 190 million acres of federal forestland at risk to catastrophic wildfire, this “bullet-proofing” phenomenon helps explain why the federal government treats just over 2 million acres a year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Congressional Research Service
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Smokey Bear meets al-Qaida, eco-terrorists
I wonder how many Southern California homeowners sent $25 last month to one of the "environmental" organizations that just burned them out of their homes?
Southern California fires – outgoing Gov. Gray Davis has called them the worst disaster in the state's history – are the direct result of the efforts of America's environmental organizations. As this column is written, there have been 16 deaths and 1,600 homes destroyed, and the fires are still raging.
You and I will be expected to "shut up and pay the bill" for this flaming display of environmental ignorance and arrogance in action...
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of shutting my mouth and opening my wallet every time an "environmentalist" climbs on his soapbox to explain why its "wrong" to cut down dead trees, thin the forest and remove underbrush. I'm tired of enriching lawyers on both sides of the debate, while communities, families and schools go begging. I think it's an outrage that the environmentalists' policies have resulted in the most destructive wildfires in our nation's history. And I think it's time to end their reign of eco-terror...
Washington fiddles while California burns
A couple of bills are languishing in Congress that could have limited the effects of the wildfires that have devastated much of Southern California and saved countless homes and lives.
For more than a week, two giant C-130J aircraft, outfitted with state-of-the-art Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, sat on ground in California while the fires multiplied and began to burn out of control. In addition, there were two of these planes in Colorado, two in Wyoming and two in North Carolina that could have been called into service.
These planes carry between 2,750 and 3,000 gallons of water or fire retardant, which can cover an area 60 feet wide by a quarter-mile long. After discharging a load, they can be refilled in 15 to 20 minutes.
We, the federal taxpayers, purchased these systems in 1973, specifically to fight forest fires. So why were all those planes kept on the ground all this time? It's due to a depression-era bill that benefits a few at the expense of the many...
Permalink
Smokey Bear meets al-Qaida, eco-terrorists
I wonder how many Southern California homeowners sent $25 last month to one of the "environmental" organizations that just burned them out of their homes?
Southern California fires – outgoing Gov. Gray Davis has called them the worst disaster in the state's history – are the direct result of the efforts of America's environmental organizations. As this column is written, there have been 16 deaths and 1,600 homes destroyed, and the fires are still raging.
You and I will be expected to "shut up and pay the bill" for this flaming display of environmental ignorance and arrogance in action...
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of shutting my mouth and opening my wallet every time an "environmentalist" climbs on his soapbox to explain why its "wrong" to cut down dead trees, thin the forest and remove underbrush. I'm tired of enriching lawyers on both sides of the debate, while communities, families and schools go begging. I think it's an outrage that the environmentalists' policies have resulted in the most destructive wildfires in our nation's history. And I think it's time to end their reign of eco-terror...
Washington fiddles while California burns
A couple of bills are languishing in Congress that could have limited the effects of the wildfires that have devastated much of Southern California and saved countless homes and lives.
For more than a week, two giant C-130J aircraft, outfitted with state-of-the-art Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, sat on ground in California while the fires multiplied and began to burn out of control. In addition, there were two of these planes in Colorado, two in Wyoming and two in North Carolina that could have been called into service.
These planes carry between 2,750 and 3,000 gallons of water or fire retardant, which can cover an area 60 feet wide by a quarter-mile long. After discharging a load, they can be refilled in 15 to 20 minutes.
We, the federal taxpayers, purchased these systems in 1973, specifically to fight forest fires. So why were all those planes kept on the ground all this time? It's due to a depression-era bill that benefits a few at the expense of the many...
Permalink
NEWS ROUNDUP
Flames In Calif. Fan New Life Into A Bill That Would Allow Logging On U.S. Land California is burning, and Congress is feeling the heat -- and moving quickly to pass a controversial forestry bill to allow more logging on federal land. The bill looked dead last week, when Senate Democrats blocked a vote on the House version of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. But since then, with Southern California fires raging, leading Republicans and Democrats have reached a compromise that late Wednesday looked likely to pass...California fires show limits of firefighting Fighting wildfires is more than a matter of pointing hoses at the flames and hoping for the best. Just like military generals, fire chiefs study the battlefield, predict the enemy's moves, and deploy troops to vulnerable flanks. It helps that fires tend to follow well-known rules. Still, models based on decades of research are often unable to predict a fire's path when weather conditions get in the way. Fire strategy and high-tech devices haven't been able to stop blazes from wreaking havoc in southern California, pointing to the limits of fighting and forecasting wildfires, especially in a region where gusts of dry winds change direction and speed up with no warning. Case in point: San Diego's mammoth Cedar Fire grew at amazing speeds, allegedly caused by hunter shooting a signal flare into the air east of the city. Whipped by the region's perennial Santa Ana winds, the fire moved too fast to allow firefighters to forecast its path and surround it. "You've got a fire that went from 1,000 acres to 115,000 in 12 hours," says Bob Wolf, president of the California Department of Forestry firefighters' union. "I've been a firefighter for 22 years and I've never seen anything like it."...Forest Service boss urges more prescribed burns The head of the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday that residents of the fire-prone West must reintroduce prescribed burns into their vocabulary to avoid the sort of catastrophic blazes now sweeping Southern California. That applies to homeowners in the lower chaparral regions where fires are consuming homes in Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties, as well as in the forested upper elevations where firestorms threaten drought- and beetle-infested pine forests in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. "We need to get fire back into these fire-dependent ecosystems," Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said in an interview Tuesday before touring the Southern California fires...More drilling rigs than ever punching through Colo. soil More drilling rigs are searching for natural gas in Colorado and Wyoming than at any time in more than 17 years, a reflection of higher natural gas prices and the nation's increasing demand for domestic fuel. And drilling companies are scrambling to get more equipment into the field to meet the demand, even as the price climbs to rent a towering drilling rig and crew to operate it. Across the nation, about 1,115 rigs were operating as of Oct. 17, according to Hughes Christensen's count...Wildfires force evacuations north, south of Denver A fast-moving wildfire forced the evacuation of thousands of upscale homes in rolling grasslands south of Denver on Wednesday as fierce winds fanned a handful of devastating blazes along the eastern slopes of the Rockies. The 100-acre fire chewed through hills of scattered pine and sent smoke pouring over Denver’s far southern suburbs. Evacuation calls, which relied on the 911 system to reach 3,000 homes and businesses, went out less than three hours after the fire was reported. Authorities said 21 busloads of students were evacuated from an elementary school eight miles north of Castle Rock...In Montana, the next Arctic Refuge debate Modern conservationists call this wild country "the American Serengeti." But unlike the African Serengeti, Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, a 100-mile stretch of glacier-sculpted peaks and valleys held by the US Forest Service and the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has only temporary protection against oil and gas drilling. That could change. In a debate starkly reminiscent of the battle over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Montana Front lands are the latest to join America's heated debate over energy production and wildlife. At issue: would an initial development of 11 wells, producing a moderate amount of natural gas, leave a footprint acceptably small to justify drilling in one of the world's most striking and largely unspoiled landscapes? The Bush administration has targeted the Rocky Mountain Front, along with the ANWR, for oil and gas exploration. Last fall, the BLM issued new policies aimed at reducing barriers to oil and gas leasing on its lands and launched an environmental impact study along the Front, to be completed by year's end. Energy firms want to extract gas through existing and new leases on BLM and US Forest lands. If approved, drilling could begin by 2005. In addition, the US Forest Service will reconsider a drilling moratorium it issued six years ago on the Lewis and Clark National Forest, a portion of the Front, when it expires in 2006...Delay in Aerial Water Drops Is Criticized As fire continued to destroy large portions of San Diego County, the dispute between some local officials and the administration of Gov. Gray Davis intensified Tuesday over why aerial tankers and water-laden helicopters were not available in the first two days of the blaze. County supervisors fumed that Davis was too slow in authorizing the use of state "air assets" to douse the fire and too timid in seeking federal assistance. Several had pleaded with the governor's staff last weekend to redirect state resources to San Diego and demand help from the federal government and military. A spokesman for Davis said the supervisors were distorting what he characterized as the governor's long-standing support of fire prevention and fire suppression in Southern California...Until Court Rules, U.S. Wildlife Unit Won't Allow Killing of Endangered Species in Land Exchanges Pending a final court decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has stopped issuing controversial permits that allow landowners to kill endangered species or destroy their habitat in exchange for setting aside land elsewhere. U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan issued a one-page court order Sept. 30 granting a motion by Spirit of the Sage Council and other environmental groups challenging the permits. But he gave no details on exactly what the groups had won, instead saying a final memorandum would follow...
Permalink
Flames In Calif. Fan New Life Into A Bill That Would Allow Logging On U.S. Land California is burning, and Congress is feeling the heat -- and moving quickly to pass a controversial forestry bill to allow more logging on federal land. The bill looked dead last week, when Senate Democrats blocked a vote on the House version of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. But since then, with Southern California fires raging, leading Republicans and Democrats have reached a compromise that late Wednesday looked likely to pass...California fires show limits of firefighting Fighting wildfires is more than a matter of pointing hoses at the flames and hoping for the best. Just like military generals, fire chiefs study the battlefield, predict the enemy's moves, and deploy troops to vulnerable flanks. It helps that fires tend to follow well-known rules. Still, models based on decades of research are often unable to predict a fire's path when weather conditions get in the way. Fire strategy and high-tech devices haven't been able to stop blazes from wreaking havoc in southern California, pointing to the limits of fighting and forecasting wildfires, especially in a region where gusts of dry winds change direction and speed up with no warning. Case in point: San Diego's mammoth Cedar Fire grew at amazing speeds, allegedly caused by hunter shooting a signal flare into the air east of the city. Whipped by the region's perennial Santa Ana winds, the fire moved too fast to allow firefighters to forecast its path and surround it. "You've got a fire that went from 1,000 acres to 115,000 in 12 hours," says Bob Wolf, president of the California Department of Forestry firefighters' union. "I've been a firefighter for 22 years and I've never seen anything like it."...Forest Service boss urges more prescribed burns The head of the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday that residents of the fire-prone West must reintroduce prescribed burns into their vocabulary to avoid the sort of catastrophic blazes now sweeping Southern California. That applies to homeowners in the lower chaparral regions where fires are consuming homes in Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties, as well as in the forested upper elevations where firestorms threaten drought- and beetle-infested pine forests in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. "We need to get fire back into these fire-dependent ecosystems," Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said in an interview Tuesday before touring the Southern California fires...More drilling rigs than ever punching through Colo. soil More drilling rigs are searching for natural gas in Colorado and Wyoming than at any time in more than 17 years, a reflection of higher natural gas prices and the nation's increasing demand for domestic fuel. And drilling companies are scrambling to get more equipment into the field to meet the demand, even as the price climbs to rent a towering drilling rig and crew to operate it. Across the nation, about 1,115 rigs were operating as of Oct. 17, according to Hughes Christensen's count...Wildfires force evacuations north, south of Denver A fast-moving wildfire forced the evacuation of thousands of upscale homes in rolling grasslands south of Denver on Wednesday as fierce winds fanned a handful of devastating blazes along the eastern slopes of the Rockies. The 100-acre fire chewed through hills of scattered pine and sent smoke pouring over Denver’s far southern suburbs. Evacuation calls, which relied on the 911 system to reach 3,000 homes and businesses, went out less than three hours after the fire was reported. Authorities said 21 busloads of students were evacuated from an elementary school eight miles north of Castle Rock...In Montana, the next Arctic Refuge debate Modern conservationists call this wild country "the American Serengeti." But unlike the African Serengeti, Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, a 100-mile stretch of glacier-sculpted peaks and valleys held by the US Forest Service and the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has only temporary protection against oil and gas drilling. That could change. In a debate starkly reminiscent of the battle over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Montana Front lands are the latest to join America's heated debate over energy production and wildlife. At issue: would an initial development of 11 wells, producing a moderate amount of natural gas, leave a footprint acceptably small to justify drilling in one of the world's most striking and largely unspoiled landscapes? The Bush administration has targeted the Rocky Mountain Front, along with the ANWR, for oil and gas exploration. Last fall, the BLM issued new policies aimed at reducing barriers to oil and gas leasing on its lands and launched an environmental impact study along the Front, to be completed by year's end. Energy firms want to extract gas through existing and new leases on BLM and US Forest lands. If approved, drilling could begin by 2005. In addition, the US Forest Service will reconsider a drilling moratorium it issued six years ago on the Lewis and Clark National Forest, a portion of the Front, when it expires in 2006...Delay in Aerial Water Drops Is Criticized As fire continued to destroy large portions of San Diego County, the dispute between some local officials and the administration of Gov. Gray Davis intensified Tuesday over why aerial tankers and water-laden helicopters were not available in the first two days of the blaze. County supervisors fumed that Davis was too slow in authorizing the use of state "air assets" to douse the fire and too timid in seeking federal assistance. Several had pleaded with the governor's staff last weekend to redirect state resources to San Diego and demand help from the federal government and military. A spokesman for Davis said the supervisors were distorting what he characterized as the governor's long-standing support of fire prevention and fire suppression in Southern California...Until Court Rules, U.S. Wildlife Unit Won't Allow Killing of Endangered Species in Land Exchanges Pending a final court decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has stopped issuing controversial permits that allow landowners to kill endangered species or destroy their habitat in exchange for setting aside land elsewhere. U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan issued a one-page court order Sept. 30 granting a motion by Spirit of the Sage Council and other environmental groups challenging the permits. But he gave no details on exactly what the groups had won, instead saying a final memorandum would follow...
Permalink
Economics don't pan out for grazing buyout
By Crosby Allen
Fremont County, Wyo., commissioner
In case you have not yet seen this bill, here is a little insight on HR 3324, the "Voluntary Grazing Buyout Act."
This act would cause the appropriation of your tax dollars, by the federal government, to buy grazing permits from ranchers. These grazing areas would then be placed in non-grazing status and would no longer be used for grazing of any livestock.
The appropriation would be for $100 million, which would take approximately 571,000 animal unit months (AUMs) of grazing off BLM and national forestland.
If one rancher in the western states has a permit for 300 cow/calf pairs, for four months of summer grazing, this would equate to about 1,200 AUMs. Using this example, this taxpayer-funded buyout would remove about 475 ranchers from the ranges in the western states in one year.
Without public land grazing, these ranches will not be able to support the same number of cattle that they can with the public land grazing. The ranches that sell their grazing permits will be forced to do the following: 1) cease cattle production; 2) drastically reduce the number of cattle they are currently running; or, 3) subdivide their privately owned ranchlands to replace the income lost from their annual cattle sales (unless they are already wealthy).
Here's what this means to you. You are going to pay the cost of your own community's economic funeral.
As an example, let's say we have a typical rancher who runs 300 head of mother cows. Using central Wyoming as the location for the operation, the rancher would run about four months on BLM-managed land. While the cattle were summering on the BLM, the rancher would be irrigating and haying his base property (privately owned) in preparation for keeping the cattle on the private property for the remaining eight months of the year.
At first the cattle would graze the pasture when they come home; then, when the pasture snows under or runs out, the hay would be fed to the animals until the next grazing season, when the cattle would be turned back out on the BLM managed land and the annual cycle would begin anew.
Now, let's say this same rancher takes the buyout and sells his BLM grazing permit. He would sell his 1,200 AUMs (300 pair x 4 months) for $175 per AUM, which would equal $210,000.
Most of this amount would most likely go to pay off his bills and maybe buy a new pickup, which would be a short-term injection into the local economy. However, the long-term effect will be devastating to the local economy.
You see, while the public ground under the BLM grazing permit supported 1200 AUMs, the base property (privately owned by the rancher) would have to support about 2400 AUMs which would require at least 100 head of mother cows be sold, as the remaining operation would not longer be able to support 300 pairs without the public grazing permit.
When the rancher was fully stocked at 300 pair, he would sell about 285 calves weighing 475 lbs each at a price of $425 totaling $121,125. Now that he has sold his grazing permit, he can only run about 200 pair (actually less than that, but for simplification of math we'll use 200). Now, after the buyout, he will sell about 190 calves at 475 lbs each at a price of $425 totaling $80,750. This is a difference of $40,375.
Now let's use University of Wyoming figures that estimate that one dollar will turn over in a community six times before it falls out of local circulation. When we multiply the $40,375 by six, we see that $242,250, approximately one-quarter of a million dollars, is lost from the local economy each and every year thereafter.
This example illustrates the negative economic impact to a local economy from just one rancher selling his grazing permit back to the government. The total effect from HR 3324, the "Voluntary Grazing Buyout Act," would be over $115 million that would come out of local western economies in just one year, and these economies would suffer this loss directly every year after that.
In other words, the feds will use $100 million (of your tax dollars) to cause your local western economies to suffer an approximate loss of $115 million this year and every year after.
If you know someone who works at a bank, sells gasoline or diesel, sells clothing, sells ranch and cattle supplies or equipment, works in or owns a restaurant or a grocery store, is or works for a veterinarian, drives a cattle truck or works at the livestock auction barn, then you know someone who is going to take a direct economic hit from this "buyout."
You, as a citizen making your living in one of the western states, your family and your friends, will suffer the indirect economic hit resulting from the lack of this economic activity occurring from the grazing of livestock on public lands.
This buyout is an agenda being driven by people who want all cattle off all public land. Guess what, Phase Two of their agenda is to drive all cattle off all private land.
I hope this sheds some light on this simple but critically important issue. If you feel it's important, maybe you ought to share your thoughts with your friends, neighbors, and elected officials. This example uses conservative, average numbers and is simplified for the purposes of illustration. An exact accounting and use of actual costs of production and actual market values would show the actual negative economic impact to local economies to be significantly higher.
Permalink
By Crosby Allen
Fremont County, Wyo., commissioner
In case you have not yet seen this bill, here is a little insight on HR 3324, the "Voluntary Grazing Buyout Act."
This act would cause the appropriation of your tax dollars, by the federal government, to buy grazing permits from ranchers. These grazing areas would then be placed in non-grazing status and would no longer be used for grazing of any livestock.
The appropriation would be for $100 million, which would take approximately 571,000 animal unit months (AUMs) of grazing off BLM and national forestland.
If one rancher in the western states has a permit for 300 cow/calf pairs, for four months of summer grazing, this would equate to about 1,200 AUMs. Using this example, this taxpayer-funded buyout would remove about 475 ranchers from the ranges in the western states in one year.
Without public land grazing, these ranches will not be able to support the same number of cattle that they can with the public land grazing. The ranches that sell their grazing permits will be forced to do the following: 1) cease cattle production; 2) drastically reduce the number of cattle they are currently running; or, 3) subdivide their privately owned ranchlands to replace the income lost from their annual cattle sales (unless they are already wealthy).
Here's what this means to you. You are going to pay the cost of your own community's economic funeral.
As an example, let's say we have a typical rancher who runs 300 head of mother cows. Using central Wyoming as the location for the operation, the rancher would run about four months on BLM-managed land. While the cattle were summering on the BLM, the rancher would be irrigating and haying his base property (privately owned) in preparation for keeping the cattle on the private property for the remaining eight months of the year.
At first the cattle would graze the pasture when they come home; then, when the pasture snows under or runs out, the hay would be fed to the animals until the next grazing season, when the cattle would be turned back out on the BLM managed land and the annual cycle would begin anew.
Now, let's say this same rancher takes the buyout and sells his BLM grazing permit. He would sell his 1,200 AUMs (300 pair x 4 months) for $175 per AUM, which would equal $210,000.
Most of this amount would most likely go to pay off his bills and maybe buy a new pickup, which would be a short-term injection into the local economy. However, the long-term effect will be devastating to the local economy.
