Saturday, May 14, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Paradise Valley rancher loses more sheep to wolves Paradise Valley rancher Bob Weber lost 11 sheep to wolves late Wednesday, apparently after leaving a small gate open on a pen built by Defenders of Wildlife. The four-and-a-half acre enclosure was built by the nonprofit group, which compensates ranchers for livestock lost to wolves. Weber's ranch, south of Livingston, has had several wolf attacks over the past 18 months. "The contract I have with the Defenders of Wildlife is that when I am notified or have a depredation I am required to put them in this pen," Weber said Friday. "I have been putting them in for the past few days to get them used to it. (Wednesday) I didn't get around to closing a gate in the corner." Weber said he had 90 ewes and 150 lambs in the pen. Ed Bangs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf recovery coordinator, guessed the predator was a yearling lone wolf. "He probably was overly excited -- killing, grabbing biting -- but was not very successful killing the ewes," Bangs said. Weber said he lost four ewes and seven lambs, including some he had to put down because of their injuries....
Wolf bill stirs controversy at Capitol An executive of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association wants to “amend the hell out of it or kill it.” Wolf conservationists oppose it, but for different reasons. They want wolf protections strengthened. House Republicans, meanwhile, said the bill falls short of addressing ranchers’ concerns. Oregon wildlife officials stirred up controversy at the Capitol last week when they introduced a wolf bill based on a management plan developed by a state wolf advisory committee and adopted earlier this year by the state wildlife commission. The bill, House Bill 3478, restricts ranchers from killing wolves and calls for the state to set aside $200,000 to compensate ranchers for losses....
Coyote non-shooting period a lightning rod Are Michigan hunters capable of distinguishing wolves from coyotes? It's a hot topic of debate right now, as state wildlife officials have suggested extending an Upper Peninsula hunting regulation designed to protect wolves to the northern Lower Peninsula. It has been illegal to shoot coyotes in the Upper Peninsula during the firearms deer season (Nov. 15-30) since 1993, as part of the Department of Natural Resources' wolf recovery plan. Because wolves have been found in the northern Lower Peninsula within the last year, the DNR has recommended that same prohibition against shooting coyotes during gun season apply in the northern Lower as well....
Pups believed to be wolf-dog hybrids are euthanized Six pups that wildlife officials believe to be wolf-dog hybrids were euthanized late this week, several days after they were removed from their den in eastern Arizona. John Morgart, coordinator of the Mexican gray-wolf recovery project for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the pups' physical appearance made it clear they were not purebred wolves. The recovery program aims to restore the endangered wolf population, not create a hybrid population, Morgart said, adding that the agency is authorized by federal law to euthanize hybrid pups. Blood samples drawn from the pups Wednesday are being analyzed to determine their parentage. The results are not expected for weeks....
Developer sets his sights on the Wolf Creek ski area As his passengers lurched to and fro, Davey Pitcher expertly drove the Sno-Cat across the slopes of the no-frills southern Colorado ski area his family has run near the Continental Divide for almost three decades. Pitcher wasn't focusing on the thick stands of pine, the chairlifts stretching to the 11,900-foot summit or the deep snow that make this place a popular draw for serious skiers and 'boarders. He was envisioning what Texas billionaire Billy Joe "Red" McCombs wants to build nearby: a $1 billion project with 222,100 square feet of commercial space, hotels and homes for up to 10,500 people. This in a county with just 932 full-time residents....
E-mail message spurs concern over OMB competitive sourcing tactics An e-mail circulated to Forest Service managers last week has triggered concern that the White House is pushing the agency to prematurely open jobs to private sector competition. The Office of Management and Budget threatened to downgrade the Agriculture Department from a yellow to a red - the lowest rating - on the competitive sourcing section of the Bush administration's quarterly management score card, unless the Forest Service allows contractors to bid on at least 100 jobs by the close of the fiscal year, according to the May 3 message, sent from headquarters to update field managers on the Forest Service's competitive sourcing program....
Column: Trees Can Be Just Another Sacred Cow Only God can make a tree, but anyone can ruin a prairie. Consider the celebrated 19th century journalist Julius Sterling Morton. On moving to Nebraska from Michigan in 1854, he found he didn't like the way nature had designed the Great Plains. Accordingly, he summoned forth "a great army of husbandmen…to battle against the timberless prairies." In 1885, Morton's birthday became a state holiday we all just noted called "Arbor Day." A statue of him, paid for in part by the pennies, nickels and dimes of school children from all over the world, now stands in Nebraska City. Arbor Day is celebrated throughout our land, and when you join the National Arbor Day Foundation you get 10 free tree seedlings that may or may not belong in your area. There are or were prairies in most of our nation, not just the plains states. Prairies used to dominate the San Francisco Bay region, but as Arbor Day euphoria swept west, locals planted trees -- including eucalyptus, America's biggest weed -- thereby wiping out native ecosystems. By 1949, the trees had killed off the remnant population of the prairie-dependent Xerces blue butterfly, making the Presidio of San Francisco -- an old Spanish garrison -- the site of the first documented butterfly extinction in North America....
Mount St. Helens erupting with new life 25 years later When Crisafulli first ventured onto the moonscape left behind by Mount St. Helens' May 18, 1980, eruption, Spirit Lake was lifeless. His discovery of a single lupine growing near its shores two years later was cause for wonder. Now, as the U.S. Forest Service ecologist begins his 25th season on the volcano's flanks, thickets of trees shelter a growing number of animals and the lake supports abundant frog, salamander and fish populations. The scales from the trout — and many more like it — will reveal the animals' ages. Biologists in snorkel gear will swim transects in the lake's shallows, counting fish and searching out the gelatinous egg sacs of amphibians....
Land bill battle heats up A bill that could pave the way for Congress to lay claim to millions of dollars from federal land sales in Clark County advanced on Tuesday. The House Appropriations Committee approved legislation that Nevada leaders fear could open the door to a loss of $700 million a year the government is required to spend in the state. But as Congress grapples with looming deficits, a Bush administration plan to tap Southern Nevada land profits is proving attractive, several lawmakers said. "We're half a billion dollars in deficit. There's always an interest in money anywhere," said Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C. chairman of the panel that sets annual spending for the Interior Department....
Developers cautious about BLM proposal If the federal government is going to take the majority of the money raised in Nevada via Bureau of Land Management land auctions, then just don't have the sales, or drastically reduce what is sold. If we can't have it -- neither can the federal government. That was the idea floated by Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury recently in response to the resurfacing of President Bush's proposal to take 70 percent of revenue from the land sales while leaving 30 percent for the state. He's looking for other local municipalities and county leaders to back his plan. So far Woodbury has received some support and nods of "sympathy" from other county commissioners, he said....
BLM worker pleads guilty A Bureau of Land Management employee accused of stealing from the agency pleaded guilty Thursday to two misdemeanors in federal court. Daniel C. Boechler, 56, pleaded guilty to identity theft and to keeping stolen government records. A third count of retention of stolen government property, a felony, is to be dismissed at sentencing. Boechler, an employee of BLM's fire center, had been scheduled for a jury trial Monday when he pleaded guilty in a plea agreement. The indictment alleged that on Sept. 12, 2003, Boechler had at his home two GPS units, a long-range telephone, binoculars and a fax machine. He also had the identification card/building access card for BLM employees and his supervisor's airport identification/ access card, which had been stolen in July from the shower room of the fire center....
Developers eye Mojave land California's Mojave Desert has long been the scene of controversy and litigation, much of it driven by conflicts over off-road vehicle use, mining, grazing and the Defense Department's fondness for dropping bombs and driving tanks on it. The Mojave is a landscape of deceptive fragility, and defenders of its rare species and harsh beauty have clashed repeatedly with user groups, industry and the military. Suburban sprawl has not been high on the list of threats, but that is changing. Desert development is booming, particularly in the dusty hinterlands of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, thanks to cheap land, soaring housing costs near the coast, and the apparently boundless willingness of Californians to commute long distances on congested freeways....
Plan may keep bird off endangered list State wildlife officials are seeking landowner agreement programs to protect the Gunnison sage grouse before the bird ends up on the federal Endangered Species List. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is under a court order to propose a rule in September aimed at protecting the bird. The agency then has one year to solicit comments and make a final ruling whether to list it as a "threatened" species. In the meantime, state and federal officials are hoping to put protection plans in place that would keep the listing from being necessary. Since 2000, the Gunnison sage grouse has been recognized as a separate species from the greater sage grouse. It is found in only 10 counties in the southwestern part of Colorado and a few areas of Utah. Wildlife officials estimate its numbers in Colorado at 3,200....
Editorial: A vanishing wildlife fund THE DISCOVERY last month in Arkansas that the magnificent ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct after all should prove to Congress the value of land conservation and the protection of endangered species. But Congress is moving in exactly the opposite direction. A House subcommittee has dropped all money for land acquisition from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and other lawmakers are working to strip the Endangered Species Act of much of its authority to protect critical habitats. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is supposed to receive as much as $900 million a year in royalties collected from federal leases for offshore oil and gas drilling. The House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee left it with nothing but operating funds. The subcommittee was only slightly less stingy with the Forest Legacy program, approving just $25 million, the lowest amount in six years. This program is a crucial source of money for states seeking to protect privately owned forestlands from development....