You see, while the public ground under the BLM grazing permit supported 1200 AUMs, the base property (privately owned by the rancher) would have to support about 2400 AUMs which would require at least 100 head of mother cows be sold, as the remaining operation would not longer be able to support 300 pairs without the public grazing permit.
When the rancher was fully stocked at 300 pair, he would sell about 285 calves weighing 475 lbs each at a price of $425 totaling $121,125. Now that he has sold his grazing permit, he can only run about 200 pair (actually less than that, but for simplification of math we'll use 200). Now, after the buyout, he will sell about 190 calves at 475 lbs each at a price of $425 totaling $80,750. This is a difference of $40,375.
Now let's use University of Wyoming figures that estimate that one dollar will turn over in a community six times before it falls out of local circulation. When we multiply the $40,375 by six, we see that $242,250, approximately one-quarter of a million dollars, is lost from the local economy each and every year thereafter.
This example illustrates the negative economic impact to a local economy from just one rancher selling his grazing permit back to the government. The total effect from HR 3324, the "Voluntary Grazing Buyout Act," would be over $115 million that would come out of local western economies in just one year, and these economies would suffer this loss directly every year after that.
In other words, the feds will use $100 million (of your tax dollars) to cause your local western economies to suffer an approximate loss of $115 million this year and every year after.
If you know someone who works at a bank, sells gasoline or diesel, sells clothing, sells ranch and cattle supplies or equipment, works in or owns a restaurant or a grocery store, is or works for a veterinarian, drives a cattle truck or works at the livestock auction barn, then you know someone who is going to take a direct economic hit from this "buyout."
You, as a citizen making your living in one of the western states, your family and your friends, will suffer the indirect economic hit resulting from the lack of this economic activity occurring from the grazing of livestock on public lands.
This buyout is an agenda being driven by people who want all cattle off all public land. Guess what, Phase Two of their agenda is to drive all cattle off all private land.
I hope this sheds some light on this simple but critically important issue. If you feel it's important, maybe you ought to share your thoughts with your friends, neighbors, and elected officials. This example uses conservative, average numbers and is simplified for the purposes of illustration. An exact accounting and use of actual costs of production and actual market values would show the actual negative economic impact to local economies to be significantly higher.
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
First, Do No Household Harm
The Senate is set to vote Thursday on a bill that would impose mandatory restrictions on emissions of greenhouse gases, affecting practically every business and consumer in the country.
While supporters claim that the climate-change legislation, S.139, introduced by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), has been toned down in response to concerns about its negative economic effects, a new study by Charles River Associates finds that the impact would still be dramatic -- a cost of between $350 and $1,300 per family per year through 2020.
At a minimum, the study found, "refined petroleum product prices would rise by 12 percent to 16 percent" even under the milder, amended McCain-Lieberman bill. Under the most optimistic assumptions, "the associated consumer costs are estimated to be $350 per household in 2010, rising to $530 per household by 2020."
Coming on top of separate new research that shows clearly that the 20th Century is not the warmest period on record, the Charles River study should discourage Senators concerned about the uncertain U.S. economic recovery from approving McCain-Lieberman -- which would raise energy costs, reduce consumer spending, and kill jobs...
Another Setback for Kyoto
Coming on the heels of Russia's apparent decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the Wall Street Journal reports that the European Union's efforts to implement the agreement on their own may be stalling.
The EU is having trouble keeping its promises to cut so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, by 8 percent from 1990 levels by the end of the decade.
--Based on current trends, the European Environment Agency predicts emissions will fall only 4.7 percent by the time the targets become binding between 2008 and 2012.
--Furthermore, the European Parliament is delaying consideration of a bill to regulate the trading of credits for greenhouse gas emissions reductions -- risking a 2005 deadline for implementation.
--Use of pollution credits would allow the EU to cut its Kyoto bill by about 20 percent from an estimated 3.4 billion euros.
Furthermore, EU diplomats say some governments are backing away from promises to give aid to poorer countries.
--The EU, along with several industrialized nations, promised two years ago to contribute $523 million to developing countries beginning in 2005 to help them combat greenhouse gas emissions.
--But EU environment ministers meeting Monday in Luxembourg failed to agree on the share each country will contribute, with Spain, Greece and Portugal arguing that they are poorer than their Northern European counterparts.
--The southern European countries want their combined contribution reduced by about 20 million (Euro) a year -- but countries are supposed to pay in proportion to their pollution, not their gross domestic product.
Source: Victoria Knight (Dow Jones Newswires), "EU Effort to Fight Global Warming Hits Money Snag," Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2003.
George W. AlGore?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) recently sued over the Bush administration's adoption of the thoroughly debunked National Assessment in the 2002 report to the U.N. The basis for the suit is the Federal Data Quality Act (FDQA), a new law intended to prevent the circulation of flawed data by government agencies. Thus far, the Bush administration has evaded every private-sector attempt to employ the FDQA. In its efforts to defend the indefensible National Assessment, the administration continues to fight against judicial enforcement of the FDQA, threatening to emasculate the law in the process.
The National Assessment is fatally flawed. It employs computer models that are proven to project climate less capably than a table of random numbers. Though the models also carry disclaimers admitting their futility at producing regional and even national results, the Assessment nonetheless purports that they detail dire calamities broken down with specificity even to the state level.
CEI's suit challenging the Assessment's junk science places "global-warming" alarmism before the courts. In response, the administration is not just protecting the National Assessment: The word is out on K Street that the White House will actively seek to eviscerate the FDQA and its troublesome requirement that data disseminated by the government be objective and have utility for its intended purpose. According to the Bush administration, regulators cannot be held to FDQA's requirements. By implication, their position is that the sole regulatory reform achieved by the Republican Congress contains nothing but toothless exhortations of regulators to do the right thing...
Permalink
First, Do No Household Harm
The Senate is set to vote Thursday on a bill that would impose mandatory restrictions on emissions of greenhouse gases, affecting practically every business and consumer in the country.
While supporters claim that the climate-change legislation, S.139, introduced by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), has been toned down in response to concerns about its negative economic effects, a new study by Charles River Associates finds that the impact would still be dramatic -- a cost of between $350 and $1,300 per family per year through 2020.
At a minimum, the study found, "refined petroleum product prices would rise by 12 percent to 16 percent" even under the milder, amended McCain-Lieberman bill. Under the most optimistic assumptions, "the associated consumer costs are estimated to be $350 per household in 2010, rising to $530 per household by 2020."
Coming on top of separate new research that shows clearly that the 20th Century is not the warmest period on record, the Charles River study should discourage Senators concerned about the uncertain U.S. economic recovery from approving McCain-Lieberman -- which would raise energy costs, reduce consumer spending, and kill jobs...
Another Setback for Kyoto
Coming on the heels of Russia's apparent decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the Wall Street Journal reports that the European Union's efforts to implement the agreement on their own may be stalling.
The EU is having trouble keeping its promises to cut so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, by 8 percent from 1990 levels by the end of the decade.
--Based on current trends, the European Environment Agency predicts emissions will fall only 4.7 percent by the time the targets become binding between 2008 and 2012.
--Furthermore, the European Parliament is delaying consideration of a bill to regulate the trading of credits for greenhouse gas emissions reductions -- risking a 2005 deadline for implementation.
--Use of pollution credits would allow the EU to cut its Kyoto bill by about 20 percent from an estimated 3.4 billion euros.
Furthermore, EU diplomats say some governments are backing away from promises to give aid to poorer countries.
--The EU, along with several industrialized nations, promised two years ago to contribute $523 million to developing countries beginning in 2005 to help them combat greenhouse gas emissions.
--But EU environment ministers meeting Monday in Luxembourg failed to agree on the share each country will contribute, with Spain, Greece and Portugal arguing that they are poorer than their Northern European counterparts.
--The southern European countries want their combined contribution reduced by about 20 million (Euro) a year -- but countries are supposed to pay in proportion to their pollution, not their gross domestic product.
Source: Victoria Knight (Dow Jones Newswires), "EU Effort to Fight Global Warming Hits Money Snag," Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2003.
George W. AlGore?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) recently sued over the Bush administration's adoption of the thoroughly debunked National Assessment in the 2002 report to the U.N. The basis for the suit is the Federal Data Quality Act (FDQA), a new law intended to prevent the circulation of flawed data by government agencies. Thus far, the Bush administration has evaded every private-sector attempt to employ the FDQA. In its efforts to defend the indefensible National Assessment, the administration continues to fight against judicial enforcement of the FDQA, threatening to emasculate the law in the process.
The National Assessment is fatally flawed. It employs computer models that are proven to project climate less capably than a table of random numbers. Though the models also carry disclaimers admitting their futility at producing regional and even national results, the Assessment nonetheless purports that they detail dire calamities broken down with specificity even to the state level.
CEI's suit challenging the Assessment's junk science places "global-warming" alarmism before the courts. In response, the administration is not just protecting the National Assessment: The word is out on K Street that the White House will actively seek to eviscerate the FDQA and its troublesome requirement that data disseminated by the government be objective and have utility for its intended purpose. According to the Bush administration, regulators cannot be held to FDQA's requirements. By implication, their position is that the sole regulatory reform achieved by the Republican Congress contains nothing but toothless exhortations of regulators to do the right thing...
Permalink
NEWS ROUNDUP
NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Forest Service retirees chide firefighting litigation Calling it "ridiculous" and "irresponsible," the National Association of Forest Service Retirees on Tuesday lambasted a lawsuit filed against the agency by current employees who want an evaluation of the environmental and social effects of wildland firefighting. "It is so outrageous, it boggles my mind," said Richard Pfilf, executive director of the 250-member retirees' group. Retirees lodged their objection in a news release out of Alexandria, Va., saying they are "alarmed by the total lack of responsibility demonstrated" by the lawsuit. In an interview, Pfilf said the lawsuit would attempt to stop the use of chemical retardants while the EIS was prepared, a process that could take years. "Forest Service retirees wonder how anyone can be so irresponsible as to demand stopping the use of retardant to prepare an EIS when Santa Ana winds are now pushing an inferno through Southern California communities," he said. In his news release, Pfilf went further: "FSEEE mischievously contrived this lawsuit as a way to interfere with and subvert proven, effective methods of fighting forest fires. "Claiming possible detriment to fish, should retardant accidentally fall into a water body, and citing a number of deaths of firefighters over the years, the suit fails to mention or equate stream habitat saved by fire suppression and the human lives saved by the use of retardant."...Groups file lawsuit over Kootenai forest timber sale Environmentalists filed another lawsuit against the Kootenai National Forest on Tuesday, hoping to stop a 12.5 million-board-foot timber sale they believe would pollute an already degraded stream. At almost the same time, not knowing a lawsuit had been filed, the Forest Service awarded a contract for the Garver timber sale to Riley Creek Lumber Co. - which bid $1.3 million over the advertised price of $230,000. Filed by Alliance for the Wild Rockies and The Lands Council, the complaint seeks to stop the Garver sale on grounds it violates the Clean Water Act and destroys habitat for species that depend on old-growth trees...House Conferees Backpedal on Protection of Public Lands Conferees from the House and Senate voted last night to reject attempts to protect national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas from a Bush Administration rule that could turn cow paths and jeep tracks into thousands of miles of bulldozed highways. The joint House-Senate FY 2004 Interior Appropriations Conference approved a conference report that fails to include a bipartisan House provision aimed at limiting a controversial Bush administration regulation. This House provision would have limited the Bush administration from moving forward with efforts to allow BLM to recognize rights-of-way across public lands where there are now little more than footpaths. The Interior Department funding bill now goes back to both houses for final passage...Environmental group plans to sue agency The Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project plans to sue the U.S. Forest Service to stop a large-scale thinning and logging project in the Metolius Basin, according to the environmental group's executive director. Karen Coulter said Monday that her group would file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court because the federal agency denied the organization's appeal of the project. That denial was issued Oct. 17. Coulter said the lawsuit would seek to prohibit the Forest Service from allowing large and old-growth trees to be logged and to prevent the agency from allowing activities that could harm soil productivity...Congress feels heat on logging proposals The wind-whipped wildfires scorching Southern California are providing momentum for legislation moving through Congress to speed thinning of dense forests and brush on public lands throughout California and the West. The fast-moving blazes that have already consumed more than 400,000 acres, destroyed 1,100 homes and claimed at least 13 lives are being cited as exhibit A by advocates of President Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative" as well as by those supporting a compromise proposal being pushed by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein to thin at least 20 million acres of land at high risk of a catastrophic fire. On Friday, even before the wildfires raged out of control, House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, urged the Senate to "wake up and smell the smoke" and rally behind a House-passed bill that encompasses much of Bush's original proposal to limit administrative appeals and court challenges for logging and brush-clearing projects. But critics say they fear the hysteria over deadly wildfires in California will help gain approval for a bill that could increase logging in old-growth forest areas and curtail the rights of citizens to challenge Forest Service decisions...Environmentalists suspicious over Bush's Healthy Forest plan "They're working on public fear that a big, catastrophic fire is going to come eat my home," said Deb Robison, a Sierra Club organizer in Boulder, Colo. "The problem is, this won't really protect people's homes." Environmentalists sense a logging giveaway. They accuse the administration of eliminating the threat of forest fires by cutting down forests. And they contend that the fuel-reduction approach is going largely to the wrong places. Rather than thin the woods close to developed areas, they say, Bush is opening too much of the backcountry. Logging there will bring more roads into more wilderness, they say, and bring more fire-starting human activity into the backcountry...Column:Greens' blues over Bush off key A prime example just arrived in the mail from actor Robert Redford on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Redford's fund-raising letter accuses Bush of "waging a sweeping attack on our environmental laws," of "cynical new policies ... (that) will enrich giant corporations even as they increase pollution and destroy some of our most treasured wild lands" and of "allow(ing) 17,000 of the nation's worst polluters to spew more toxic chemicals into our air and harm the health of millions of Americans." When the administration recently announced possible removal of Endangered Species Act protection for Oregon coastal coho salmon because of the species' return to Oregon rivers in record numbers, the National Wildlife Federation accused Bush of "abrogating responsibility" while the Native Fish Society called it "a political fix." The Greens' hatred for Bush's environmental programs is no mystery. To them, Clinton-Gore -- with Bruce Babbitt at Interior -- ranks as the all-time dream-team of environmental politics. So close was the partnership between Clinton-Gore and the vast network of eco-activist organizations that no appreciable differences in their agendas are detectable. Now, viewed from the far left end of the environmental spectrum, each of Bush's programs to balance environmental protection with concern for the lives and livelihoods of people is regarded, and portrayed to the public, as a radical departure from the glory days of Clinton-Gore...Plan to save endangered toad hailed as 'astute compromise' The endangered Houston toad is making more friends among the pines and sandy soil east of Austin. They include weekend farmers and other residents of Bastrop County who have helped compile a conservation plan to save the palm-size amphibian from extinction. A two-volume, 300-page Lost Pines habitat conservation plan compiled by a 15-member citizens' work group is under review by the county attorney's office. By April, it is expected to be submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency is responsible under the federal Endangered Species Act for ensuring the survival of the 3.5-inch-long amphibian...Guinn urges panel to finish sage grouse plan Gov. Kenny Guinn urged a state panel Tuesday to complete a conservation plan to protect sage grouse in Nevada before a possible listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act. Guinn appointed the committee made up of representatives of various interest groups and government agencies in 2000 and charged them with developing a conservation strategy to protect the birds and their sagebrush habitat...Rare sighting: Ranchers and farmers join efforts to save a bird Ken Morgan knows it isn't often that significant conservation deals begin with dozens of cups of coffee sipped around kitchen tables in farm country. But with the possibility of yet another species being added to the federal protected list, biologist Morgan asked a smattering of farmers to consider an unusual proposition: Identify, and then acknowledge that endangered mountain plovers nest on their land. In a surprising move of cooperation, the overall-clad agrarians agreed, even if it meant environmentalists could someday use the information against them to justify increased regulation of their land as plover habitat. In this litigious era when the fate of more and more species is being decided in courtrooms, the idea of farmers and ranchers willingly divulging the location of rare animals on the back 40 might seem counterintuitive...Park Service will study 'parasite' bird The National Park Service at Grand Canyon plans to study the possibility of trapping a species of bird that causes problems because it lays eggs in the nests of other birds -- namely the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher. Grand Canyon Deputy Superintendent Kate Cannon recently wrote a letter to the Center for Biological Diversity to let it know that the Park Service would conduct a environmental analysis of capturing and removing brown-headed cowbirds. The analysis also will examine other alternatives. The Center wrote the Grand Canyon superintendent in August, critical of the park for ignoring recommendations of a 1996 report that suggested the cowbird was causing problems for the endangered species...Authorities kill 3rd male wolf For the third time, a male wolf joining the Green River pack in Wyoming has had to be killed because of depredations on livestock in the area. The pack, which roams southwest of Grand Teton National Park, has had a consistent alpha female but a revolving door when it comes to male leadership. Federal Wildlife Services, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has had to shoot three males that have joined the pack successively -- each entering the picture when another is removed...Man sought after assault on ranger One man has been arrested and the search for another continued this morning in connection with shooting at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger in the Red Hills area west of Jamestown yesterday. John James Heller, 20, booked on suspicion of drug possession, remained in custody this morning in lieu of $10,000 bail...Column: Horse (Non) Sense Wild horses is an oxymoron. Wild equines did evolve in the Western Hemisphere, but they also started going extinct here millions of years ago. The last native, truly wild horses vanished from North America in advance of mammoths, camels, and even lumbering giant ground sloths. The two species of so-called wild horse and donkey at large on our prairies, plains, and deserts today were never originally on this continent but are the result of Spaniards' and prospectors' losing their livestock -- or cutting it loose to get rid of it. These feral horses and donkeys are about as wild as stray cats and park pigeons. Like many feral animals, they are whizzes at exploiting newfound habitats. As anyone who has ever followed a parade can testify, they are blessed with "straight-through" digestive systems that let them flourish on a high-fiber, low-nutrient diet. They can reproduce at an annual rate of 15 percent, potentially doubling their population every five years. And predators have never represented a threat: In the early 1800s, when it was seemingly possible to walk (rather briskly, to be sure) on the backs of wolves and grizzly bears from the Mississippi to the Pacific, feral horses were estimated to number 2 million...BLM boosts bonds for oil, gas wells Under the proposed rules, oil and gas companies will have to pay $20,000 in bonds for wells they drill in a particular lease areas. This is double the current rate of $10,000. Bonds for statewide leases, or for wells drilled in federal lands within a particular state, would jump three times to $75,000 from the current rate of $25,000. Bonds for nationwide leases, however, would remain unchanged at $150,000...Column: SUWA on the Defense: Rich Enviro Group Things must be heating up in southern Utah. A rich, Salt Lake City-based environmental group has charged into the middle of recent events involving Kane County’s push for equal treatment of road signage in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM). On Saturday, all Garfield and Kane County post office box holders received an arrogant letter from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), informing them that their elected county officials “took actions that lack common sense and may not be in your best interest.” It looks like SUWA is attempting to instill fear into the hearts of private property owners, a large segment of those who received the mailing, by suggesting that the Federal R.S. 2477 law might someday encroach upon them by building a road across their land. SUWA, an environmental organization that has fought legal application of R.S. 2477 for years, deliberately ignores the fact that R.S. 2477 relates to rights-of-way “over public lands”, not over private lands...Park Service Studying Hacienda Casino Purchase The National Park Service has sought for decades to purchase the Hacienda casino, located within what is now the Lake Mead National Recreation Area along U.S. Highway 93 west of Boulder City and long considered an aberration at the entrance to one of the most-visited parks in the nation. After decades of waiting, the Park Service may now have its chance. The owners of the Hacienda Hotel & Casino have recently approached Lake Mead officials about possibly selling the property, an action that has triggered a government-funded appraisal and hazardous materials review of the site that is expected by March, National Park Service spokeswoman Roxanne Dey said...Saving suckers with a shock Endangered suckers still lingering in the A Canal are in for a shock. An electric shock. Fishery biologists with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation last week began to "salvage" suckers trapped in the receding waters of the A Canal, which was shut off for the season on Oct. 15. The operation involves sending an electric current through a pool of water, which harmlessly stuns the fish and sends them floating to the top. The fish are then gathered up and carted by pickup to Upper Klamath Lake so they don't dry up with the canal, stay trapped in isolated pools or become lunch for a gull, said Rich Piaskowski, a fishery biologist with the Bureau...Make Way for Buffalo This forlorn farm town — Rawson, population 6 — is a fine place to contemplate the boldest idea in America today: rescuing the rural Great Plains by returning much of it to a vast "Buffalo Commons." The result would be the world's largest nature park, drawing tourists from all over the world to see parts of 10 states alive again with buffalo, elk, grizzlies and wolves. Restoring a large chunk of the plains — which cover nearly one-fifth of the lower 48 states — to their original state may also be the best way to revive local economies and keep hamlets like Rawson from becoming ghost towns. It sounds cruel to say so, but towns like Rawson are a reminder that the oversettlement of the Great Plains has turned out to be a 150-year-long mistake, one of the longest-running and most costly errors in American history. Families struggled for generations to survive droughts and blizzards, then finally gave up and moved on. You can buy a home out here for $3,000, and you can sometimes rent one for nothing at all if you promise to mow the lawn and keep up the house. The rural parts of the Great Plains are emptying, and in some cases reverting to wilderness...PETA plans shareholder campaign against restaurant company An animal-rights group that has pressured fast-food companies is turning its attention to Brinker International Inc., owner of casual-dining chains including Chili's. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Tuesday it has bought 110 shares of Brinker to pressure the company on the raising and slaughter of animals used to fill the restaurants' menus. PETA said owning the shares would give it the right to speak at shareholder meetings and offer resolutions calling for tougher standards for animal care...R-CALF cautiously optimistic on COOL rules The mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) rules released Monday by USDA were met with cautious optimism by the cattle association that helped write the law in the 2002 Farm Bill. Leo McDonnell, President of R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) said the group's preliminary analysis of the rules reveals significant improvements over the voluntary guidelines released by USDA last November, but there are still some issues that need to be addressed. "For the most part, the process is working as USDA has clarified and corrected a number of deficiencies contained in its first draft," he said. McDonnell said the improvements indicate USDA has listened to industry concerns and has taken steps to address these concerns in a meaningful way...50% Chance Of Australian/US FTA The chances of finishing an Australian-U.S. free trade agreement were described as "better than 50 percent" Sunday by Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile. Vaile also defended AWB Ltd. -- the former Australian Wheat Board -- against charges it may have been involved in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq under an Oil For Food contract for Australian wheat with unusually high prices, as was first reported on DTN. Told by an interviewer on the Australian television program Sunday Sunrise that if the FTA is not signed by Christmas, the consensus is the deal won't be done, Vaile said, "[I] still think it's probably better than 50 percent, but it's very hard to tell. It's a very comprehensive and complex negotiation. We have been given a short time frame to do it in by comparison to other negotiations. It's a matter now of matching the political will with the energy from our negotiating teams and focusing on finding answers to some of the more sensitive issues."...
Permalink
NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Forest Service retirees chide firefighting litigation Calling it "ridiculous" and "irresponsible," the National Association of Forest Service Retirees on Tuesday lambasted a lawsuit filed against the agency by current employees who want an evaluation of the environmental and social effects of wildland firefighting. "It is so outrageous, it boggles my mind," said Richard Pfilf, executive director of the 250-member retirees' group. Retirees lodged their objection in a news release out of Alexandria, Va., saying they are "alarmed by the total lack of responsibility demonstrated" by the lawsuit. In an interview, Pfilf said the lawsuit would attempt to stop the use of chemical retardants while the EIS was prepared, a process that could take years. "Forest Service retirees wonder how anyone can be so irresponsible as to demand stopping the use of retardant to prepare an EIS when Santa Ana winds are now pushing an inferno through Southern California communities," he said. In his news release, Pfilf went further: "FSEEE mischievously contrived this lawsuit as a way to interfere with and subvert proven, effective methods of fighting forest fires. "Claiming possible detriment to fish, should retardant accidentally fall into a water body, and citing a number of deaths of firefighters over the years, the suit fails to mention or equate stream habitat saved by fire suppression and the human lives saved by the use of retardant."...Groups file lawsuit over Kootenai forest timber sale Environmentalists filed another lawsuit against the Kootenai National Forest on Tuesday, hoping to stop a 12.5 million-board-foot timber sale they believe would pollute an already degraded stream. At almost the same time, not knowing a lawsuit had been filed, the Forest Service awarded a contract for the Garver timber sale to Riley Creek Lumber Co. - which bid $1.3 million over the advertised price of $230,000. Filed by Alliance for the Wild Rockies and The Lands Council, the complaint seeks to stop the Garver sale on grounds it violates the Clean Water Act and destroys habitat for species that depend on old-growth trees...House Conferees Backpedal on Protection of Public Lands Conferees from the House and Senate voted last night to reject attempts to protect national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas from a Bush Administration rule that could turn cow paths and jeep tracks into thousands of miles of bulldozed highways. The joint House-Senate FY 2004 Interior Appropriations Conference approved a conference report that fails to include a bipartisan House provision aimed at limiting a controversial Bush administration regulation. This House provision would have limited the Bush administration from moving forward with efforts to allow BLM to recognize rights-of-way across public lands where there are now little more than footpaths. The Interior Department funding bill now goes back to both houses for final passage...Environmental group plans to sue agency The Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project plans to sue the U.S. Forest Service to stop a large-scale thinning and logging project in the Metolius Basin, according to the environmental group's executive director. Karen Coulter said Monday that her group would file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court because the federal agency denied the organization's appeal of the project. That denial was issued Oct. 17. Coulter said the lawsuit would seek to prohibit the Forest Service from allowing large and old-growth trees to be logged and to prevent the agency from allowing activities that could harm soil productivity...Congress feels heat on logging proposals The wind-whipped wildfires scorching Southern California are providing momentum for legislation moving through Congress to speed thinning of dense forests and brush on public lands throughout California and the West. The fast-moving blazes that have already consumed more than 400,000 acres, destroyed 1,100 homes and claimed at least 13 lives are being cited as exhibit A by advocates of President Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative" as well as by those supporting a compromise proposal being pushed by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein to thin at least 20 million acres of land at high risk of a catastrophic fire. On Friday, even before the wildfires raged out of control, House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, urged the Senate to "wake up and smell the smoke" and rally behind a House-passed bill that encompasses much of Bush's original proposal to limit administrative appeals and court challenges for logging and brush-clearing projects. But critics say they fear the hysteria over deadly wildfires in California will help gain approval for a bill that could increase logging in old-growth forest areas and curtail the rights of citizens to challenge Forest Service decisions...Environmentalists suspicious over Bush's Healthy Forest plan "They're working on public fear that a big, catastrophic fire is going to come eat my home," said Deb Robison, a Sierra Club organizer in Boulder, Colo. "The problem is, this won't really protect people's homes." Environmentalists sense a logging giveaway. They accuse the administration of eliminating the threat of forest fires by cutting down forests. And they contend that the fuel-reduction approach is going largely to the wrong places. Rather than thin the woods close to developed areas, they say, Bush is opening too much of the backcountry. Logging there will bring more roads into more wilderness, they say, and bring more fire-starting human activity into the backcountry...Column:Greens' blues over Bush off key A prime example just arrived in the mail from actor Robert Redford on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Redford's fund-raising letter accuses Bush of "waging a sweeping attack on our environmental laws," of "cynical new policies ... (that) will enrich giant corporations even as they increase pollution and destroy some of our most treasured wild lands" and of "allow(ing) 17,000 of the nation's worst polluters to spew more toxic chemicals into our air and harm the health of millions of Americans." When the administration recently announced possible removal of Endangered Species Act protection for Oregon coastal coho salmon because of the species' return to Oregon rivers in record numbers, the National Wildlife Federation accused Bush of "abrogating responsibility" while the Native Fish Society called it "a political fix." The Greens' hatred for Bush's environmental programs is no mystery. To them, Clinton-Gore -- with Bruce Babbitt at Interior -- ranks as the all-time dream-team of environmental politics. So close was the partnership between Clinton-Gore and the vast network of eco-activist organizations that no appreciable differences in their agendas are detectable. Now, viewed from the far left end of the environmental spectrum, each of Bush's programs to balance environmental protection with concern for the lives and livelihoods of people is regarded, and portrayed to the public, as a radical departure from the glory days of Clinton-Gore...Plan to save endangered toad hailed as 'astute compromise' The endangered Houston toad is making more friends among the pines and sandy soil east of Austin. They include weekend farmers and other residents of Bastrop County who have helped compile a conservation plan to save the palm-size amphibian from extinction. A two-volume, 300-page Lost Pines habitat conservation plan compiled by a 15-member citizens' work group is under review by the county attorney's office. By April, it is expected to be submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency is responsible under the federal Endangered Species Act for ensuring the survival of the 3.5-inch-long amphibian...Guinn urges panel to finish sage grouse plan Gov. Kenny Guinn urged a state panel Tuesday to complete a conservation plan to protect sage grouse in Nevada before a possible listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act. Guinn appointed the committee made up of representatives of various interest groups and government agencies in 2000 and charged them with developing a conservation strategy to protect the birds and their sagebrush habitat...Rare sighting: Ranchers and farmers join efforts to save a bird Ken Morgan knows it isn't often that significant conservation deals begin with dozens of cups of coffee sipped around kitchen tables in farm country. But with the possibility of yet another species being added to the federal protected list, biologist Morgan asked a smattering of farmers to consider an unusual proposition: Identify, and then acknowledge that endangered mountain plovers nest on their land. In a surprising move of cooperation, the overall-clad agrarians agreed, even if it meant environmentalists could someday use the information against them to justify increased regulation of their land as plover habitat. In this litigious era when the fate of more and more species is being decided in courtrooms, the idea of farmers and ranchers willingly divulging the location of rare animals on the back 40 might seem counterintuitive...Park Service will study 'parasite' bird The National Park Service at Grand Canyon plans to study the possibility of trapping a species of bird that causes problems because it lays eggs in the nests of other birds -- namely the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher. Grand Canyon Deputy Superintendent Kate Cannon recently wrote a letter to the Center for Biological Diversity to let it know that the Park Service would conduct a environmental analysis of capturing and removing brown-headed cowbirds. The analysis also will examine other alternatives. The Center wrote the Grand Canyon superintendent in August, critical of the park for ignoring recommendations of a 1996 report that suggested the cowbird was causing problems for the endangered species...Authorities kill 3rd male wolf For the third time, a male wolf joining the Green River pack in Wyoming has had to be killed because of depredations on livestock in the area. The pack, which roams southwest of Grand Teton National Park, has had a consistent alpha female but a revolving door when it comes to male leadership. Federal Wildlife Services, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has had to shoot three males that have joined the pack successively -- each entering the picture when another is removed...Man sought after assault on ranger One man has been arrested and the search for another continued this morning in connection with shooting at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger in the Red Hills area west of Jamestown yesterday. John James Heller, 20, booked on suspicion of drug possession, remained in custody this morning in lieu of $10,000 bail...Column: Horse (Non) Sense Wild horses is an oxymoron. Wild equines did evolve in the Western Hemisphere, but they also started going extinct here millions of years ago. The last native, truly wild horses vanished from North America in advance of mammoths, camels, and even lumbering giant ground sloths. The two species of so-called wild horse and donkey at large on our prairies, plains, and deserts today were never originally on this continent but are the result of Spaniards' and prospectors' losing their livestock -- or cutting it loose to get rid of it. These feral horses and donkeys are about as wild as stray cats and park pigeons. Like many feral animals, they are whizzes at exploiting newfound habitats. As anyone who has ever followed a parade can testify, they are blessed with "straight-through" digestive systems that let them flourish on a high-fiber, low-nutrient diet. They can reproduce at an annual rate of 15 percent, potentially doubling their population every five years. And predators have never represented a threat: In the early 1800s, when it was seemingly possible to walk (rather briskly, to be sure) on the backs of wolves and grizzly bears from the Mississippi to the Pacific, feral horses were estimated to number 2 million...BLM boosts bonds for oil, gas wells Under the proposed rules, oil and gas companies will have to pay $20,000 in bonds for wells they drill in a particular lease areas. This is double the current rate of $10,000. Bonds for statewide leases, or for wells drilled in federal lands within a particular state, would jump three times to $75,000 from the current rate of $25,000. Bonds for nationwide leases, however, would remain unchanged at $150,000...Column: SUWA on the Defense: Rich Enviro Group Things must be heating up in southern Utah. A rich, Salt Lake City-based environmental group has charged into the middle of recent events involving Kane County’s push for equal treatment of road signage in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM). On Saturday, all Garfield and Kane County post office box holders received an arrogant letter from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), informing them that their elected county officials “took actions that lack common sense and may not be in your best interest.” It looks like SUWA is attempting to instill fear into the hearts of private property owners, a large segment of those who received the mailing, by suggesting that the Federal R.S. 2477 law might someday encroach upon them by building a road across their land. SUWA, an environmental organization that has fought legal application of R.S. 2477 for years, deliberately ignores the fact that R.S. 2477 relates to rights-of-way “over public lands”, not over private lands...Park Service Studying Hacienda Casino Purchase The National Park Service has sought for decades to purchase the Hacienda casino, located within what is now the Lake Mead National Recreation Area along U.S. Highway 93 west of Boulder City and long considered an aberration at the entrance to one of the most-visited parks in the nation. After decades of waiting, the Park Service may now have its chance. The owners of the Hacienda Hotel & Casino have recently approached Lake Mead officials about possibly selling the property, an action that has triggered a government-funded appraisal and hazardous materials review of the site that is expected by March, National Park Service spokeswoman Roxanne Dey said...Saving suckers with a shock Endangered suckers still lingering in the A Canal are in for a shock. An electric shock. Fishery biologists with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation last week began to "salvage" suckers trapped in the receding waters of the A Canal, which was shut off for the season on Oct. 15. The operation involves sending an electric current through a pool of water, which harmlessly stuns the fish and sends them floating to the top. The fish are then gathered up and carted by pickup to Upper Klamath Lake so they don't dry up with the canal, stay trapped in isolated pools or become lunch for a gull, said Rich Piaskowski, a fishery biologist with the Bureau...Make Way for Buffalo This forlorn farm town — Rawson, population 6 — is a fine place to contemplate the boldest idea in America today: rescuing the rural Great Plains by returning much of it to a vast "Buffalo Commons." The result would be the world's largest nature park, drawing tourists from all over the world to see parts of 10 states alive again with buffalo, elk, grizzlies and wolves. Restoring a large chunk of the plains — which cover nearly one-fifth of the lower 48 states — to their original state may also be the best way to revive local economies and keep hamlets like Rawson from becoming ghost towns. It sounds cruel to say so, but towns like Rawson are a reminder that the oversettlement of the Great Plains has turned out to be a 150-year-long mistake, one of the longest-running and most costly errors in American history. Families struggled for generations to survive droughts and blizzards, then finally gave up and moved on. You can buy a home out here for $3,000, and you can sometimes rent one for nothing at all if you promise to mow the lawn and keep up the house. The rural parts of the Great Plains are emptying, and in some cases reverting to wilderness...PETA plans shareholder campaign against restaurant company An animal-rights group that has pressured fast-food companies is turning its attention to Brinker International Inc., owner of casual-dining chains including Chili's. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Tuesday it has bought 110 shares of Brinker to pressure the company on the raising and slaughter of animals used to fill the restaurants' menus. PETA said owning the shares would give it the right to speak at shareholder meetings and offer resolutions calling for tougher standards for animal care...R-CALF cautiously optimistic on COOL rules The mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) rules released Monday by USDA were met with cautious optimism by the cattle association that helped write the law in the 2002 Farm Bill. Leo McDonnell, President of R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) said the group's preliminary analysis of the rules reveals significant improvements over the voluntary guidelines released by USDA last November, but there are still some issues that need to be addressed. "For the most part, the process is working as USDA has clarified and corrected a number of deficiencies contained in its first draft," he said. McDonnell said the improvements indicate USDA has listened to industry concerns and has taken steps to address these concerns in a meaningful way...50% Chance Of Australian/US FTA The chances of finishing an Australian-U.S. free trade agreement were described as "better than 50 percent" Sunday by Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile. Vaile also defended AWB Ltd. -- the former Australian Wheat Board -- against charges it may have been involved in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq under an Oil For Food contract for Australian wheat with unusually high prices, as was first reported on DTN. Told by an interviewer on the Australian television program Sunday Sunrise that if the FTA is not signed by Christmas, the consensus is the deal won't be done, Vaile said, "[I] still think it's probably better than 50 percent, but it's very hard to tell. It's a very comprehensive and complex negotiation. We have been given a short time frame to do it in by comparison to other negotiations. It's a matter now of matching the political will with the energy from our negotiating teams and focusing on finding answers to some of the more sensitive issues."...
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Washington Post Editorial
This is the kind of crap our elected officials read in D.C. It's enough to make you sick.
Fire Damage
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A24
WITH TERRIFYING intensity, fires are burning across Southern California and Mexico this week, proving once again that natural disasters can be no less devastating than the man-made kind. They have already killed more than a dozen people, destroyed more than 1,500 homes and burned half a million acres. A staggering 50,000 more homes are thought to be under threat, as the fires, fanned by desert winds, move into the Los Angeles and San Diego suburbs. It's a genuine national tragedy -- and one that shouldn't be misused for political purposes.
Unfortunately, that is a distinct possibility. The fires happen to have arrived just as the Senate is wrestling with a bill, already passed by the House, which is supposedly designed to help prevent catastrophic fires. In theory, the bill would address the environmental imbalance that has developed over the past several decades from the Forest Service's misguided policy of preventing all forest fires, even the low-level fires that once cleared away brush and young trees from old forests. Without these periodic fires, forests have become much denser, and big fires are far more damaging than they used to be.
But although foresters and scientists now recognize this problem, brush is still not being cleared away fast enough. Why? The House Republican authors of the forest bill blame overly bureaucratic environmental regulations. Accordingly, their bill attempts to loosen the procedures that the Forest Service must go through before it can carry out "fuel reduction activity" -- a change that would also help the timber industry dodge objections to the cutting down of older forests. This explanation does not stand up to close scrutiny. Last week, the General Accounting Office released the final results of its study on fuel reduction activity and discovered that of the Forest Service's 818 applications to cut brush, only one-quarter were appealed. Of these, 79 percent were processed within 90 days. What is hampering the process is not environmental litigators but finances. To carry out more brush-clearing operations, the Forest Service needs more resources.
But the Forest Service is unlikely to get significantly more resources anytime soon. It would therefore make sense for Congress, instead of passing laws that appear to be largely of benefit to the timber industry, to encourage the Forest Service to spend whatever money it does have on brush-clearing projects closer to human communities. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has helped write a compromise bill that would instruct the Forest Service to spend at least 50 percent of its fuel reduction resources on precisely that. Although this is the right approach, Ms. Feinstein has received no guarantee that her bill won't be completely rewritten by a Republican conference committee, as has lately become common practice.