U.S. study says water levels dropping A federal review of the water bank that spent $7.6 million this year to buy irrigation water from Klamath Reclamation Project farmers to increase flows for salmon finds it is seriously drawing down the local water table and may not be able to help fish through extended dry periods. In a report released yesterday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said a preliminary estimate has found that private wells pumping for the water bank have increased demand on the local groundwater eightfold, causing water levels in other wells to drop between 2 and 20 feet....
Missouri dog wins hero award for saving rancher's life A border collie and golden retriever mix from Missouri has won the National Hero Dog award for alerting her owner that her husband was pinned underneath a tractor. Eight-year-old Shannon, who lives on an 80-acre ranch in Washington, Mo., accepted the 23rd annual National Hero Dog award Friday with her owners Ted and Peggy Mandry. The award does not honor trained rescue dogs. Instead it honors "a companion animal that's well-treated and has bonded with the family, so they somehow know what to do and step up to the plate when there's trouble," said Madeline Bernstein, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles. Shannon caught media attention last June when firefighters credited her for saving Ted Mandry's life....
Rancher Finds Balloon Cluster With Letter to Heaven on His Property John Meadows was checking for newborn calves Monday morning when he spotted a white patch in the field of green grass on his Estancia area ranch. It was not the white face of a Hereford newborn or a piece of blowing trash that greeted Meadows, but a sheet of white paper tied to a trio of white balloons with blue ribbon. The paper Meadows found on Monday was neatly folded and contained the following words in a child-like scrawl: "Hi Mom I love you. Doo you like Heaven I hope so God willing I will see you one of these days" The paper bore no legible signature, prompting Meadows to think a child wrote it....
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Paradise Valley rancher loses more sheep to wolves Paradise Valley rancher Bob Weber lost 11 sheep to wolves late Wednesday, apparently after leaving a small gate open on a pen built by Defenders of Wildlife. The four-and-a-half acre enclosure was built by the nonprofit group, which compensates ranchers for livestock lost to wolves. Weber's ranch, south of Livingston, has had several wolf attacks over the past 18 months. "The contract I have with the Defenders of Wildlife is that when I am notified or have a depredation I am required to put them in this pen," Weber said Friday. "I have been putting them in for the past few days to get them used to it. (Wednesday) I didn't get around to closing a gate in the corner." Weber said he had 90 ewes and 150 lambs in the pen. Ed Bangs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf recovery coordinator, guessed the predator was a yearling lone wolf. "He probably was overly excited -- killing, grabbing biting -- but was not very successful killing the ewes," Bangs said. Weber said he lost four ewes and seven lambs, including some he had to put down because of their injuries....
Wolf bill stirs controversy at Capitol An executive of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association wants to “amend the hell out of it or kill it.” Wolf conservationists oppose it, but for different reasons. They want wolf protections strengthened. House Republicans, meanwhile, said the bill falls short of addressing ranchers’ concerns. Oregon wildlife officials stirred up controversy at the Capitol last week when they introduced a wolf bill based on a management plan developed by a state wolf advisory committee and adopted earlier this year by the state wildlife commission. The bill, House Bill 3478, restricts ranchers from killing wolves and calls for the state to set aside $200,000 to compensate ranchers for losses....
Coyote non-shooting period a lightning rod Are Michigan hunters capable of distinguishing wolves from coyotes? It's a hot topic of debate right now, as state wildlife officials have suggested extending an Upper Peninsula hunting regulation designed to protect wolves to the northern Lower Peninsula. It has been illegal to shoot coyotes in the Upper Peninsula during the firearms deer season (Nov. 15-30) since 1993, as part of the Department of Natural Resources' wolf recovery plan. Because wolves have been found in the northern Lower Peninsula within the last year, the DNR has recommended that same prohibition against shooting coyotes during gun season apply in the northern Lower as well....
Pups believed to be wolf-dog hybrids are euthanized Six pups that wildlife officials believe to be wolf-dog hybrids were euthanized late this week, several days after they were removed from their den in eastern Arizona. John Morgart, coordinator of the Mexican gray-wolf recovery project for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the pups' physical appearance made it clear they were not purebred wolves. The recovery program aims to restore the endangered wolf population, not create a hybrid population, Morgart said, adding that the agency is authorized by federal law to euthanize hybrid pups. Blood samples drawn from the pups Wednesday are being analyzed to determine their parentage. The results are not expected for weeks....
Developer sets his sights on the Wolf Creek ski area As his passengers lurched to and fro, Davey Pitcher expertly drove the Sno-Cat across the slopes of the no-frills southern Colorado ski area his family has run near the Continental Divide for almost three decades. Pitcher wasn't focusing on the thick stands of pine, the chairlifts stretching to the 11,900-foot summit or the deep snow that make this place a popular draw for serious skiers and 'boarders. He was envisioning what Texas billionaire Billy Joe "Red" McCombs wants to build nearby: a $1 billion project with 222,100 square feet of commercial space, hotels and homes for up to 10,500 people. This in a county with just 932 full-time residents....
E-mail message spurs concern over OMB competitive sourcing tactics An e-mail circulated to Forest Service managers last week has triggered concern that the White House is pushing the agency to prematurely open jobs to private sector competition. The Office of Management and Budget threatened to downgrade the Agriculture Department from a yellow to a red - the lowest rating - on the competitive sourcing section of the Bush administration's quarterly management score card, unless the Forest Service allows contractors to bid on at least 100 jobs by the close of the fiscal year, according to the May 3 message, sent from headquarters to update field managers on the Forest Service's competitive sourcing program....
Column: Trees Can Be Just Another Sacred Cow Only God can make a tree, but anyone can ruin a prairie. Consider the celebrated 19th century journalist Julius Sterling Morton. On moving to Nebraska from Michigan in 1854, he found he didn't like the way nature had designed the Great Plains. Accordingly, he summoned forth "a great army of husbandmen…to battle against the timberless prairies." In 1885, Morton's birthday became a state holiday we all just noted called "Arbor Day." A statue of him, paid for in part by the pennies, nickels and dimes of school children from all over the world, now stands in Nebraska City. Arbor Day is celebrated throughout our land, and when you join the National Arbor Day Foundation you get 10 free tree seedlings that may or may not belong in your area. There are or were prairies in most of our nation, not just the plains states. Prairies used to dominate the San Francisco Bay region, but as Arbor Day euphoria swept west, locals planted trees -- including eucalyptus, America's biggest weed -- thereby wiping out native ecosystems. By 1949, the trees had killed off the remnant population of the prairie-dependent Xerces blue butterfly, making the Presidio of San Francisco -- an old Spanish garrison -- the site of the first documented butterfly extinction in North America....
Mount St. Helens erupting with new life 25 years later When Crisafulli first ventured onto the moonscape left behind by Mount St. Helens' May 18, 1980, eruption, Spirit Lake was lifeless. His discovery of a single lupine growing near its shores two years later was cause for wonder. Now, as the U.S. Forest Service ecologist begins his 25th season on the volcano's flanks, thickets of trees shelter a growing number of animals and the lake supports abundant frog, salamander and fish populations. The scales from the trout — and many more like it — will reveal the animals' ages. Biologists in snorkel gear will swim transects in the lake's shallows, counting fish and searching out the gelatinous egg sacs of amphibians....
Land bill battle heats up A bill that could pave the way for Congress to lay claim to millions of dollars from federal land sales in Clark County advanced on Tuesday. The House Appropriations Committee approved legislation that Nevada leaders fear could open the door to a loss of $700 million a year the government is required to spend in the state. But as Congress grapples with looming deficits, a Bush administration plan to tap Southern Nevada land profits is proving attractive, several lawmakers said. "We're half a billion dollars in deficit. There's always an interest in money anywhere," said Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C. chairman of the panel that sets annual spending for the Interior Department....
Developers cautious about BLM proposal If the federal government is going to take the majority of the money raised in Nevada via Bureau of Land Management land auctions, then just don't have the sales, or drastically reduce what is sold. If we can't have it -- neither can the federal government. That was the idea floated by Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury recently in response to the resurfacing of President Bush's proposal to take 70 percent of revenue from the land sales while leaving 30 percent for the state. He's looking for other local municipalities and county leaders to back his plan. So far Woodbury has received some support and nods of "sympathy" from other county commissioners, he said....
BLM worker pleads guilty A Bureau of Land Management employee accused of stealing from the agency pleaded guilty Thursday to two misdemeanors in federal court. Daniel C. Boechler, 56, pleaded guilty to identity theft and to keeping stolen government records. A third count of retention of stolen government property, a felony, is to be dismissed at sentencing. Boechler, an employee of BLM's fire center, had been scheduled for a jury trial Monday when he pleaded guilty in a plea agreement. The indictment alleged that on Sept. 12, 2003, Boechler had at his home two GPS units, a long-range telephone, binoculars and a fax machine. He also had the identification card/building access card for BLM employees and his supervisor's airport identification/ access card, which had been stolen in July from the shower room of the fire center....