In the absence of such a guarantee -- which would have to come from the White House -- it's probably better to pass no bill at all. We retain just the slimmest hope that the California blazes might cause members of Congress to redirect their energy toward saving people and homes, and away from helping loggers cut down mature trees.
That's right, let the west burn if need be, just don't do anything that might be beneficial to the timber industry.
Too bad the following column by Alan Caruba is not in a daily paper read by most people on the hill.
When Will Congress Stop Pandering To Greens And Begin To Protect Our Forests And People?
On September 22 of this year, Jack Blackwell, a regional forester of the Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service, testified before the Committee on Resources of the House subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. Barely a month later, his warnings about the conditions of the forested areas of southern California came true, destroying countless homes and taking lives in its path.
He began by noting that the 672,000 acres of the San Bernadino National Forest had some 24 million people living within a two-hour drive and that it was going through "a significant cycle of drought-related, vegetation mortality" involving "severe tree loss." The result was "a tremendous build-up of hazardous fuels" for a cataclysmic fire.
He noted, "Some community covenants have restricted landowners since the 1920s from tree removal activities on private land within the National Forest" and that the "Forest has not had an active timber harvest program for nearly ten years. There are no lumber mills in southern California and now the current removal of dead and dying trees is difficult and expensive."
How much more expensive will be the replacement of the homes that have since been destroyed? Or the loss of revenue due to the restrictions on properly managing this forest areas that could have been gained by cutting and thinning its overgrown mass of trees? Since the Greens mounted their Spotted Owl hoax in the northwest more than a decade ago, countless sawmills have gone out of business and many small towns dependent on them have withered to a few families.
Blackwell told the committee "The President´s Healthy Forest Initiative would play a key role in helping us avoid situations such as we see on the San Bernadino National Forest today. The initiative is based on a common-sense approach to reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires by restoring forest and rangeland health and ensuring the long-term safety and health of communities and natural resources in our care."
He urged "a public and private partnership" as "critical in providing an integrated and coordinated approach to address the crisis forest-wide." And he told the committee that the Forest Service had "redirected $3.2 million in State Fire Assistance and Community Protection/Community Assistance funding for wildfire prevention and hazardous fuels reduction…"
Blackwell warned that other forested areas have similar conditions. "Those ecological conditions, combined with the massive influx of people into California´s wildlands and the rapid growth of communities in and around those wildlands, particularly in the Sierra Nevada, have created the potential for truly disastrous wildfires."
One can hardly wonder what Blackwell is thinking these days or the many forest managers and others who, for years now, have been warning against the now annual loss of huge forest areas to these fires. The plain fact is that the US Forest Service has known for decades that these problems exist and has been issuing these warnings, but the success of the environmental movement in deterring the proper management of forests has once again reaped the whirlwind.
There literally is no excuse for the loss of life and property we have witnessed on our television news and read about in our daily newspapers. The President has been under attack the Greens for his proposed solution to this problem and this is just one more example of the irresponsible and dangerous efforts of Greens to attack the timber industry in every way possible.
It is, of course, all part of the Green attack on the economy in general. It has succeeded, not only with the huge loss of forested areas, the homes of those in and adjacent to them, but also in driving up the cost of lumber in an economy in which new home sales plays a significant, if not the leading role.
There are 490 million acres called timberlands in the US. They can produce more than 20 cubic feet of wood per acre annually. They´re growing more trees today than they were fifty years ago. At the same time, 247 million acres (33.5%) are reserved from harvest by law or are slow-growing woodlands unsuitable for timber production. The bottom line is that the US has some 70% of the forestland that was here in 1600, fully 737 million acres, when the pilgrims first arrived.
The US National Park System represents 83 million acres and unlike national forests, national parks do not allow any timber harvesting. The National Forest System, some 191 million acres, was established "…to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States." These National Forests contribute 25% of the gross receipts from timber sales directly to states for county roads and schools, amounting to millions of dollars each year. All that revenue has been lost because of these preventable catastrophic fires.
This situation has long been known to Congress and to Americans who have witnessed the annual losses. Civil servants like Jack Blackwell have been telling Congress what the problem is and how to solve it. The real question is when will Congress stop pandering to vocal Green organizations and their lobbying, and begin to protect our forests and our people? And when will Americans stop buying into all their lies?
And Hugh Hewitt absolutely gets it
How 'habitat protection' causes killer infernos
...Of course, fire has always been with us. What has not been a feature of the West, however, has been the perversion of land-management policies to extremist environmental agendas.
Serious students of land use in the West know that since 1992, the aggressive expansion of the mandates of the federal Endangered Species Act has led to a crazy quilt approach of federal dictates, many of which are simply incomprehensible. The bewildering array of designations of critical habitat for a variety of species and the threat of federal criminal law violations for illegal "take" of any of a growing list of species has led to a dramatic curtailment of habitat management that has allowed fuel loads to skyrocket throughout the region.
Similarly, the radical expansion of the National Environmental Policy Act as a tool of obstruction has mirrored the rise of the "no growth" movement among environmental activists. Logging plans are routinely challenged and die a death of delay and obstruction. The predictable consequences are infernos that feed on the years of neglect.
When the media arrive at the scene of the disaster, they hear of Santa Ana winds and drought, but never of the relentless opposition to common-sense management practices that could limit the destruction. They never learn that the California Gnatcatcher, to use just one example, was listed as endangered a decade ago despite a robust population here and in Mexico, or that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service routinely refuses to propose aggressive brush-management practices that would allow local governments and landowners to proactively clear habitat that might house the birds. Rather, the Service continues to issue sweeping designations of "critical habitat," the publication of which complicates the management and use of land that doesn't even support gnatcatchers.
For more than a decade, the leadership of the "resource" agencies at the state and local level has included numerous individuals who lack the ability or the motivation to serve the communities that need innovation and action, not more grand plans and environmental documents. President Bush and Gov. Schwarzenegger would both do themselves great good with the public if they embraced reform of these government bureaucracies that have once again failed to protect either the public or the environment from disaster.
Permalink
This is the kind of crap our elected officials read in D.C. It's enough to make you sick.
Fire Damage
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A24
WITH TERRIFYING intensity, fires are burning across Southern California and Mexico this week, proving once again that natural disasters can be no less devastating than the man-made kind. They have already killed more than a dozen people, destroyed more than 1,500 homes and burned half a million acres. A staggering 50,000 more homes are thought to be under threat, as the fires, fanned by desert winds, move into the Los Angeles and San Diego suburbs. It's a genuine national tragedy -- and one that shouldn't be misused for political purposes.
Unfortunately, that is a distinct possibility. The fires happen to have arrived just as the Senate is wrestling with a bill, already passed by the House, which is supposedly designed to help prevent catastrophic fires. In theory, the bill would address the environmental imbalance that has developed over the past several decades from the Forest Service's misguided policy of preventing all forest fires, even the low-level fires that once cleared away brush and young trees from old forests. Without these periodic fires, forests have become much denser, and big fires are far more damaging than they used to be.
But although foresters and scientists now recognize this problem, brush is still not being cleared away fast enough. Why? The House Republican authors of the forest bill blame overly bureaucratic environmental regulations. Accordingly, their bill attempts to loosen the procedures that the Forest Service must go through before it can carry out "fuel reduction activity" -- a change that would also help the timber industry dodge objections to the cutting down of older forests. This explanation does not stand up to close scrutiny. Last week, the General Accounting Office released the final results of its study on fuel reduction activity and discovered that of the Forest Service's 818 applications to cut brush, only one-quarter were appealed. Of these, 79 percent were processed within 90 days. What is hampering the process is not environmental litigators but finances. To carry out more brush-clearing operations, the Forest Service needs more resources.
But the Forest Service is unlikely to get significantly more resources anytime soon. It would therefore make sense for Congress, instead of passing laws that appear to be largely of benefit to the timber industry, to encourage the Forest Service to spend whatever money it does have on brush-clearing projects closer to human communities. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has helped write a compromise bill that would instruct the Forest Service to spend at least 50 percent of its fuel reduction resources on precisely that. Although this is the right approach, Ms. Feinstein has received no guarantee that her bill won't be completely rewritten by a Republican conference committee, as has lately become common practice.
In the absence of such a guarantee -- which would have to come from the White House -- it's probably better to pass no bill at all. We retain just the slimmest hope that the California blazes might cause members of Congress to redirect their energy toward saving people and homes, and away from helping loggers cut down mature trees.
That's right, let the west burn if need be, just don't do anything that might be beneficial to the timber industry.
Too bad the following column by Alan Caruba is not in a daily paper read by most people on the hill.
When Will Congress Stop Pandering To Greens And Begin To Protect Our Forests And People?
On September 22 of this year, Jack Blackwell, a regional forester of the Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service, testified before the Committee on Resources of the House subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. Barely a month later, his warnings about the conditions of the forested areas of southern California came true, destroying countless homes and taking lives in its path.
He began by noting that the 672,000 acres of the San Bernadino National Forest had some 24 million people living within a two-hour drive and that it was going through "a significant cycle of drought-related, vegetation mortality" involving "severe tree loss." The result was "a tremendous build-up of hazardous fuels" for a cataclysmic fire.
He noted, "Some community covenants have restricted landowners since the 1920s from tree removal activities on private land within the National Forest" and that the "Forest has not had an active timber harvest program for nearly ten years. There are no lumber mills in southern California and now the current removal of dead and dying trees is difficult and expensive."
How much more expensive will be the replacement of the homes that have since been destroyed? Or the loss of revenue due to the restrictions on properly managing this forest areas that could have been gained by cutting and thinning its overgrown mass of trees? Since the Greens mounted their Spotted Owl hoax in the northwest more than a decade ago, countless sawmills have gone out of business and many small towns dependent on them have withered to a few families.
Blackwell told the committee "The President´s Healthy Forest Initiative would play a key role in helping us avoid situations such as we see on the San Bernadino National Forest today. The initiative is based on a common-sense approach to reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires by restoring forest and rangeland health and ensuring the long-term safety and health of communities and natural resources in our care."
He urged "a public and private partnership" as "critical in providing an integrated and coordinated approach to address the crisis forest-wide." And he told the committee that the Forest Service had "redirected $3.2 million in State Fire Assistance and Community Protection/Community Assistance funding for wildfire prevention and hazardous fuels reduction…"
Blackwell warned that other forested areas have similar conditions. "Those ecological conditions, combined with the massive influx of people into California´s wildlands and the rapid growth of communities in and around those wildlands, particularly in the Sierra Nevada, have created the potential for truly disastrous wildfires."
One can hardly wonder what Blackwell is thinking these days or the many forest managers and others who, for years now, have been warning against the now annual loss of huge forest areas to these fires. The plain fact is that the US Forest Service has known for decades that these problems exist and has been issuing these warnings, but the success of the environmental movement in deterring the proper management of forests has once again reaped the whirlwind.
There literally is no excuse for the loss of life and property we have witnessed on our television news and read about in our daily newspapers. The President has been under attack the Greens for his proposed solution to this problem and this is just one more example of the irresponsible and dangerous efforts of Greens to attack the timber industry in every way possible.
It is, of course, all part of the Green attack on the economy in general. It has succeeded, not only with the huge loss of forested areas, the homes of those in and adjacent to them, but also in driving up the cost of lumber in an economy in which new home sales plays a significant, if not the leading role.
There are 490 million acres called timberlands in the US. They can produce more than 20 cubic feet of wood per acre annually. They´re growing more trees today than they were fifty years ago. At the same time, 247 million acres (33.5%) are reserved from harvest by law or are slow-growing woodlands unsuitable for timber production. The bottom line is that the US has some 70% of the forestland that was here in 1600, fully 737 million acres, when the pilgrims first arrived.
The US National Park System represents 83 million acres and unlike national forests, national parks do not allow any timber harvesting. The National Forest System, some 191 million acres, was established "…to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States." These National Forests contribute 25% of the gross receipts from timber sales directly to states for county roads and schools, amounting to millions of dollars each year. All that revenue has been lost because of these preventable catastrophic fires.
This situation has long been known to Congress and to Americans who have witnessed the annual losses. Civil servants like Jack Blackwell have been telling Congress what the problem is and how to solve it. The real question is when will Congress stop pandering to vocal Green organizations and their lobbying, and begin to protect our forests and our people? And when will Americans stop buying into all their lies?
And Hugh Hewitt absolutely gets it
How 'habitat protection' causes killer infernos
...Of course, fire has always been with us. What has not been a feature of the West, however, has been the perversion of land-management policies to extremist environmental agendas.
Serious students of land use in the West know that since 1992, the aggressive expansion of the mandates of the federal Endangered Species Act has led to a crazy quilt approach of federal dictates, many of which are simply incomprehensible. The bewildering array of designations of critical habitat for a variety of species and the threat of federal criminal law violations for illegal "take" of any of a growing list of species has led to a dramatic curtailment of habitat management that has allowed fuel loads to skyrocket throughout the region.
Similarly, the radical expansion of the National Environmental Policy Act as a tool of obstruction has mirrored the rise of the "no growth" movement among environmental activists. Logging plans are routinely challenged and die a death of delay and obstruction. The predictable consequences are infernos that feed on the years of neglect.
When the media arrive at the scene of the disaster, they hear of Santa Ana winds and drought, but never of the relentless opposition to common-sense management practices that could limit the destruction. They never learn that the California Gnatcatcher, to use just one example, was listed as endangered a decade ago despite a robust population here and in Mexico, or that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service routinely refuses to propose aggressive brush-management practices that would allow local governments and landowners to proactively clear habitat that might house the birds. Rather, the Service continues to issue sweeping designations of "critical habitat," the publication of which complicates the management and use of land that doesn't even support gnatcatchers.
For more than a decade, the leadership of the "resource" agencies at the state and local level has included numerous individuals who lack the ability or the motivation to serve the communities that need innovation and action, not more grand plans and environmental documents. President Bush and Gov. Schwarzenegger would both do themselves great good with the public if they embraced reform of these government bureaucracies that have once again failed to protect either the public or the environment from disaster.