Developers eye Mojave land California's Mojave Desert has long been the scene of controversy and litigation, much of it driven by conflicts over off-road vehicle use, mining, grazing and the Defense Department's fondness for dropping bombs and driving tanks on it. The Mojave is a landscape of deceptive fragility, and defenders of its rare species and harsh beauty have clashed repeatedly with user groups, industry and the military. Suburban sprawl has not been high on the list of threats, but that is changing. Desert development is booming, particularly in the dusty hinterlands of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, thanks to cheap land, soaring housing costs near the coast, and the apparently boundless willingness of Californians to commute long distances on congested freeways....
Plan may keep bird off endangered list State wildlife officials are seeking landowner agreement programs to protect the Gunnison sage grouse before the bird ends up on the federal Endangered Species List. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is under a court order to propose a rule in September aimed at protecting the bird. The agency then has one year to solicit comments and make a final ruling whether to list it as a "threatened" species. In the meantime, state and federal officials are hoping to put protection plans in place that would keep the listing from being necessary. Since 2000, the Gunnison sage grouse has been recognized as a separate species from the greater sage grouse. It is found in only 10 counties in the southwestern part of Colorado and a few areas of Utah. Wildlife officials estimate its numbers in Colorado at 3,200....
Editorial: A vanishing wildlife fund THE DISCOVERY last month in Arkansas that the magnificent ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct after all should prove to Congress the value of land conservation and the protection of endangered species. But Congress is moving in exactly the opposite direction. A House subcommittee has dropped all money for land acquisition from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and other lawmakers are working to strip the Endangered Species Act of much of its authority to protect critical habitats. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is supposed to receive as much as $900 million a year in royalties collected from federal leases for offshore oil and gas drilling. The House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee left it with nothing but operating funds. The subcommittee was only slightly less stingy with the Forest Legacy program, approving just $25 million, the lowest amount in six years. This program is a crucial source of money for states seeking to protect privately owned forestlands from development....
U.S. study says water levels dropping A federal review of the water bank that spent $7.6 million this year to buy irrigation water from Klamath Reclamation Project farmers to increase flows for salmon finds it is seriously drawing down the local water table and may not be able to help fish through extended dry periods. In a report released yesterday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said a preliminary estimate has found that private wells pumping for the water bank have increased demand on the local groundwater eightfold, causing water levels in other wells to drop between 2 and 20 feet....
Missouri dog wins hero award for saving rancher's life A border collie and golden retriever mix from Missouri has won the National Hero Dog award for alerting her owner that her husband was pinned underneath a tractor. Eight-year-old Shannon, who lives on an 80-acre ranch in Washington, Mo., accepted the 23rd annual National Hero Dog award Friday with her owners Ted and Peggy Mandry. The award does not honor trained rescue dogs. Instead it honors "a companion animal that's well-treated and has bonded with the family, so they somehow know what to do and step up to the plate when there's trouble," said Madeline Bernstein, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles. Shannon caught media attention last June when firefighters credited her for saving Ted Mandry's life....
Rancher Finds Balloon Cluster With Letter to Heaven on His Property John Meadows was checking for newborn calves Monday morning when he spotted a white patch in the field of green grass on his Estancia area ranch. It was not the white face of a Hereford newborn or a piece of blowing trash that greeted Meadows, but a sheet of white paper tied to a trio of white balloons with blue ribbon. The paper Meadows found on Monday was neatly folded and contained the following words in a child-like scrawl: "Hi Mom I love you. Doo you like Heaven I hope so God willing I will see you one of these days" The paper bore no legible signature, prompting Meadows to think a child wrote it....
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Friday, May 13, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Column: Slapstick politics make slipshod roadless policy "It's a fine mess you've gotten us into again, Stanley." That famous line from the comedy team Laurel and Hardy is reminiscent of the slapstick political maneuvers of the Bush Administration in its seemingly never-ending struggle to build roads into and develop the last slivers of America's wild lands. In a six-year long farcical, on-again-off-again waste of time and taxpayer money, the administration has merrily proceeded down one dead end after another in its whimsical undertaking to undermine the insistence of the American people that our still unroaded public lands remain just as they are-wild. The amateurish high jinks of the current administration began shortly after the swearing in ceremony of George W. Bush. With the sudden announcement that the new president intended to overturn "The Roadless Rule" and at the urging of the extractive industries, the "Rule" was hauled into court. Venue shopping for a friendly judge began. Following several years of legal machinations, an embarrassing loss to Bush before a federal circuit court and on the very eve of a second federal circuit court decision, the White House has rushed to announce its latest convoluted decision....
Drought crimps grazing on federal grasslands Drought is again prompting the U.S. Forest Service to sharply reduce the number of cattle allowed to graze on federal land in western South Dakota this summer. The Forest Service is cutting back on grazing in an attempt to encourage recovery of the grass and other vegetation on the nearly 2 million acres of federally owned land in two national forests and three national grasslands in western South Dakota, range management officials say. The grazing cutbacks will affect more than 600 private ranchers who will have to find other pasture or feed for thousands of head of cattle....
Forest bill altered; governor signs it this time around Nearly one month after vetoing a forest bill, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed an altered version into law Thursday. The bill provides a variety of tax breaks to entice industry to tackle the job of thinning out Arizona's overgrown forests. But unlike last month, when environmentalists cheered the governor's veto, the Sierra Club jeered her approval of Senate Bill 1283. The group said the bill is not targeted at getting rid of the smaller trees and brush that are clogging the forests and would extend the tax breaks to larger trees....
Why Are Coyotes Getting More Aggressive? Coyotes tend to avoid human contact. But recently, coyotes have been getting increasingly aggressive in the eastern United States, including southeastern New York state, attacking neighborhood pets on the fringe of urban and suburban areas. "This kind of aggressive behavior is usually the last stage before coyotes actually start attacking humans -- such as small children that are perceived by the coyotes as a potential food source," says Paul Curtis, associate professor of natural resources at Cornell University. He notes that in the past two decades, several dozen attacks on humans have been reported in California. Coyotes, which are closely related to dogs and wolves, are ubiquitous in North America, but they rarely have been a danger to humans. Fearful of being hunted and trapped, these large carnivores have typically stayed in wooded areas and away from humans. But now that coyotes have started foraging in suburban areas, more research is needed to find out why and how to prevent potential conflicts with people. Curtis and his colleagues are launching a five-year study of coyote ecology and behavior in urban and suburban areas of New York state, thanks to a grant of $428,000 from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)....
Defenders of Wildlife Releases "Living with Black Bears" DVD In celebration of Bear Awareness Week, May 15-21, Defenders of Wildlife is releasing its newest DVD, entitled "Living with Black Bears in the Tahoe Region." This DVD, which includes both English and Spanish versions of the program, was produced for use in employee and volunteer trainings, U.S. Forest Service ranger stations, and elementary school curriculum. "The 'Living with Black Bears' DVD will enhance bear awareness for those who visit and live in bear country," said Cynthia Wilkerson, California Representative for Defenders of Wildlife. "This presentation includes simple tips that residents and visitors can use to minimize conflicts with black bears in the Tahoe area. We hope that people will take responsibility for sharing habitat with bears by adopting these guidelines into their daily lives. Increasing bear awareness in Tahoe will improve the quality of life for both bears and humans."....
Tracking of mysterious wolverines sheds light In the gathering darkness, four biologists wearing headlamps surround an unconscious wolverine that is flat on its back, legs akimbo. They check a transmitter implanted in its belly and fit another, larger one on a collar around its heavily muscled neck. Then they inject the animal with the antidote to the drug that knocked it out and place it in a box trap. An hour or so later, when the lid of the trap is opened, the animal clambers out and runs into the forest. Every two hours the position of the wolverine -- known as M-1 -- is fixed by a geopositioning satellite and recorded in the collar. A few weeks later, the wolverine is recaptured, and a record of its travels is downloaded from the collar into a laptop. The result confirms data that the researchers have accumulated over three years: Wolverines are wildly peripatetic....
Meager chinook run leaves fishing industry high and dry Fertilizer salesman Rex Harke had planned to take 12 of his most loyal clients on a salmon-fishing expedition down the Columbia River this week. Usually at this time, the spring chinook are charging up the river in the tens of thousands, heading from the Pacific Ocean to their spawning beds. But in a phenomenon that has puzzled environmentalists and government biologists, this season the fish have failed to appear. The low numbers prompted officials to halt sport and commercial fishing on the river — and Harke reluctantly called his guide to cancel....
Prison program trains wild horses for new homes Inmate Dean Kruk of Reno reined in the wild horse he was riding Wednesday at the Warm Springs Correctional Center’s training area and paused to talk about the prison’s gentling program. “It has changed my life,” the 47-year-old Kruk said as he stroked “Buddy,” a 3-year-old sorrel gelding rounded up by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from the Jackson Mountains northwest of Winnemucca. The saddle-trained horse, and 11 others gathered by the BLM and Nevada Department of Agriculture throughout the state, are set to be adopted Saturday in a public auction at the Carson City minimum security prison....