Permalink
Monday, October 27, 2003
NEWS ROUNDUP
NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Congress OKs $3B to Combat Wildfires Congressional negotiators agreed Monday to spend almost $3 billion in the coming year to combat and prevent wildfires, making history's largest one-time firefighting allocation as a series of devastating blazes tore through California. The firefighting money includes $289 million for suppression, $11 million to cut down trees in overgrown or disease-ridden forests to reduce fire threats and $9 million in state and community fire assistance. It also repays $400 million that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management borrowed from other programs to battle blazes this summer... Hamstrung heroes?: A devastating wave of fires underscores perilous choices of when to attack and when to retreat. The current conflagrations in Southern California involve both city and wildland firefighters, but it's the issue of wildland firefighters losing their edge that has singed the grapevine for several years now, discussed among firefighters and argued on the pages of their professional journals. The charge is that wildland firefighters - from the elite smoke jumpers to the novice "Type 2s" - lack the gung-ho spirit of 20 years ago. They don't work as hard on the fire line. They don't go after fires as aggressively. Whereas crews used to spend days in the sticks eating only what they carried or what helicopters could sling in, they now return after each shift to fire camps that are sometimes more like summer camp, with catered steak dinners, laundry service and hot showers instead of soot-caked bodies and C rations. Larry Humphrey, an outspoken 30-year veteran and the commander at the Summerhaven fire that destroyed more than 250 Arizona homes in June, sees increasing caution. "We're becoming less aggressive when we fight fire," says Humphrey, who works for the Bureau of Land Management in Arizona. "There's a trigger point for engagement, and a trigger point for disengagement." And fire teams yo-yo between attack and retreat. To Humphrey, it's an aggressive crew that stays alert and safe. Dan Buckley, a mustached 45-year-old who manages fires in Yosemite, says teams just quit the fire line while battling the 500,000-acre Biscuit fire in Oregon in summer 2002. "Even if they were doing critical work, they'd just get up and leave," he recalls. "It was crazy."...Ranchers cool to proposed western grazing law Legislation that would give western cattle and sheep ranchers a chance to sell their federal grazing leases back to the government is getting a cold reception from stockmen in Southwest Colorado. "It would be disastrous," said Sid Snyder, a Cortez cattleman whose family has grazed stock on federal land since 1952. "It might be good for a short while, but it takes away opportunities. What if my son wants to continue the operation and doesn't have the option?" Ned Jefferies, president of the La Plata-Archuleta Cattlemen's Association, doesn't know anyone anxious to sell. "In Southwest Colorado, if you're going to have an economical unit pay your bills and make a profit it's hard to make it work without a permit," Jefferies said. "All kinds of livestock operations do it without a permit, but a lot of cattlemen work at something else or they have mineral income or the wife goes to town to work." "I don't think many ranchers would agree with the buyout," said Steve Suckla, a third-generation San Miguel County cattleman whose family has used federal grazing permits for 45 years. Suckla said ranchers commonly buy and sell grazing permits among themselves under established guidelines. A government buyout, which would retire land from grazing permanently, could prove too definitive, Suckla said. "Grazing permits here are part of the community, a part of the infrastructure," Suckla said. "The fires and the drought show just how shaky tourism is. Agriculture isn't going to go away."...Proposed legislation offers money for ranchers' grazing rights Legislation has been proposed to Congress to offer ranchers money in exchange for their public grazing leases with the support from Graham and Greenlee county residents. According to the text of the Arizona Voluntary Grazing Permit Act, the intent of the legislation is, "To give livestock operators holding a grazing permit or lease on federal lands in the state of Arizona the opportunity to relinquish their grazing permit or lease in exchange for compensation, and for other puposes." Arizona Cattle Grower's Association lobbyist "Doc" C.B. Lane said he spoke with three ranchers who are pushing the bills. "The bills have very big, fatal holes in them and no one seems to notice," he said in an e-mail to the Courier. "In both bills, the 'waiving of the permit' does not exclude all of the permits that are sold between ranchers." If either bill passes, every government agency that has grazing permits would have to retire every permit permanently as each one is waived, he said...Shoshone settlement remains distant A settlement for the Western Shoshone's long disputed land claims in Nevada has taken one step forward and one step back. The Senate last week voted to pay nearly $145 million to the Western Shoshone as reparations for ancestral land taken by the federal government. Eligible tribal members would get about $20,000 apiece to settle a 1977 land claims case. But opponents of the payout filed a lawsuit in federal district court earlier this month seeking to assert title to more than 60 million acres, mostly in Nevada, under a treaty signed with the U.S. government in 1866. The dispute over land claims dates back more than 50 years and seems destined to drag on, especially as tribal members remained divided over whether to accept a one-time payment from the government or continue seeking ownership of the land...Wyoming Checks Mines for West Nile Source An outbreak of West Nile virus in northeastern Wyoming has scientists and some residents wondering if an unconventional approach to natural gas extraction is increasing the risk of the disease. The treeless prairie of the Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming is dotted with thousands of wells for extracting methane, which like other types of natural gas is used to heat homes. But in these wells, unlike traditional ones, the natural gas is mixed with ground water. Every well that pumps out methane also pumps out ground water round the clock, and the arid region is dotted with hundreds of new ponds to hold the excess water. In all parts of the country, health officials have advised residents that one of the first lines of defense against the mosquito-borne virus is to get rid of standing water. While the link between the methane wells and the virus is still under study, some scientists suspect that the standing water may be a rich breeding ground...Grouse face new threat in W. Nile West Nile virus has killed almost two dozen of Wyoming's greater sage grouse, a species already imperiled by drought, overgrazing and the splintering of the sagebrush steppe they need to survive. Experts say the deaths foreshadow what could occur in Colorado next year, when the Western Slope is expected to suffer more intense West Nile infection. Already, 19 sage grouse in Wyoming, the state with the West's last sizable stand of the birds, have succumbed to West Nile. That number will grow...CA Fires: And now for the REST of the story..... San Diego County instituted the first Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Program (MSHCP) in the nation about 10 years ago. The MSHCP was supposed to provide "islands of connected habitat" to "preserve a rich diversity of sensitive flora and fauna". By some counts, San Diego County has the highest number of plants, animals, birds, and reptiles in the threatened and endangered species list. The corner stone of the MSHCP is (or was) the Mission Trails Regional Park. This "park" connected pocket of habitat from the mountains to the coast. This same "park" is the corridor that allowed the fire to progress rapidly through residential and industrial areas; claiming untold millions in property damage and human life. While this news report cites eight deaths due to the fire, updated reports have attributed eleven deaths. The grand MSHCP "preserve" is now charred lands...Ranch owner: Access ruling will help all citizens The owners of a ranch that won a Wyoming Supreme Court decision allowing them to control access through their spread said the ruling will help all Wyoming property owners and those who wish to use their land. ''The clarity of the Supreme Court's decision should remove all future uncertainties,'' said Spike Forbes, who co-owns the Beckton Stock Farm west of Sheridan with other relatives. ''Such clarity is a clear benefit to all the citizens of Wyoming, whether they own property or simply wish to use the property of others.'' In their decision issued Friday, the justices unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling that allowed the ranch to close access to the Soldier Creek Trail which crosses their property. The trail leads to prime public hunting lands managed by the Bighorn National Forest, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and state of Wyoming. The trail had been used by the public since the 1890s, but in 2001, the Forbeses locked off the trail because hunters were continually leaving gates open and littering. Hunters were asked to either use a new corridor or call for permission to use the existing trail...Outdoor retailers nag Leavitt Outdoor retailers, restless with what they see as inaction by Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt on promised protections for the state's wild lands, are talking again about packing up their twice-yearly trade show and pitching camp outside Utah. Although Leavitt insists he has made solid progress in keeping his pledge to make Utah the nation's recreation capital, the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) said Sunday in a letter to the governor it was "immensely disappointed" with his lack of results. "Whatever his goals were, whatever his objectives were," said OIA President Frank Hugelmeyer, "at this point they are just words." The retailers' latest threat to pull their big trade show out of Utah came on the eve of plans for a crucial vote in the U.S. Senate to push forward Leavitt's stalled nomination to be the next administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, action which could come as soon as today. Some of the Democratic senators blocking a Senate confirmation vote on Leavitt have called the governor's handling of wilderness evidence that he is not suited to the nation's top environmental protection job...Details in death of bear researcher may never be known After investigating the scene of the killings and listening to a six-minute tape recording of the screams and shouts made during the attack, officials can guess what happened, but they can't be sure, Ellis said. He was one of the rangers who found the bodies in the Kaflia Lake area on Oct. 6, and he shot the large bear guarding the bodies as the bruin approached him, with a bullet stopping the bear only 12 feet away. A necropsy of the bear's stomach two days later found human remains. Still, officials can't be sure that bear killed the pair. Rangers and troopers also shot a young, aggressive bear that approached their plane shortly before taking off with the victims' remains, according to the Associated Press. After piecing various evidence together in the past few weeks, Ellis now speculates that a bear came through the Treadwell/Huguenard camp the evening of Oct. 5 and "when Treadwell went out to investigate, the bear probably took a swipe (at) or bite" out of Treadwell, injuring him...Editorial: Klamath conundrum The Klamath River basin, site of one of the West's most intractable water problems, recently got a new and important dose of science that should make alfalfa farmers, salmon fishermen and federal agencies equally uncomfortable. These groups are all part of the problem. If there is ever to be peace on the river, they have to work together for a solution that provides enough clean water at the right temperature to keep fish swimming and spawning in the Klamath. The current situation produces a near-monthly political battle over flows in the river. Does the federal Bureau of Reclamation release water from the polluted Klamath Lake, home of endangered suckerfish, which need clean water? If so, does the water flow into the Pacific Ocean to help sustain the river's salmon and steelhead? Or does this flow get diverted by farmers who contract with the bureau for irrigation water? This new, exhaustive review by the National Academies of Science adds two important ingredients to this ongoing political struggle -- temperature and tributaries...Surface damage painful subject It's been eight months since a 12-person jury awarded Dan ''Buck'' and Mary Brannaman damages of $810,887 in their civil lawsuit against Paxton Resources Inc. The award was for breaching a surface and damage use agreement in the first such trial involving coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin counties of Sheridan, Campbell and Johnson. While many landowners in Sheridan County and surrounding areas have reaped benefits from coal-bed methane development in the form of royalty payments and property improvements, others say they are still experiencing problems with operators, for reasons similar to those listed by the Brannamans in their case. Proponents of methane development and extraction, including Paxton Resources President Greg Vadnais, assert they just want to do the right thing, and maintain there are mutual benefits for both operators and landowners. For people like Bill and Marge West, landowners in the Spotted Horse area with significant methane development on their property, and Sheridan County rancher Bill Doenz, the Brannaman case - once seen as a turning point in landowner/methane operator cooperation - hasn't really changed the attitudes of methane operators they claim still refuse to honor negotiated surface-damage agreements. ''I wish the Brannaman case had turned things around, so that methane companies would start doing what they should be doing. I don't see how it's affected things at all,'' said Marge West...Gov't Doubles Food Labels Cost Estimate People probably will have to pay more for their food to cover the cost of new labels Congress ordered to tell where their meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and peanuts come from, the Agriculture Department said Monday. The department released figures doubling from $2 billion to $4 billion its estimate of what the labels will cost in their first year, largely from procedures required for labeling livestock origins. In the 2002 farm bill, Congress required that the labels start appearing on products by next September. Kenneth Clayton, associate administrator for the department's Agricultural Marketing Service, said the costs are likely to be passed on to consumers as higher shelf prices at grocery stores. Clayton offered no estimate of how much prices might go up because of the labels...Head vet lays out BSE trail The case of the cow with BSE could be a novel written by British mystery novelist Agatha Christie. Instead, it's a true-life story that Canadian veterinarians had to deduce in a race against time. Canadian Food Inspection Agency staff had few clues when they got the call May 16, just before the Victoria Day long weekend, that a cow had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, said George Luterbach, a CFIA veterinarian. They knew the remains of a black cow had gone to a rendering plant three months earlier and the hide had been stripped and sent to a tannery. That basic knowledge launched parallel investigations within CFIA. Investigators had to find out what happened to the animal and where it had come from...Necessity mothered creative inventions The ingenuity and creativeness of our ancestors never cease to amaze me. It was a time of few towns, fewer stores, no money, and if you needed something you didn't have at hand, you made it or did without. Addie Adkins of Pampa tells how her daddy made an ice cream freezer out of two buckets. Seems a bad hailstorm hit their farm when Addie was about 5 years old. Her mother mixed ice cream in a one-gallon syrup bucket with lid and bail. Her daddy inserted the small bucket into a larger milk bucket and packed the extra space with hail stones and cow salt. Using the bail on the smaller bucket, he twisted it around and around until it froze the ice cream inside. Addie said it sure was a treat...
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NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Congress OKs $3B to Combat Wildfires Congressional negotiators agreed Monday to spend almost $3 billion in the coming year to combat and prevent wildfires, making history's largest one-time firefighting allocation as a series of devastating blazes tore through California. The firefighting money includes $289 million for suppression, $11 million to cut down trees in overgrown or disease-ridden forests to reduce fire threats and $9 million in state and community fire assistance. It also repays $400 million that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management borrowed from other programs to battle blazes this summer... Hamstrung heroes?: A devastating wave of fires underscores perilous choices of when to attack and when to retreat. The current conflagrations in Southern California involve both city and wildland firefighters, but it's the issue of wildland firefighters losing their edge that has singed the grapevine for several years now, discussed among firefighters and argued on the pages of their professional journals. The charge is that wildland firefighters - from the elite smoke jumpers to the novice "Type 2s" - lack the gung-ho spirit of 20 years ago. They don't work as hard on the fire line. They don't go after fires as aggressively. Whereas crews used to spend days in the sticks eating only what they carried or what helicopters could sling in, they now return after each shift to fire camps that are sometimes more like summer camp, with catered steak dinners, laundry service and hot showers instead of soot-caked bodies and C rations. Larry Humphrey, an outspoken 30-year veteran and the commander at the Summerhaven fire that destroyed more than 250 Arizona homes in June, sees increasing caution. "We're becoming less aggressive when we fight fire," says Humphrey, who works for the Bureau of Land Management in Arizona. "There's a trigger point for engagement, and a trigger point for disengagement." And fire teams yo-yo between attack and retreat. To Humphrey, it's an aggressive crew that stays alert and safe. Dan Buckley, a mustached 45-year-old who manages fires in Yosemite, says teams just quit the fire line while battling the 500,000-acre Biscuit fire in Oregon in summer 2002. "Even if they were doing critical work, they'd just get up and leave," he recalls. "It was crazy."...Ranchers cool to proposed western grazing law Legislation that would give western cattle and sheep ranchers a chance to sell their federal grazing leases back to the government is getting a cold reception from stockmen in Southwest Colorado. "It would be disastrous," said Sid Snyder, a Cortez cattleman whose family has grazed stock on federal land since 1952. "It might be good for a short while, but it takes away opportunities. What if my son wants to continue the operation and doesn't have the option?" Ned Jefferies, president of the La Plata-Archuleta Cattlemen's Association, doesn't know anyone anxious to sell. "In Southwest Colorado, if you're going to have an economical unit pay your bills and make a profit it's hard to make it work without a permit," Jefferies said. "All kinds of livestock operations do it without a permit, but a lot of cattlemen work at something else or they have mineral income or the wife goes to town to work." "I don't think many ranchers would agree with the buyout," said Steve Suckla, a third-generation San Miguel County cattleman whose family has used federal grazing permits for 45 years. Suckla said ranchers commonly buy and sell grazing permits among themselves under established guidelines. A government buyout, which would retire land from grazing permanently, could prove too definitive, Suckla said. "Grazing permits here are part of the community, a part of the infrastructure," Suckla said. "The fires and the drought show just how shaky tourism is. Agriculture isn't going to go away."...Proposed legislation offers money for ranchers' grazing rights Legislation has been proposed to Congress to offer ranchers money in exchange for their public grazing leases with the support from Graham and Greenlee county residents. According to the text of the Arizona Voluntary Grazing Permit Act, the intent of the legislation is, "To give livestock operators holding a grazing permit or lease on federal lands in the state of Arizona the opportunity to relinquish their grazing permit or lease in exchange for compensation, and for other puposes." Arizona Cattle Grower's Association lobbyist "Doc" C.B. Lane said he spoke with three ranchers who are pushing the bills. "The bills have very big, fatal holes in them and no one seems to notice," he said in an e-mail to the Courier. "In both bills, the 'waiving of the permit' does not exclude all of the permits that are sold between ranchers." If either bill passes, every government agency that has grazing permits would have to retire every permit permanently as each one is waived, he said...Shoshone settlement remains distant A settlement for the Western Shoshone's long disputed land claims in Nevada has taken one step forward and one step back. The Senate last week voted to pay nearly $145 million to the Western Shoshone as reparations for ancestral land taken by the federal government. Eligible tribal members would get about $20,000 apiece to settle a 1977 land claims case. But opponents of the payout filed a lawsuit in federal district court earlier this month seeking to assert title to more than 60 million acres, mostly in Nevada, under a treaty signed with the U.S. government in 1866. The dispute over land claims dates back more than 50 years and seems destined to drag on, especially as tribal members remained divided over whether to accept a one-time payment from the government or continue seeking ownership of the land...Wyoming Checks Mines for West Nile Source An outbreak of West Nile virus in northeastern Wyoming has scientists and some residents wondering if an unconventional approach to natural gas extraction is increasing the risk of the disease. The treeless prairie of the Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming is dotted with thousands of wells for extracting methane, which like other types of natural gas is used to heat homes. But in these wells, unlike traditional ones, the natural gas is mixed with ground water. Every well that pumps out methane also pumps out ground water round the clock, and the arid region is dotted with hundreds of new ponds to hold the excess water. In all parts of the country, health officials have advised residents that one of the first lines of defense against the mosquito-borne virus is to get rid of standing water. While the link between the methane wells and the virus is still under study, some scientists suspect that the standing water may be a rich breeding ground...Grouse face new threat in W. Nile West Nile virus has killed almost two dozen of Wyoming's greater sage grouse, a species already imperiled by drought, overgrazing and the splintering of the sagebrush steppe they need to survive. Experts say the deaths foreshadow what could occur in Colorado next year, when the Western Slope is expected to suffer more intense West Nile infection. Already, 19 sage grouse in Wyoming, the state with the West's last sizable stand of the birds, have succumbed to West Nile. That number will grow...CA Fires: And now for the REST of the story..... San Diego County instituted the first Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Program (MSHCP) in the nation about 10 years ago. The MSHCP was supposed to provide "islands of connected habitat" to "preserve a rich diversity of sensitive flora and fauna". By some counts, San Diego County has the highest number of plants, animals, birds, and reptiles in the threatened and endangered species list. The corner stone of the MSHCP is (or was) the Mission Trails Regional Park. This "park" connected pocket of habitat from the mountains to the coast. This same "park" is the corridor that allowed the fire to progress rapidly through residential and industrial areas; claiming untold millions in property damage and human life. While this news report cites eight deaths due to the fire, updated reports have attributed eleven deaths. The grand MSHCP "preserve" is now charred lands...Ranch owner: Access ruling will help all citizens The owners of a ranch that won a Wyoming Supreme Court decision allowing them to control access through their spread said the ruling will help all Wyoming property owners and those who wish to use their land. ''The clarity of the Supreme Court's decision should remove all future uncertainties,'' said Spike Forbes, who co-owns the Beckton Stock Farm west of Sheridan with other relatives. ''Such clarity is a clear benefit to all the citizens of Wyoming, whether they own property or simply wish to use the property of others.'' In their decision issued Friday, the justices unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling that allowed the ranch to close access to the Soldier Creek Trail which crosses their property. The trail leads to prime public hunting lands managed by the Bighorn National Forest, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and state of Wyoming. The trail had been used by the public since the 1890s, but in 2001, the Forbeses locked off the trail because hunters were continually leaving gates open and littering. Hunters were asked to either use a new corridor or call for permission to use the existing trail...Outdoor retailers nag Leavitt Outdoor retailers, restless with what they see as inaction by Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt on promised protections for the state's wild lands, are talking again about packing up their twice-yearly trade show and pitching camp outside Utah. Although Leavitt insists he has made solid progress in keeping his pledge to make Utah the nation's recreation capital, the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) said Sunday in a letter to the governor it was "immensely disappointed" with his lack of results. "Whatever his goals were, whatever his objectives were," said OIA President Frank Hugelmeyer, "at this point they are just words." The retailers' latest threat to pull their big trade show out of Utah came on the eve of plans for a crucial vote in the U.S. Senate to push forward Leavitt's stalled nomination to be the next administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, action which could come as soon as today. Some of the Democratic senators blocking a Senate confirmation vote on Leavitt have called the governor's handling of wilderness evidence that he is not suited to the nation's top environmental protection job...Details in death of bear researcher may never be known After investigating the scene of the killings and listening to a six-minute tape recording of the screams and shouts made during the attack, officials can guess what happened, but they can't be sure, Ellis said. He was one of the rangers who found the bodies in the Kaflia Lake area on Oct. 6, and he shot the large bear guarding the bodies as the bruin approached him, with a bullet stopping the bear only 12 feet away. A necropsy of the bear's stomach two days later found human remains. Still, officials can't be sure that bear killed the pair. Rangers and troopers also shot a young, aggressive bear that approached their plane shortly before taking off with the victims' remains, according to the Associated Press. After piecing various evidence together in the past few weeks, Ellis now speculates that a bear came through the Treadwell/Huguenard camp the evening of Oct. 5 and "when Treadwell went out to investigate, the bear probably took a swipe (at) or bite" out of Treadwell, injuring him...Editorial: Klamath conundrum The Klamath River basin, site of one of the West's most intractable water problems, recently got a new and important dose of science that should make alfalfa farmers, salmon fishermen and federal agencies equally uncomfortable. These groups are all part of the problem. If there is ever to be peace on the river, they have to work together for a solution that provides enough clean water at the right temperature to keep fish swimming and spawning in the Klamath. The current situation produces a near-monthly political battle over flows in the river. Does the federal Bureau of Reclamation release water from the polluted Klamath Lake, home of endangered suckerfish, which need clean water? If so, does the water flow into the Pacific Ocean to help sustain the river's salmon and steelhead? Or does this flow get diverted by farmers who contract with the bureau for irrigation water? This new, exhaustive review by the National Academies of Science adds two important ingredients to this ongoing political struggle -- temperature and tributaries...Surface damage painful subject It's been eight months since a 12-person jury awarded Dan ''Buck'' and Mary Brannaman damages of $810,887 in their civil lawsuit against Paxton Resources Inc. The award was for breaching a surface and damage use agreement in the first such trial involving coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin counties of Sheridan, Campbell and Johnson. While many landowners in Sheridan County and surrounding areas have reaped benefits from coal-bed methane development in the form of royalty payments and property improvements, others say they are still experiencing problems with operators, for reasons similar to those listed by the Brannamans in their case. Proponents of methane development and extraction, including Paxton Resources President Greg Vadnais, assert they just want to do the right thing, and maintain there are mutual benefits for both operators and landowners. For people like Bill and Marge West, landowners in the Spotted Horse area with significant methane development on their property, and Sheridan County rancher Bill Doenz, the Brannaman case - once seen as a turning point in landowner/methane operator cooperation - hasn't really changed the attitudes of methane operators they claim still refuse to honor negotiated surface-damage agreements. ''I wish the Brannaman case had turned things around, so that methane companies would start doing what they should be doing. I don't see how it's affected things at all,'' said Marge West...Gov't Doubles Food Labels Cost Estimate People probably will have to pay more for their food to cover the cost of new labels Congress ordered to tell where their meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and peanuts come from, the Agriculture Department said Monday. The department released figures doubling from $2 billion to $4 billion its estimate of what the labels will cost in their first year, largely from procedures required for labeling livestock origins. In the 2002 farm bill, Congress required that the labels start appearing on products by next September. Kenneth Clayton, associate administrator for the department's Agricultural Marketing Service, said the costs are likely to be passed on to consumers as higher shelf prices at grocery stores. Clayton offered no estimate of how much prices might go up because of the labels...Head vet lays out BSE trail The case of the cow with BSE could be a novel written by British mystery novelist Agatha Christie. Instead, it's a true-life story that Canadian veterinarians had to deduce in a race against time. Canadian Food Inspection Agency staff had few clues when they got the call May 16, just before the Victoria Day long weekend, that a cow had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, said George Luterbach, a CFIA veterinarian. They knew the remains of a black cow had gone to a rendering plant three months earlier and the hide had been stripped and sent to a tannery. That basic knowledge launched parallel investigations within CFIA. Investigators had to find out what happened to the animal and where it had come from...Necessity mothered creative inventions The ingenuity and creativeness of our ancestors never cease to amaze me. It was a time of few towns, fewer stores, no money, and if you needed something you didn't have at hand, you made it or did without. Addie Adkins of Pampa tells how her daddy made an ice cream freezer out of two buckets. Seems a bad hailstorm hit their farm when Addie was about 5 years old. Her mother mixed ice cream in a one-gallon syrup bucket with lid and bail. Her daddy inserted the small bucket into a larger milk bucket and packed the extra space with hail stones and cow salt. Using the bail on the smaller bucket, he twisted it around and around until it froze the ice cream inside. Addie said it sure was a treat...