Billing glitch terminates oil and gas leases Glitch or no glitch, the federal government demands yearly rental payments on oil and gas leases, or the leases may be terminated and re-sold into the market. Richard Ryan of Cheyenne said he and many others with mineral leases in Wyoming and across the West are paying for the Mineral Management Service's failure to send out lease rental notifications in 2002. Without the notification, many lease holders failed to make the $2-per-acre rental payment for that year. However, the federal government considers the notification a courtesy. The Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled in February that regardless of notification, it is up to mineral lessees to make timely rental payments. Ryan and others who failed to make their 2002 rental payments were asked by the Minerals Management Service to either pay a five-fold increase rental fee or lose their leases....
America's unheralded water cleanup With little fanfare, counties, states, and the federal government have collectively spent an estimated $14 billion or more - at least $1 billion a year since 1990 - to restore rivers and streams to their natural condition, not including dollars spent on Goliath restoration projects like the Everglades. Ironically, the move to clean up America's unheralded rivers comes at a time when the condition of the nation's waterways overall is starting to deteriorate. That finding is tempered by growing signs that the nation's rivers are getting dirtier overall - after decades of getting cleaner, the same study notes. From about 1973 to 1998, rivers and lakes in the United States were getting cleaner, but that's now reversed itself, according to American Rivers, which helped organize the new study....
Nevada water bill pits rural governments against urban lawmaker Governments couldn't sell water rights at market value, under a bill debated Wednesday in an Assembly panel - and opposed by rural Nevada officials who said it will keep them from getting what the water's really worth in this arid state. Sen. Warren Hardy, R-Las Vegas, said he introduced SB466 to keep local government agencies from sales of water rights at inflated prices that would "drive the fair-market value of water through the roof." Hardy's bill, reviewed by the Assembly Government Affairs Committee, would prohibit state and local government agencies from selling or leasing a water right for more than the appraised value. Currently, the price of the water is left to the market - and scarce supplies and rapid growth have typically kept the price well above the appraised value....
Mouths Where Their Money Is Yesterday, nearly 400 people met at the United Nations headquarters to talk about changing the world. They were upbeat and enthusiastic about their power to get corporate America's attention, and to demand that it take climate change seriously. And not just take it seriously, but do something about it. Who were these people? Global activists? International diplomats? No. They were American state treasurers, city and state comptrollers, and managers of pension and mutual funds, joined by a smattering of their European colleagues. They gathered for the second Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk, cosponsored by the United Nations Foundation -- established by billionaire Ted Turner in 1998 to support U.N. causes -- and Ceres, a Boston-based investor-environmentalist coalition. These financial managers collectively control trillions of dollars in investments in U.S. public corporations, and are responsible for seeing to it that millions of retired steelworkers, teachers, state employees, and others do not wake up one day and find themselves not just elderly, but poor. As far as these professionals are concerned, climate change is creating huge investment risks -- but it also holds the potential for enormous financial rewards. It is their professional responsibility to see to it that U.S. corporations deal with both....
Bottlenecks Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond. Are our dealings with nature sustainable? Can we expect world economic growth to continue for the foreseeable future? Should we be confident that our knowledge and skills will increase in ways that will lessen our reliance on nature despite our growing numbers and rising economic activity? Jared Diamond, a professor of geography in California, looks for answers to these big questions by examining the societies that collapsed. The body of his book contains accounts of four such societies: the Easter Islanders; the Anasazi; the Mayans; and the Norse in Greenland, who died out six hundred years ago. Diamond demonstrates that the proximate cause of each collapse was ecological devastation brought about, broadly speaking, by one or more of the following: deforestation and habitat destruction; soil degradation (erosion, salinisation and fertility decline); water management problems; over-hunting; over-fishing; population growth; increased per capita impact on the environment; and the impact of exotic species on native species of plants and animals. As might be expected, the relative importance of these factors differs from case to case....
Escape from Ecotopia In the afterword to the 30th-anniversary edition of his 1975 novel, Ernest Callenbach writes, "Looking back, it seems clear that Ecotopia was the first attempt to portray a sustainable society, and that this, more than its modest literary merit, explains its durability." Sadly, there is no false humility in that statement. Ecotopia is ostensibly about a secessionist Northwest -- northern California, Oregon, and Washington -- founded on ecological principles. In this independent land, cars are abolished, everybody recycles, and sewage is turned to fertilizer. More fundamentally, Ecotopia is a "stable-state" society, where old notions of economic progress are retired and "biological stasis" becomes the ultimate goal. That sounds good, as far as it goes; however, the vision is weighed down by so much extraneous cultural baggage -- Marxism, paganism, free love, ritual warfare, communal living, abortion on demand, legalized drugs, gamelan orchestras -- that readers coming to Ecotopia for the first time will find both more and less than they bargained for....