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Posturing and Reality on Warming
For the first time, the Senate is about to vote on whether to restrict national emissions of carbon dioxide -- the respiration of our civilization and our economy -- in an attempt to control the world's uncontrollable climate. This legislation has absolutely no basis in science.
The bill in question is S.139, sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, and John McCain, Arizona Republican. Both are global-warming hawks who see an opportunity to bring about the Kyoto Protocol through a legislative back door. Both also know it won't do a measurable thing about the Earth's temperature and that it hasn't a snowball's chance in a Washington summer of passage.
But that's not the point. S.139 is designed to embarrass President Bush and to embolden the Senate's green posturers by neutralizing the 1997 Byrd-Hagel "Sense of the Senate" Resolution which, 95-0, stated the Senate would never entertain any climate change treaty that would cost American jobs. Instead, expect S.139 to get between 30 and 40 votes. No doubt, the green lobby will crow about rapidly growing support for instruments like the Kyoto Protocol and (egad) beyond...
Dioxin Shenanigans: Why the is EPA Afraid of Independent Peer Review?
If he makes it past a bruising Senate confirmation process, Utah Governor and EPA Administrator-designate Mike Leavitt will soon face an even bigger challenge. How does he deal with an entrenched EPA bureaucracy that - if it can get away with it - is perfectly willing to put its own narrow regulatory interests above those of the public it is supposed to serve?
As Leavitt prepares to take the reins at the EPA, the agency is set to release its long-awaited reassessment of dioxin. But the document the EPA is about to foist on the public has set off alarm bells in Congress where lawmakers rightly fear that the agency has sacrificed science for the sake of expanding its already vast regulatory empire.
Eleven years in the making, the EPA study is supposed to review the scientific data to determine whether exposure to dioxin in the environment poses any significant risk to human health. The EPA's findings could then serve as the basis for regulating the sources of dioxin emissions...
Fearful that the agency was cooking the books on dioxin, Congressman James T. Walsh (R-NY), chairman of the House Appropriation Committee's subcommittee on VA, HUD, and independent agencies, has twice - in February 2002 and again in February of this year - asked the EPA to submit its dioxin reassessment to the National Academy of Sciences for independent review.
Walsh's requests have fallen on deaf ears. Stiffing Congress has done little to allay the suspicion that the EPA doesn't want an independent entity mucking around its handling of dioxin...
Farming On Trial
British farmers must be wondering if they've been transported to Alice's Wonderland. Suddenly, normal farm activities like combating weeds in the fields are akin to crimes against nature.
Last week, the UK government released the results of its 3-year farm-scale evaluations (FSEs) supposedly examining the environmental impacts of genetically modified, or "GM" crops. According to the headlines in scores of UK newspapers, the results indicate that two of the three GM crops were "damaging to wildlife."
The Guardian headline read, "Two GM crops face ban for damaging wildlife." Commentator John Vidal says the trials provide "a legal basis for banning the two crops under European Union rules, which say that either health or environmental detriment must be proved."
This is a sham. They aren't talking wildlife; they're literally talking about weeds. The FSE measured the number and density of weeds and associated insects in the crop fields. The researchers call it "farmland biodiversity" and assume that fewer weeds and dependent bugs in farm fields means fewer birds and other critters off the farm. The FSE researchers refer to this assumption as "the negative impacts of cleanliness."...
Cooler Heads Project
Schwarzenegger's Campaign Cheers Environmentalists
According to Greenwire (Oct. 15), California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's "policy agenda reads like an environmentalist's wish list." He has set a target of reducing "air pollution by up to 50 percent, through incentives for clean fuel usage, and build hydrogen car fueling stations along California highways. The governor-elect also supports the state's renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which would require that 20 percent of the state's power come from solar and wind power by 2017."
In addition, he has promised to defend the state's greenhouse gas legislation against legal challenges, saying, "California's landmark legislation to cut greenhouse gases is now law, and I will work to implement it and to win the expected challenges in court along the way."
Schwarzenegger's campaign was not wholly attractive to the environmental lobby, which reacted badly to his suggestion that he might want to close down the state's environmental protection agency as part of his campaign against government bureaucracy. However, Terry Tamminen, an unpaid adviser to Schwarzenegger on environmental issues, and executive director of Environment Now, told Greenwire that he hoped the new Governor would be able to work more closely with the White House than Gov. Davis did on issues like global warming and air pollution, saying, "As a Republican governor, Arnold is much more likely to be able to work with the Bush administration to resolve differences. California could persuade the federal government to take another look at those policies."
Kyoto Ratification Latest
Since March of this year, eleven more countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol: Botswana, Ghana, Guyana, Kyrgyzstan, Marshall Islands, Myanmar, Namibia, Moldova, St. Lucia, Solomon Islands, and Switzerland. Of these, Switzerland is the only Annex I country subject to emissions controls under the pact, responsible for 0.3 percent of the emissions concerned.
Switzerland's ratification brings the total percentage of Annex I emissions belonging to countries that have ratified the protocol to 44.2 percent. The USA (36.1), Australia (2.1) and Russia (17.4) together make up 55.6 percent, meaning that as long as either Russia or the U. S. fails to ratify the protocol, it cannot go into effect.
Eco-radicals Twist Tax Law to Feed Habits
Corporate misbehavior remains much in the news in America. One day it is Enron; next it is the New York Stock Exchange. Big Labor, too, must routinely be called to account. Now comes a study, "Green-Peace, Dirty Money: Tax Violations in the World of non-Profits," from Public Interest Watch, demonstrating the importance of scrutinizing nonprofit organizations.
PIW charges the radical environmental group Greenpeace with misusing tax-exempt donations for political purposes. Greenpeace, it says, is "the most egregious offender we reviewed," and thus warrants a thorough investigation. Greenpeace activists sometimes risk life and limb trying to blockade bases and ships and invade businesses and power plants. Alas, the group lacks an appreciation for the importance of protecting humans as well as whales and plants.
There may be no more avid antagonist to technological innovation than Greenpeace, which sees danger in every advance and most ferociously opposes changes that offer the greatest potential benefits. If the organization had its way, we'd all be living in primitive hovels with dirt floors, sharing our single room with farm animals while enjoying the wonders of cholera, smallpox and typhoid...
Permalink
Posturing and Reality on Warming
For the first time, the Senate is about to vote on whether to restrict national emissions of carbon dioxide -- the respiration of our civilization and our economy -- in an attempt to control the world's uncontrollable climate. This legislation has absolutely no basis in science.
The bill in question is S.139, sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, and John McCain, Arizona Republican. Both are global-warming hawks who see an opportunity to bring about the Kyoto Protocol through a legislative back door. Both also know it won't do a measurable thing about the Earth's temperature and that it hasn't a snowball's chance in a Washington summer of passage.
But that's not the point. S.139 is designed to embarrass President Bush and to embolden the Senate's green posturers by neutralizing the 1997 Byrd-Hagel "Sense of the Senate" Resolution which, 95-0, stated the Senate would never entertain any climate change treaty that would cost American jobs. Instead, expect S.139 to get between 30 and 40 votes. No doubt, the green lobby will crow about rapidly growing support for instruments like the Kyoto Protocol and (egad) beyond...
Dioxin Shenanigans: Why the is EPA Afraid of Independent Peer Review?
If he makes it past a bruising Senate confirmation process, Utah Governor and EPA Administrator-designate Mike Leavitt will soon face an even bigger challenge. How does he deal with an entrenched EPA bureaucracy that - if it can get away with it - is perfectly willing to put its own narrow regulatory interests above those of the public it is supposed to serve?
As Leavitt prepares to take the reins at the EPA, the agency is set to release its long-awaited reassessment of dioxin. But the document the EPA is about to foist on the public has set off alarm bells in Congress where lawmakers rightly fear that the agency has sacrificed science for the sake of expanding its already vast regulatory empire.
Eleven years in the making, the EPA study is supposed to review the scientific data to determine whether exposure to dioxin in the environment poses any significant risk to human health. The EPA's findings could then serve as the basis for regulating the sources of dioxin emissions...
Fearful that the agency was cooking the books on dioxin, Congressman James T. Walsh (R-NY), chairman of the House Appropriation Committee's subcommittee on VA, HUD, and independent agencies, has twice - in February 2002 and again in February of this year - asked the EPA to submit its dioxin reassessment to the National Academy of Sciences for independent review.
Walsh's requests have fallen on deaf ears. Stiffing Congress has done little to allay the suspicion that the EPA doesn't want an independent entity mucking around its handling of dioxin...
Farming On Trial
British farmers must be wondering if they've been transported to Alice's Wonderland. Suddenly, normal farm activities like combating weeds in the fields are akin to crimes against nature.
Last week, the UK government released the results of its 3-year farm-scale evaluations (FSEs) supposedly examining the environmental impacts of genetically modified, or "GM" crops. According to the headlines in scores of UK newspapers, the results indicate that two of the three GM crops were "damaging to wildlife."
The Guardian headline read, "Two GM crops face ban for damaging wildlife." Commentator John Vidal says the trials provide "a legal basis for banning the two crops under European Union rules, which say that either health or environmental detriment must be proved."
This is a sham. They aren't talking wildlife; they're literally talking about weeds. The FSE measured the number and density of weeds and associated insects in the crop fields. The researchers call it "farmland biodiversity" and assume that fewer weeds and dependent bugs in farm fields means fewer birds and other critters off the farm. The FSE researchers refer to this assumption as "the negative impacts of cleanliness."...
Cooler Heads Project
Schwarzenegger's Campaign Cheers Environmentalists
According to Greenwire (Oct. 15), California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's "policy agenda reads like an environmentalist's wish list." He has set a target of reducing "air pollution by up to 50 percent, through incentives for clean fuel usage, and build hydrogen car fueling stations along California highways. The governor-elect also supports the state's renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which would require that 20 percent of the state's power come from solar and wind power by 2017."
In addition, he has promised to defend the state's greenhouse gas legislation against legal challenges, saying, "California's landmark legislation to cut greenhouse gases is now law, and I will work to implement it and to win the expected challenges in court along the way."
Schwarzenegger's campaign was not wholly attractive to the environmental lobby, which reacted badly to his suggestion that he might want to close down the state's environmental protection agency as part of his campaign against government bureaucracy. However, Terry Tamminen, an unpaid adviser to Schwarzenegger on environmental issues, and executive director of Environment Now, told Greenwire that he hoped the new Governor would be able to work more closely with the White House than Gov. Davis did on issues like global warming and air pollution, saying, "As a Republican governor, Arnold is much more likely to be able to work with the Bush administration to resolve differences. California could persuade the federal government to take another look at those policies."
Kyoto Ratification Latest
Since March of this year, eleven more countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol: Botswana, Ghana, Guyana, Kyrgyzstan, Marshall Islands, Myanmar, Namibia, Moldova, St. Lucia, Solomon Islands, and Switzerland. Of these, Switzerland is the only Annex I country subject to emissions controls under the pact, responsible for 0.3 percent of the emissions concerned.
Switzerland's ratification brings the total percentage of Annex I emissions belonging to countries that have ratified the protocol to 44.2 percent. The USA (36.1), Australia (2.1) and Russia (17.4) together make up 55.6 percent, meaning that as long as either Russia or the U. S. fails to ratify the protocol, it cannot go into effect.
Eco-radicals Twist Tax Law to Feed Habits
Corporate misbehavior remains much in the news in America. One day it is Enron; next it is the New York Stock Exchange. Big Labor, too, must routinely be called to account. Now comes a study, "Green-Peace, Dirty Money: Tax Violations in the World of non-Profits," from Public Interest Watch, demonstrating the importance of scrutinizing nonprofit organizations.
PIW charges the radical environmental group Greenpeace with misusing tax-exempt donations for political purposes. Greenpeace, it says, is "the most egregious offender we reviewed," and thus warrants a thorough investigation. Greenpeace activists sometimes risk life and limb trying to blockade bases and ships and invade businesses and power plants. Alas, the group lacks an appreciation for the importance of protecting humans as well as whales and plants.
There may be no more avid antagonist to technological innovation than Greenpeace, which sees danger in every advance and most ferociously opposes changes that offer the greatest potential benefits. If the organization had its way, we'd all be living in primitive hovels with dirt floors, sharing our single room with farm animals while enjoying the wonders of cholera, smallpox and typhoid...
Permalink
OPINION/COMMENTARY
The radical green god-squad
When the radical greens began distributing bumper stickers that read "No moo in '92," and "Cattle free by '93," most people just laughed, unable to comprehend the idea of completely eliminating ranching in the American West. Radical greens, however, are dedicated to the proposition that:
"A radical notion may become rational, and then, over time, reasonable and realistic – if you work your butt off."
This is the slogan that heads Andy Kerr's website. Kerr heads the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign, a coalition of radical green groups that have been working their butts off over the last decade to make the radical notion of a cattle-free West a reality.
A handful of radical congressmen has now introduced legislation that, if adopted, would be the final blow to the troubled ranching industry. Their plan requires taxpayers to cough up more than $3 billion to buy grazing rights from ranchers...
Permalink
The radical green god-squad
When the radical greens began distributing bumper stickers that read "No moo in '92," and "Cattle free by '93," most people just laughed, unable to comprehend the idea of completely eliminating ranching in the American West. Radical greens, however, are dedicated to the proposition that:
"A radical notion may become rational, and then, over time, reasonable and realistic – if you work your butt off."
This is the slogan that heads Andy Kerr's website. Kerr heads the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign, a coalition of radical green groups that have been working their butts off over the last decade to make the radical notion of a cattle-free West a reality.
A handful of radical congressmen has now introduced legislation that, if adopted, would be the final blow to the troubled ranching industry. Their plan requires taxpayers to cough up more than $3 billion to buy grazing rights from ranchers...
Permalink
NEWS ROUNDUP
NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Animas-La Plata District: The tape is silent A tape of a closed-door meeting to discuss cost overruns on the Animas-La Plata Project may never become public. Blame the equipment. The Durango Herald and an environmental group, Taxpayers for the Animas River, have separately demanded that the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District release a tape recording of the closed Aug. 14 meeting at which A-LP supporters discussed what to do about the overruns. The A-LP District has refused both requests. But even if the district had said yes, the tape wouldn't have revealed anything, said Mike Griswold, president of the conservancy district board. That's because a tape recorder used during the closed session apparently did not work properly, he said...Suspect preached peace: FBI links man to possible sabotage of power lines Michael Devlyn Poulin preached nonviolence and took part in anti-war rallies earlier this year. That made it all the more shocking to his friends Thursday that Poulin, 62, was the target of an FBI investigation into two acts of sabotage at transmission line towers in Anderson and in southern Oregon. A federal warrant has been issued for the arrest of Poulin, whom authorities suspect unscrewed at least 18 bolts securing the base of a tower along Interstate 5 near Riverside Avenue on Monday. Police have equated the alleged act with domestic terrorism, since a toppled tower might have injured someone, started a fire or caused a massive blackout...Land Trust Alliance Rewriting Its Ethics Standards The nation's largest coalition of land preservationists is rewriting its ethical standards in response to recent reports of conflicts of interest and questionable land deals cut in the name of the environment. At its annual conference last weekend in Sacramento, the Washington-based Land Trust Alliance announced plans to add ethics training to its professional workshops, begin an ethics column in its quarterly magazine and develop regulations governing land-preservation techniques. An alliance "strategic plan" distributed at the conference said: "The U.S. Senate has launched an investigation of land trust practices, and land trusts are receiving increased critical scrutiny from the national media. Sooner or later, the government will demand stricter standards and credentialing for land trusts. . . . The best solution is a single, national set of standards and a credentialing process that is designed and managed by the land trust community."...Wyoming lawmakers, ranchers oppose grazing permit buyouts Federal efforts to encourage conservation groups to buy grazing rights from willing sellers are getting a cold reception from some ranchers and Wyoming's congressional delegation. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., calls the Shays bill ''a shot aimed at the heart of Wyoming,'' her press secretary, Joe Milczewski, said. Cubin will fight the bill in the House Resources Committee, he said...Bears find grapes tasty With the exceptionally late grape harvest this year, it's no wonder there have been reports of bears feasting on some of the lingering crop here in the Ukiah hills. Some east hills residents have noted there has been more bear activity in their locale than they have seen in decades, and pillaged vinerows have had certain bear-specific calling cards left behind on the ground...Trail Responsibility and Accountability for the Improvement of Lands (TRAIL) Act Just three weeks after the bill was introduced in Congress, the House Resources Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee held a hearing on a proposal to crack down on people who willfully damage public land, reports the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). "Congress is moving quickly because it recognizes that this is a problem that needs to be addressed," noted AMA Washington Representative Patrick Holtz. The bill, HR 3247, is called the Trail Responsibility and Accountability for the Improvement of lands (TRAIL) Act. It would create consistent standards for law enforcement on federal land. Also, the proposal substantially increases the penalties on recreational users of the land who willfully cause damage to public land. The fines would be used for rehabilitation, education, and awareness. At the hearing, Mark Rey, U.S. Agriculture Department undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, and Larry Parkinson, U.S. Interior Department deputy secretary for law enforcement and security, offered support for the goals of the bill and offered to work with the subcommittee on the final language of the bill...Environmentalists, Off-Road Drivers Battle for Sand A turf war is being waged between environmentalists and off-road drivers on the sand dunes of California. In the last 30 years, the amount of protected wilderness in the Golden State jumped from 2 million to 14 million acres, while off-roading, an activity in which drivers take their vehicles into areas where they can drive more adventurously, has become wildly popular there, leaving the remaining open space contested. California's Imperial Sand Dunes, the largest mass of sand dunes in the state, are designated as a recreation area, but environmentalists consider the land a unique and fragile ecosystem that needs protection...Gas-royalty ruling a victory BP America Production Co. has improperly deducted costs from payments to 4,000 gas-royalty owners in La Plata and Archuleta counties since 1991, according to a recent court ruling. But it could be years before damages are determined and awarded in the case. Tens of millions of dollars in royalties and interest on unpaid royalties are at stake, said the plaintiffs' attorney, Bob Miller. The figure could rise to more than $100 million. Sheep ranchers Linda and Richard Parry filed the lawsuit in 1994 after Amoco Production Co., now part of BP, nearly halved their royalty payments...Another Bush court nominee draws fire Another of President Bush's federal court nominees could be in for a rough ride, this time at the hands of environmentalists. William G. Myers III, nominated in May to sit on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves Montana, is drawing fire for his relationship with the ranching and mining industries he once represented as a lawyer and lobbyist...On The Edge Of Common Sense: Neighbor roped into doin' things the hard way Dave is one of those good men that neighbors feel comfortable asking for a little help now and then. Homer is a trader of livestock, canned goods, used lumber, small appliance parts and railroad salvage. He's known for bein' tight with a dollar and for his primitive thinking. Homer caught Dave at the coffee shop and asked if he'd be able to help him castrate some bull calves he'd recently bought from a rancher south of St. Francis, Kan. "Anything I need to bring?" asked Dave. "Yup," said Homer, "a good horse."...Saving Seabiscuit's ranch Beneath the trademark diamond H insignia of millionaire Charles Howard's Ridgewood Ranch, state Sen. Wes Chesbro stood with representatives of the Department of Conservation, the Mendocino Land Trust and the Church of the Golden Rule Thursday morning to kick off the cause of converting the historic ranch to a conservation easement. Home of the celebrated Depression-era equine hero, Seabiscuit, the Ridgewood Ranch's prospects of being preserved forever in its present state are strong with the signing at Thursday's press conference of a letter of intent to provide up to $1 million through the California Farmland Conservancy Program toward the preservation of the ranch's prime farmland, which includes irrigated pasture, orchards and an organic farm, old-growth redwoods, five miles of fish-bearing creeks, vernal pools, oak woodlands, habitat for diverse species of plants and wildlife, and scenic vistas that border both sides of Highway 101 for three miles...A sure shot returns to a Wild West town Ol' Dead Eye returned home the other day to bury a relative almost 30 years younger than she. At 91, Louise Carpenter has seen it all in Paradox, a town so named because things just ain't natural here. The Dolores River crosscuts Paradox Valley - not running parallel with the canyon walls, as it naturally should. Carpenter is among the last in this town of 250 who can connect its 19th century frontier roots with its 21st century present - "from outhouse to modern plumbing," as she put it. She earned the nickname Dead Eye around 1931, when as a young woman she entered a turkey shoot in Grand Junction, about 100 miles away. Women participated separately. When Carpenter took her one practice shot, borrowing a friendly stranger's firearm, all the women backed out: Carpenter scored a bull's-eye. So she entered the men's competition, and using the same man's gun, she won - beating even the friendly gun owner. Her reputation as a sure shot was secured later when she shot a deer right through the eye...Town passes diapers for horses law LUCEDALE, Miss. - If a horse wants to gallop into this town, it's going to have to diaper up, and not horse around. Unbeknownst to horse lovers, the city of Lucedale approved a new ordinance earlier this month that requires horses to wear diapers when in town. The ordinance requires all livestock - horses, cattle, sheep, mules and others - to be diapered. Some horse riders now may boycott the city's annual Christmas parade. Last year, the parade drew 250 riders. The law will take effect Nov. 7...
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NOTE: Click on the highlighted areas in orange to go to the article, study, report, etc.
Animas-La Plata District: The tape is silent A tape of a closed-door meeting to discuss cost overruns on the Animas-La Plata Project may never become public. Blame the equipment. The Durango Herald and an environmental group, Taxpayers for the Animas River, have separately demanded that the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District release a tape recording of the closed Aug. 14 meeting at which A-LP supporters discussed what to do about the overruns. The A-LP District has refused both requests. But even if the district had said yes, the tape wouldn't have revealed anything, said Mike Griswold, president of the conservancy district board. That's because a tape recorder used during the closed session apparently did not work properly, he said...Suspect preached peace: FBI links man to possible sabotage of power lines Michael Devlyn Poulin preached nonviolence and took part in anti-war rallies earlier this year. That made it all the more shocking to his friends Thursday that Poulin, 62, was the target of an FBI investigation into two acts of sabotage at transmission line towers in Anderson and in southern Oregon. A federal warrant has been issued for the arrest of Poulin, whom authorities suspect unscrewed at least 18 bolts securing the base of a tower along Interstate 5 near Riverside Avenue on Monday. Police have equated the alleged act with domestic terrorism, since a toppled tower might have injured someone, started a fire or caused a massive blackout...Land Trust Alliance Rewriting Its Ethics Standards The nation's largest coalition of land preservationists is rewriting its ethical standards in response to recent reports of conflicts of interest and questionable land deals cut in the name of the environment. At its annual conference last weekend in Sacramento, the Washington-based Land Trust Alliance announced plans to add ethics training to its professional workshops, begin an ethics column in its quarterly magazine and develop regulations governing land-preservation techniques. An alliance "strategic plan" distributed at the conference said: "The U.S. Senate has launched an investigation of land trust practices, and land trusts are receiving increased critical scrutiny from the national media. Sooner or later, the government will demand stricter standards and credentialing for land trusts. . . . The best solution is a single, national set of standards and a credentialing process that is designed and managed by the land trust community."...Wyoming lawmakers, ranchers oppose grazing permit buyouts Federal efforts to encourage conservation groups to buy grazing rights from willing sellers are getting a cold reception from some ranchers and Wyoming's congressional delegation. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., calls the Shays bill ''a shot aimed at the heart of Wyoming,'' her press secretary, Joe Milczewski, said. Cubin will fight the bill in the House Resources Committee, he said...Bears find grapes tasty With the exceptionally late grape harvest this year, it's no wonder there have been reports of bears feasting on some of the lingering crop here in the Ukiah hills. Some east hills residents have noted there has been more bear activity in their locale than they have seen in decades, and pillaged vinerows have had certain bear-specific calling cards left behind on the ground...Trail Responsibility and Accountability for the Improvement of Lands (TRAIL) Act Just three weeks after the bill was introduced in Congress, the House Resources Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee held a hearing on a proposal to crack down on people who willfully damage public land, reports the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). "Congress is moving quickly because it recognizes that this is a problem that needs to be addressed," noted AMA Washington Representative Patrick Holtz. The bill, HR 3247, is called the Trail Responsibility and Accountability for the Improvement of lands (TRAIL) Act. It would create consistent standards for law enforcement on federal land. Also, the proposal substantially increases the penalties on recreational users of the land who willfully cause damage to public land. The fines would be used for rehabilitation, education, and awareness. At the hearing, Mark Rey, U.S. Agriculture Department undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, and Larry Parkinson, U.S. Interior Department deputy secretary for law enforcement and security, offered support for the goals of the bill and offered to work with the subcommittee on the final language of the bill...Environmentalists, Off-Road Drivers Battle for Sand A turf war is being waged between environmentalists and off-road drivers on the sand dunes of California. In the last 30 years, the amount of protected wilderness in the Golden State jumped from 2 million to 14 million acres, while off-roading, an activity in which drivers take their vehicles into areas where they can drive more adventurously, has become wildly popular there, leaving the remaining open space contested. California's Imperial Sand Dunes, the largest mass of sand dunes in the state, are designated as a recreation area, but environmentalists consider the land a unique and fragile ecosystem that needs protection...Gas-royalty ruling a victory BP America Production Co. has improperly deducted costs from payments to 4,000 gas-royalty owners in La Plata and Archuleta counties since 1991, according to a recent court ruling. But it could be years before damages are determined and awarded in the case. Tens of millions of dollars in royalties and interest on unpaid royalties are at stake, said the plaintiffs' attorney, Bob Miller. The figure could rise to more than $100 million. Sheep ranchers Linda and Richard Parry filed the lawsuit in 1994 after Amoco Production Co., now part of BP, nearly halved their royalty payments...Another Bush court nominee draws fire Another of President Bush's federal court nominees could be in for a rough ride, this time at the hands of environmentalists. William G. Myers III, nominated in May to sit on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves Montana, is drawing fire for his relationship with the ranching and mining industries he once represented as a lawyer and lobbyist...On The Edge Of Common Sense: Neighbor roped into doin' things the hard way Dave is one of those good men that neighbors feel comfortable asking for a little help now and then. Homer is a trader of livestock, canned goods, used lumber, small appliance parts and railroad salvage. He's known for bein' tight with a dollar and for his primitive thinking. Homer caught Dave at the coffee shop and asked if he'd be able to help him castrate some bull calves he'd recently bought from a rancher south of St. Francis, Kan. "Anything I need to bring?" asked Dave. "Yup," said Homer, "a good horse."...Saving Seabiscuit's ranch Beneath the trademark diamond H insignia of millionaire Charles Howard's Ridgewood Ranch, state Sen. Wes Chesbro stood with representatives of the Department of Conservation, the Mendocino Land Trust and the Church of the Golden Rule Thursday morning to kick off the cause of converting the historic ranch to a conservation easement. Home of the celebrated Depression-era equine hero, Seabiscuit, the Ridgewood Ranch's prospects of being preserved forever in its present state are strong with the signing at Thursday's press conference of a letter of intent to provide up to $1 million through the California Farmland Conservancy Program toward the preservation of the ranch's prime farmland, which includes irrigated pasture, orchards and an organic farm, old-growth redwoods, five miles of fish-bearing creeks, vernal pools, oak woodlands, habitat for diverse species of plants and wildlife, and scenic vistas that border both sides of Highway 101 for three miles...A sure shot returns to a Wild West town Ol' Dead Eye returned home the other day to bury a relative almost 30 years younger than she. At 91, Louise Carpenter has seen it all in Paradox, a town so named because things just ain't natural here. The Dolores River crosscuts Paradox Valley - not running parallel with the canyon walls, as it naturally should. Carpenter is among the last in this town of 250 who can connect its 19th century frontier roots with its 21st century present - "from outhouse to modern plumbing," as she put it. She earned the nickname Dead Eye around 1931, when as a young woman she entered a turkey shoot in Grand Junction, about 100 miles away. Women participated separately. When Carpenter took her one practice shot, borrowing a friendly stranger's firearm, all the women backed out: Carpenter scored a bull's-eye. So she entered the men's competition, and using the same man's gun, she won - beating even the friendly gun owner. Her reputation as a sure shot was secured later when she shot a deer right through the eye...Town passes diapers for horses law LUCEDALE, Miss. - If a horse wants to gallop into this town, it's going to have to diaper up, and not horse around. Unbeknownst to horse lovers, the city of Lucedale approved a new ordinance earlier this month that requires horses to wear diapers when in town. The ordinance requires all livestock - horses, cattle, sheep, mules and others - to be diapered. Some horse riders now may boycott the city's annual Christmas parade. Last year, the parade drew 250 riders. The law will take effect Nov. 7...
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Sunday, October 26, 2003
NEWS ROUNDUP
Calif. Wildfires Kill 14, Char 650 Homes Wildfires that have burned for days merged into walls of flame stretching across miles in parts of Southern California on Sunday, leaving 14 people dead, burning 650 homes and frustrating overmatched firefighters who worked relentlessly against fierce winds. The state's largest fire, in eastern San Diego County, caused at least nine deaths, including two who died inside their car as they apparently tried to escape the flames, San Diego Sheriff Bill Kolender said. "We were literally running through fire," said Lisza Pontes, 43, who escaped the fire with her family after the roar of flames woke them at 3:45 a.m. As they drove off, they saw a neighbor's mobile home explode...Editorial: A burning issue Part of the reason for intensity of the fires, of course, is that the forests have been allowed to grow unimpeded over the course of the last decade or so, and the accumulated fuel - underbrush, dead trees and the like - has just been waiting for a spark. This particular spark, firefighters believe, was provided by an arsonist, but it could just as well have been lightening or a thrown cigarette or an untended campfire. The result is the same: miles and miles, and acres and acres, of blackened wildlands, the loss of homes, the deaths of countless wildlife, and the loss of hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of board feet of lumber that should have been harvested by commercial loggers. Instead, because of the the fires, what Southern Californians will inherit is a denuded wasteland, an inheritance willed to us all by the extreme left of the environmental movement. And that group is, even now, trying to insure the same sort of disaster will be repeated endlessly across the land, particularly in the West...Proposed off-road limits upset Amador supervisors Off-road-vehicle enthusiasts say they have no problem with a new proposal that would confine them to designated roads and trails on a popular portion of the Eldorado National Forest. But Amador County supervisors don't like the idea -- and they've let U.S. Forest Service officials know about it. The proposed order would prohibit four-wheel-drives, motorcycles, bicycles and any other wheeled vehicles from going off National Forest System roads and trails in the Bear River area, off Highway 88 in upcountry Amador County. Both Bill Dart of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a national recreation group, and Don Klusman of the California Association of 4-Wheel Drive Clubs said their respective organizations have supported staying on trails. Supervisor Richard Vinson, who represents the upcountry area, said the board's feeling was, "Here's one more restriction -- one that not only restricts you from using the national forest but says you can't even ride a bicycle. "The next step after that would be you can't even walk, either."... Border crime ravaging parks in Arizona National parks and other federal recreation sites in Arizona have some of the highest crime rates of any public lands in the country, and those in southern Arizona lead the list. "It's the Wild West out here every night," one ranger says. Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, southeast of Yuma, has more crimes per visitor than any other piece of public land in the West. The Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona leads all forest lands in the number of crimes committed on it. Two rangers in Arizona have been shot in the past two years. Rangers now spend more time patrolling the border than guarding resources they were hired to protect...Policy changes may be adding up to create a new forest order Environmental groups are lashing out, predicting doom for federal forests. Timber industry groups are hopeful, expecting a long-awaited turnaround in forest management policies. Forest Service officials are uncertain what the outcome will be. But it's clear that over the past year, a series of significant policy changes have been developing, most of them driven by Republicans who control the White House and Congress. Individually, the policy moves won't lead to substantial changes, said Julia Altemus of the Montana Logging Association, but combined they will make a difference in forest management...Cougars chewing at economy Cougars have killed so many Rocky Mountain elk in Wallowa County that only 360 tags for antlerless elk are being offered to hunters this year, down from 4,140 just eight years ago. Because hunting is big business in northeast Oregon, the economic impact quickly trickles down to the county's 7,140 residents. The sharp decline also could signal bad news for people beyond Wallowa County. State Fish and Wildlife Department biologists say heavy cougar predation of elk calves will continue and is likely to have a similar effect in Union, Baker, Umatilla and Grant counties.... Ariz. target of grazing buyout billIf you can't beat 'em, buy 'em out. Or sell. Weary of a half-century of grazing conflicts, environmentalists are pushing new proposals to pay off ranchers who want out of their permits to run cattle on public lands. Equally weary, some Arizona ranchers are climbing on board to support the effort. Bills introduced this week in Congress would offer up to $100 million in rancher payouts as a test of the feasibility of a voluntary buyout program. One bill would affect only Arizona, where the buyout effort has been centered. The other would open the federal financial tap to all public lands ranchers in the West. Organizers of the buyout campaign in Arizona say they have collected cards from 170 Arizona ranchers, including 40 from Southern Arizona, in support of the buyout out of more than 800 Arizona ranchers surveyed...Book chronicles "True Grizz" in Northwest Montana Douglas Chadwick says right up front he's no expert on grizzly bears. But that's a modest deflection toward the major themes in his latest book, "True Grizz." It's a book about bears and how bears and people mingle in Northwest Montana, not the author's many experiences with bears or the bio-political baggage that is often attached to grizzly bears and their protection under the Endangered Species Act. The title is a play on pulp magazine tales of terrifying encounters with ferocious, bloodthirsty grizzly bears. Chadwick takes an opposite view in his book: Bears and increasing numbers of people around the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem seem to be coexisting far more than they clash...Sierra Club leader ousted amid rumblings of discontent Just five months after being elected chair of the Napa Sierra Club's executive committee, Tyler York was replaced by fellow committee member Carol Kunze at the group's meeting earlier this month, a decision that may have been prompted by York's ties to the agricultural industry. Kunze, an attorney who serves on the board of several other environmental groups, would not discuss the reasons behind the change in leadership of the Napa club. York also declined to comment. He remains a voting member of the executive committee. "Questions were raised about his leadership," said Eric Antebi, the national press secretary for the Sierra Club. "The organization ultimately decided that it didn't make sense for him to continue serving as leader of the executive committee."...Editorial: Beyond farmers vs. fish A new report on the Klamath Basin should put an end to the obsession with saving threatened fish almost solely by taking water from farmers. A national panel of scientists argues persuasively that it's wrong to keep fighting over warm, polluted water in Klamath Lake, which probably would not restore coho salmon or native suckers in any case. The real solution, they say, is a basin-wide effort that includes removing three dams, restoring large areas of wetlands and returning more clean, cool water to lakes and streams. It could take decades, or longer, to accomplish the broad changes laid out by the National Research Council in its report released last week. The report describes a prescription for the Klamath Basin that is more costly, more politically difficult and, in some cases, even more unlikely than prying water out of Klamath Project farmers...Congress, farmer blast salamander proposal The Endangered Species Act is broken and needs to be changed, said congressmen Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced) and George Radanovich (R-Mariposa) Friday at a meeting in Modesto to gather opinions on whether the California Tiger Salamander should be granted the endangered designation. "At some point, we could literally be preserving ourselves into extinction," Cardoza said. The tiger salamander is found throughout the Central Valley and in parts of the Bay Area and Southern California. If determined to be endangered, more than 1 million acres could be determined critical habitat...Ranchers fight plan to save critters U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials meeting in Modesto got an earful Friday from ranchers who oppose designating the California tiger salamander as a threatened species. The agency is under a court order to consider such a designation. Officials from Stanislaus County, one of 25 counties where the tiger salamander is believed to exist, have asked the agency for more background data on the proposal and for maps showing where the amphibians live...Hearing sought on fish report The three U.S. representatives from the Klamath Basin have asked for a congressional hearing on the Natural Research Council's report issued this week. The report focused on threatened and endangered fish. It was was commissioned by the U.S. Interior and Commerce departments after water to the Klamath Reclamation Project was shut off in 2001. According to the report, the shutoff was made without scientific justification. The report called for Basinwide efforts - from dam removal to river bank restoration to water right buyouts. The report also said there was insufficient evidence that the Klamath Project caused the fish kill of about 33,000 salmon on the lower reaches of the Klamath River in fall 2002. "It's critical that the House Resources Committee examines the findings of the NRC report to help identify ways we can prevent another tragedy like the one that occurred in the Klamath Basin in 2001 from happening again," said Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon in a press release. "This report has the potential to accomplish two pre-eminent, long-term goals: protecting endangered fish species and ensuring the sustainability of Klamath Basin agriculture."...Air quality a concern in big gas fields Gov. Dave Freudenthal wants the state Department of Environmental Quality's new budget to include extra money to start an air quality monitoring program in southwest Wyoming where major natural gas development is underway, according to the governor's press secretary Lara Azar. Air quality has become a focus of concern as drilling activity continues to intensify in the area. Recently, an in-house Bureau of Land Management e-mail was leaked to the public that contained speculation about whether proposals for full-scale development would degrade air quality enough that the public would have to be kept off the mostly federal land. Officials at the BLM Pinedale Field Office said the discussion was purely speculation, and they made assurances that the agency wouldn't allow such a scenario to happen...Court rules ban on public access to trail stands The Wyoming Supreme Court has upheld the right of a ranch in Sheridan County to block public use of a trail that has provided convenient access to prime hunting land for more than a century. In a decision issued Friday, the justices unanimously affirmed District Judge John Brackley's ruling in July 2002 that allowed the owners of the Beckton Stock Farm west of Sheridan - Waldo, William, Sarah and Edith Forbes - to close access to the Soldier Creek Trail, which crosses their property. The trail leads to public lands managed by the Bighorn National Forest, Bureau of Land Management and state of Wyoming. The dispute came to a head in September 2001 when the Forbeses, exasperated by gates being left open, locked off the trail. Hunters were asked to either use a new corridor or call for permission to use the existing trail. The ranch owners filed suit against hunters John Yeager, Larry Durante, John Reilly and George Rogers, claiming they crossed without permission...Fossil hunters comb 50,000 acres in desert A Mojave Desert tortoise, the descendant of an Ice Age survivor, hid in a burrow at the north end of the Las Vegas Valley, protecting itself from the sun's broiling rays and any predators. Researchers figure that for 40 years, this member of a threatened species has crawled over the hard, rocky terrain not far from where ancient elephants tramped 20,000 years ago through marshes at the edge of what was a shallow lake. Today, an environmental team is combing a 50,000-acre area that the Bureau of Land Management has targeted for the auction block. Significant paleontological or archaeological finds could launch a consultation process with Nevada's congressional delegation, and eventual public meetings, about how to protect the sites or preserve what is found...BLM sowing seeds in Book Cliffs The Bureau of Land Management's Moab Field Office is using cutting-edge technology to restore native vegetation to thousands of acres of public land ravaged by fire during the 2002 Rattle Complex blaze. During the next four weeks, supercharged crop-dusting planes will drop 53,200 pounds of mycorrhizae seed mix -- seeds combined with a beneficial fungus to help them take root and encased in an organic polymer coating with a starch binder -- over 1,471 acres of decimated land in the Book Cliffs areas of Cottonwood and Diamond canyons northeast of Moab... Judge halts logging on contested timber sale A federal judge has reordered a halt to logging on a contested timber sale after an environmental group charged the U.S. Bureau of Land Management with ignoring the original order...
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Calif. Wildfires Kill 14, Char 650 Homes Wildfires that have burned for days merged into walls of flame stretching across miles in parts of Southern California on Sunday, leaving 14 people dead, burning 650 homes and frustrating overmatched firefighters who worked relentlessly against fierce winds. The state's largest fire, in eastern San Diego County, caused at least nine deaths, including two who died inside their car as they apparently tried to escape the flames, San Diego Sheriff Bill Kolender said. "We were literally running through fire," said Lisza Pontes, 43, who escaped the fire with her family after the roar of flames woke them at 3:45 a.m. As they drove off, they saw a neighbor's mobile home explode...Editorial: A burning issue Part of the reason for intensity of the fires, of course, is that the forests have been allowed to grow unimpeded over the course of the last decade or so, and the accumulated fuel - underbrush, dead trees and the like - has just been waiting for a spark. This particular spark, firefighters believe, was provided by an arsonist, but it could just as well have been lightening or a thrown cigarette or an untended campfire. The result is the same: miles and miles, and acres and acres, of blackened wildlands, the loss of homes, the deaths of countless wildlife, and the loss of hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of board feet of lumber that should have been harvested by commercial loggers. Instead, because of the the fires, what Southern Californians will inherit is a denuded wasteland, an inheritance willed to us all by the extreme left of the environmental movement. And that group is, even now, trying to insure the same sort of disaster will be repeated endlessly across the land, particularly in the West...Proposed off-road limits upset Amador supervisors Off-road-vehicle enthusiasts say they have no problem with a new proposal that would confine them to designated roads and trails on a popular portion of the Eldorado National Forest. But Amador County supervisors don't like the idea -- and they've let U.S. Forest Service officials know about it. The proposed order would prohibit four-wheel-drives, motorcycles, bicycles and any other wheeled vehicles from going off National Forest System roads and trails in the Bear River area, off Highway 88 in upcountry Amador County. Both Bill Dart of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a national recreation group, and Don Klusman of the California Association of 4-Wheel Drive Clubs said their respective organizations have supported staying on trails. Supervisor Richard Vinson, who represents the upcountry area, said the board's feeling was, "Here's one more restriction -- one that not only restricts you from using the national forest but says you can't even ride a bicycle. "The next step after that would be you can't even walk, either."... Border crime ravaging parks in Arizona National parks and other federal recreation sites in Arizona have some of the highest crime rates of any public lands in the country, and those in southern Arizona lead the list. "It's the Wild West out here every night," one ranger says. Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, southeast of Yuma, has more crimes per visitor than any other piece of public land in the West. The Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona leads all forest lands in the number of crimes committed on it. Two rangers in Arizona have been shot in the past two years. Rangers now spend more time patrolling the border than guarding resources they were hired to protect...Policy changes may be adding up to create a new forest order Environmental groups are lashing out, predicting doom for federal forests. Timber industry groups are hopeful, expecting a long-awaited turnaround in forest management policies. Forest Service officials are uncertain what the outcome will be. But it's clear that over the past year, a series of significant policy changes have been developing, most of them driven by Republicans who control the White House and Congress. Individually, the policy moves won't lead to substantial changes, said Julia Altemus of the Montana Logging Association, but combined they will make a difference in forest management...Cougars chewing at economy Cougars have killed so many Rocky Mountain elk in Wallowa County that only 360 tags for antlerless elk are being offered to hunters this year, down from 4,140 just eight years ago. Because hunting is big business in northeast Oregon, the economic impact quickly trickles down to the county's 7,140 residents. The sharp decline also could signal bad news for people beyond Wallowa County. State Fish and Wildlife Department biologists say heavy cougar predation of elk calves will continue and is likely to have a similar effect in Union, Baker, Umatilla and Grant counties.... Ariz. target of grazing buyout billIf you can't beat 'em, buy 'em out. Or sell. Weary of a half-century of grazing conflicts, environmentalists are pushing new proposals to pay off ranchers who want out of their permits to run cattle on public lands. Equally weary, some Arizona ranchers are climbing on board to support the effort. Bills introduced this week in Congress would offer up to $100 million in rancher payouts as a test of the feasibility of a voluntary buyout program. One bill would affect only Arizona, where the buyout effort has been centered. The other would open the federal financial tap to all public lands ranchers in the West. Organizers of the buyout campaign in Arizona say they have collected cards from 170 Arizona ranchers, including 40 from Southern Arizona, in support of the buyout out of more than 800 Arizona ranchers surveyed...Book chronicles "True Grizz" in Northwest Montana Douglas Chadwick says right up front he's no expert on grizzly bears. But that's a modest deflection toward the major themes in his latest book, "True Grizz." It's a book about bears and how bears and people mingle in Northwest Montana, not the author's many experiences with bears or the bio-political baggage that is often attached to grizzly bears and their protection under the Endangered Species Act. The title is a play on pulp magazine tales of terrifying encounters with ferocious, bloodthirsty grizzly bears. Chadwick takes an opposite view in his book: Bears and increasing numbers of people around the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem seem to be coexisting far more than they clash...Sierra Club leader ousted amid rumblings of discontent Just five months after being elected chair of the Napa Sierra Club's executive committee, Tyler York was replaced by fellow committee member Carol Kunze at the group's meeting earlier this month, a decision that may have been prompted by York's ties to the agricultural industry. Kunze, an attorney who serves on the board of several other environmental groups, would not discuss the reasons behind the change in leadership of the Napa club. York also declined to comment. He remains a voting member of the executive committee. "Questions were raised about his leadership," said Eric Antebi, the national press secretary for the Sierra Club. "The organization ultimately decided that it didn't make sense for him to continue serving as leader of the executive committee."...Editorial: Beyond farmers vs. fish A new report on the Klamath Basin should put an end to the obsession with saving threatened fish almost solely by taking water from farmers. A national panel of scientists argues persuasively that it's wrong to keep fighting over warm, polluted water in Klamath Lake, which probably would not restore coho salmon or native suckers in any case. The real solution, they say, is a basin-wide effort that includes removing three dams, restoring large areas of wetlands and returning more clean, cool water to lakes and streams. It could take decades, or longer, to accomplish the broad changes laid out by the National Research Council in its report released last week. The report describes a prescription for the Klamath Basin that is more costly, more politically difficult and, in some cases, even more unlikely than prying water out of Klamath Project farmers...Congress, farmer blast salamander proposal The Endangered Species Act is broken and needs to be changed, said congressmen Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced) and George Radanovich (R-Mariposa) Friday at a meeting in Modesto to gather opinions on whether the California Tiger Salamander should be granted the endangered designation. "At some point, we could literally be preserving ourselves into extinction," Cardoza said. The tiger salamander is found throughout the Central Valley and in parts of the Bay Area and Southern California. If determined to be endangered, more than 1 million acres could be determined critical habitat...Ranchers fight plan to save critters U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials meeting in Modesto got an earful Friday from ranchers who oppose designating the California tiger salamander as a threatened species. The agency is under a court order to consider such a designation. Officials from Stanislaus County, one of 25 counties where the tiger salamander is believed to exist, have asked the agency for more background data on the proposal and for maps showing where the amphibians live...Hearing sought on fish report The three U.S. representatives from the Klamath Basin have asked for a congressional hearing on the Natural Research Council's report issued this week. The report focused on threatened and endangered fish. It was was commissioned by the U.S. Interior and Commerce departments after water to the Klamath Reclamation Project was shut off in 2001. According to the report, the shutoff was made without scientific justification. The report called for Basinwide efforts - from dam removal to river bank restoration to water right buyouts. The report also said there was insufficient evidence that the Klamath Project caused the fish kill of about 33,000 salmon on the lower reaches of the Klamath River in fall 2002. "It's critical that the House Resources Committee examines the findings of the NRC report to help identify ways we can prevent another tragedy like the one that occurred in the Klamath Basin in 2001 from happening again," said Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon in a press release. "This report has the potential to accomplish two pre-eminent, long-term goals: protecting endangered fish species and ensuring the sustainability of Klamath Basin agriculture."...Air quality a concern in big gas fields Gov. Dave Freudenthal wants the state Department of Environmental Quality's new budget to include extra money to start an air quality monitoring program in southwest Wyoming where major natural gas development is underway, according to the governor's press secretary Lara Azar. Air quality has become a focus of concern as drilling activity continues to intensify in the area. Recently, an in-house Bureau of Land Management e-mail was leaked to the public that contained speculation about whether proposals for full-scale development would degrade air quality enough that the public would have to be kept off the mostly federal land. Officials at the BLM Pinedale Field Office said the discussion was purely speculation, and they made assurances that the agency wouldn't allow such a scenario to happen...Court rules ban on public access to trail stands The Wyoming Supreme Court has upheld the right of a ranch in Sheridan County to block public use of a trail that has provided convenient access to prime hunting land for more than a century. In a decision issued Friday, the justices unanimously affirmed District Judge John Brackley's ruling in July 2002 that allowed the owners of the Beckton Stock Farm west of Sheridan - Waldo, William, Sarah and Edith Forbes - to close access to the Soldier Creek Trail, which crosses their property. The trail leads to public lands managed by the Bighorn National Forest, Bureau of Land Management and state of Wyoming. The dispute came to a head in September 2001 when the Forbeses, exasperated by gates being left open, locked off the trail. Hunters were asked to either use a new corridor or call for permission to use the existing trail. The ranch owners filed suit against hunters John Yeager, Larry Durante, John Reilly and George Rogers, claiming they crossed without permission...Fossil hunters comb 50,000 acres in desert A Mojave Desert tortoise, the descendant of an Ice Age survivor, hid in a burrow at the north end of the Las Vegas Valley, protecting itself from the sun's broiling rays and any predators. Researchers figure that for 40 years, this member of a threatened species has crawled over the hard, rocky terrain not far from where ancient elephants tramped 20,000 years ago through marshes at the edge of what was a shallow lake. Today, an environmental team is combing a 50,000-acre area that the Bureau of Land Management has targeted for the auction block. Significant paleontological or archaeological finds could launch a consultation process with Nevada's congressional delegation, and eventual public meetings, about how to protect the sites or preserve what is found...BLM sowing seeds in Book Cliffs The Bureau of Land Management's Moab Field Office is using cutting-edge technology to restore native vegetation to thousands of acres of public land ravaged by fire during the 2002 Rattle Complex blaze. During the next four weeks, supercharged crop-dusting planes will drop 53,200 pounds of mycorrhizae seed mix -- seeds combined with a beneficial fungus to help them take root and encased in an organic polymer coating with a starch binder -- over 1,471 acres of decimated land in the Book Cliffs areas of Cottonwood and Diamond canyons northeast of Moab... Judge halts logging on contested timber sale A federal judge has reordered a halt to logging on a contested timber sale after an environmental group charged the U.S. Bureau of Land Management with ignoring the original order...
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Voluntary Grazing Permit Buyout Act
Doc Lane has sent us his comments:
Buyout Language finally shows intent!
The Grazing Buyout that has been talked about and pushed by the Whitney family and the Center for Biological Diversity has now been introduced as two different bills in Congress. Representative Shays of Connecticut introduced HB 3324 and Representative Grijalva of Arizona introduced HB 3337. The language is slightly different in the two bills BUT the important impact of both bills is exactly the same.
In this article I would like to walk you through the impact if ether of the bills is passed. If you want to see the actual bill language you can get a copy on the Internet at http//:www.firstgov.gov/ web site. I will use Mr. Shays’ bill (HB 3324) as an example because it is the most comprehensive, but the provisions that will cause the problems cited here are in both bills.
First Problem – The selling point for supporting the “buyout” is it is completely voluntary. If you don’t want to participate you don’t have to.
Well in both bills you will be forced to lose your permit no matter what over time. The language is in Section 4
(a) (a) WAIVER OF EXISTING GRAZING PERMIT OR LEASE- A Permittee or lessee may waive to the Secretary (defined as Agriculture, Interior, Defense and Energy. In other words all grazing leases on all federal lands) at any time, a valid existing grazing permit or lease authorizing livestock grazing on Federal lands.
This sounds ok, except you MUST voluntarily waive you permit in order to transfer it to ANYONE. If you sell your ranch you must “waive” the permit back to the Secretary so that it can be transferred to the new buyer. If you die, your estate must “waive” it so it can be transferred to your heirs. IN OTHER WORDS ALL PERMITS ARE “WAIVED” IN THE COURSE OF NORMAL BUSINESS AT SOME POINT.
NOW THEY GOTCHA
Same Section 4
( b ) CANCELLATION OF WAIVED GRAZING PERMIT OR LEASE- The Secretary shall cancel grazing permits and leases waived under this section and permanently retire the associated allotments from domestic livestock grazing use notwithstanding any other provision of law.
Ok, now you sold the permit to the person who wanted to buy your ranch. You go to the local BLM or Forest Service office and “Waive” your permit back to the Secretary so it can be transferred to your buyer. SORRY, THE LAW STATES “ THE SECRETARY SHALL CANCEL …PERMITS WAIVED UNDER THIS SECTION AND PERMINATELY RETIRE THE ASSOCIATED ALLOTMENTS FROM DOMESTIC LIVESTOCK GRAZING.
I understand you are going to say it doesn’t apply to your allotment and permit because you didn’t “waive” it under Section 4 (a), you waived it to sell it to someone else. Where in 4 (a) does it say “only for voluntary permanent retirement of the allotment with compensation”? So as each permit is sold or passed on to heirs throughout the U. S. the grazing is removed PERMENTLY. The permits will have zero value because no one can ever own them but you and you won’t live forever. Very soon there will be no livestock grazing on federal land anywhere in the United States.
What happens in states like Arizona that have intermingled land throughout the state and almost all ranches depend in part on federal land as part of the ranch unit? Without the federal part they cannot ranch, it is not economically possible.
Second Problem
In Mr. Shays HB3324 the last of Section 4 acknowledge that funds to pay for the “voluntary buyout” may not be available.
Remember, appropriation of funds has to be done through Congress and NO one is guaranteeing this will be funded.
Ask yourself this question: Why would the Center for Biological Diversity want to, or Congress be willing to, pay you if this bill passes? Once the bill is signed into law, appropriating the money must be done, writing the regulations (which say “If you ever had a warning letter from the agency you don’t qualify”) and then starting to retire permits, NOT BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO RETIRE THEM BUT BECAUSE THE LAW SAYS THEY HAVE TO!!! You can waive your permit but the law does NOT say the Government has to pay you!!
C. B. 'Doc' Lane
Director of Natural Resources
Arizona Cattlemen's Association
Arizona Wool Producers Association
602-267-1129
doclane@arizonabeef.org
Thanks Doc for sending your perceptive comments. I posted the text to H.R. 3324 on 10/21 along with some press on the legislation. The comments of Sue Krentz and Cynthia Coping were posted on 10/22. Please review and send your comments to flankcinch@hotmail.com or just click on "email me" to your left.
Permalink
Doc Lane has sent us his comments:
Buyout Language finally shows intent!
The Grazing Buyout that has been talked about and pushed by the Whitney family and the Center for Biological Diversity has now been introduced as two different bills in Congress. Representative Shays of Connecticut introduced HB 3324 and Representative Grijalva of Arizona introduced HB 3337. The language is slightly different in the two bills BUT the important impact of both bills is exactly the same.
In this article I would like to walk you through the impact if ether of the bills is passed. If you want to see the actual bill language you can get a copy on the Internet at http//:www.firstgov.gov/ web site. I will use Mr. Shays’ bill (HB 3324) as an example because it is the most comprehensive, but the provisions that will cause the problems cited here are in both bills.
First Problem – The selling point for supporting the “buyout” is it is completely voluntary. If you don’t want to participate you don’t have to.
Well in both bills you will be forced to lose your permit no matter what over time. The language is in Section 4
(a) (a) WAIVER OF EXISTING GRAZING PERMIT OR LEASE- A Permittee or lessee may waive to the Secretary (defined as Agriculture, Interior, Defense and Energy. In other words all grazing leases on all federal lands) at any time, a valid existing grazing permit or lease authorizing livestock grazing on Federal lands.
This sounds ok, except you MUST voluntarily waive you permit in order to transfer it to ANYONE. If you sell your ranch you must “waive” the permit back to the Secretary so that it can be transferred to the new buyer. If you die, your estate must “waive” it so it can be transferred to your heirs. IN OTHER WORDS ALL PERMITS ARE “WAIVED” IN THE COURSE OF NORMAL BUSINESS AT SOME POINT.
NOW THEY GOTCHA
Same Section 4
( b ) CANCELLATION OF WAIVED GRAZING PERMIT OR LEASE- The Secretary shall cancel grazing permits and leases waived under this section and permanently retire the associated allotments from domestic livestock grazing use notwithstanding any other provision of law.
Ok, now you sold the permit to the person who wanted to buy your ranch. You go to the local BLM or Forest Service office and “Waive” your permit back to the Secretary so it can be transferred to your buyer. SORRY, THE LAW STATES “ THE SECRETARY SHALL CANCEL …PERMITS WAIVED UNDER THIS SECTION AND PERMINATELY RETIRE THE ASSOCIATED ALLOTMENTS FROM DOMESTIC LIVESTOCK GRAZING.
I understand you are going to say it doesn’t apply to your allotment and permit because you didn’t “waive” it under Section 4 (a), you waived it to sell it to someone else. Where in 4 (a) does it say “only for voluntary permanent retirement of the allotment with compensation”? So as each permit is sold or passed on to heirs throughout the U. S. the grazing is removed PERMENTLY. The permits will have zero value because no one can ever own them but you and you won’t live forever. Very soon there will be no livestock grazing on federal land anywhere in the United States.
What happens in states like Arizona that have intermingled land throughout the state and almost all ranches depend in part on federal land as part of the ranch unit? Without the federal part they cannot ranch, it is not economically possible.
Second Problem
In Mr. Shays HB3324 the last of Section 4 acknowledge that funds to pay for the “voluntary buyout” may not be available.
Remember, appropriation of funds has to be done through Congress and NO one is guaranteeing this will be funded.
Ask yourself this question: Why would the Center for Biological Diversity want to, or Congress be willing to, pay you if this bill passes? Once the bill is signed into law, appropriating the money must be done, writing the regulations (which say “If you ever had a warning letter from the agency you don’t qualify”) and then starting to retire permits, NOT BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO RETIRE THEM BUT BECAUSE THE LAW SAYS THEY HAVE TO!!! You can waive your permit but the law does NOT say the Government has to pay you!!
C. B. 'Doc' Lane
Director of Natural Resources
Arizona Cattlemen's Association
Arizona Wool Producers Association
602-267-1129
doclane@arizonabeef.org
Thanks Doc for sending your perceptive comments. I posted the text to H.R. 3324 on 10/21 along with some press on the legislation. The comments of Sue Krentz and Cynthia Coping were posted on 10/22. Please review and send your comments to flankcinch@hotmail.com or just click on "email me" to your left.
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