A farewell tribute to Mary Dann On Saturday morning, April 30, 2005, Dann family members, relatives, friends and supporters gathered at the Dann family ranch in Crescent Valley, in the Western Shoshone Territory (Nevada), to honor Mary Dann. As white billowing clouds hovered in the distance above beautiful desert mountain peaks, people gathered to honor Western Shoshone elder Mary Dann, who died on Earth Day, April 22, in an all-terrain vehicle accident while checking a fence line at the Dann ranch. Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney said a prayer in the Shoshone language and blessed the food. He reminded everyone that Mother Earth provides us with all the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the land we live on. He advised everyone to stay mindful of this fact. A number of Mary's immediate family members reminisced about Mary's life and told everyone how much they had learned from her life, her wisdom, and from the powerful example that she set, with her quiet and plainspoken style....
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Column: Slapstick politics make slipshod roadless policy "It's a fine mess you've gotten us into again, Stanley." That famous line from the comedy team Laurel and Hardy is reminiscent of the slapstick political maneuvers of the Bush Administration in its seemingly never-ending struggle to build roads into and develop the last slivers of America's wild lands. In a six-year long farcical, on-again-off-again waste of time and taxpayer money, the administration has merrily proceeded down one dead end after another in its whimsical undertaking to undermine the insistence of the American people that our still unroaded public lands remain just as they are-wild. The amateurish high jinks of the current administration began shortly after the swearing in ceremony of George W. Bush. With the sudden announcement that the new president intended to overturn "The Roadless Rule" and at the urging of the extractive industries, the "Rule" was hauled into court. Venue shopping for a friendly judge began. Following several years of legal machinations, an embarrassing loss to Bush before a federal circuit court and on the very eve of a second federal circuit court decision, the White House has rushed to announce its latest convoluted decision....
Drought crimps grazing on federal grasslands Drought is again prompting the U.S. Forest Service to sharply reduce the number of cattle allowed to graze on federal land in western South Dakota this summer. The Forest Service is cutting back on grazing in an attempt to encourage recovery of the grass and other vegetation on the nearly 2 million acres of federally owned land in two national forests and three national grasslands in western South Dakota, range management officials say. The grazing cutbacks will affect more than 600 private ranchers who will have to find other pasture or feed for thousands of head of cattle....
Forest bill altered; governor signs it this time around Nearly one month after vetoing a forest bill, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed an altered version into law Thursday. The bill provides a variety of tax breaks to entice industry to tackle the job of thinning out Arizona's overgrown forests. But unlike last month, when environmentalists cheered the governor's veto, the Sierra Club jeered her approval of Senate Bill 1283. The group said the bill is not targeted at getting rid of the smaller trees and brush that are clogging the forests and would extend the tax breaks to larger trees....
Why Are Coyotes Getting More Aggressive? Coyotes tend to avoid human contact. But recently, coyotes have been getting increasingly aggressive in the eastern United States, including southeastern New York state, attacking neighborhood pets on the fringe of urban and suburban areas. "This kind of aggressive behavior is usually the last stage before coyotes actually start attacking humans -- such as small children that are perceived by the coyotes as a potential food source," says Paul Curtis, associate professor of natural resources at Cornell University. He notes that in the past two decades, several dozen attacks on humans have been reported in California. Coyotes, which are closely related to dogs and wolves, are ubiquitous in North America, but they rarely have been a danger to humans. Fearful of being hunted and trapped, these large carnivores have typically stayed in wooded areas and away from humans. But now that coyotes have started foraging in suburban areas, more research is needed to find out why and how to prevent potential conflicts with people. Curtis and his colleagues are launching a five-year study of coyote ecology and behavior in urban and suburban areas of New York state, thanks to a grant of $428,000 from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)....
Defenders of Wildlife Releases "Living with Black Bears" DVD In celebration of Bear Awareness Week, May 15-21, Defenders of Wildlife is releasing its newest DVD, entitled "Living with Black Bears in the Tahoe Region." This DVD, which includes both English and Spanish versions of the program, was produced for use in employee and volunteer trainings, U.S. Forest Service ranger stations, and elementary school curriculum. "The 'Living with Black Bears' DVD will enhance bear awareness for those who visit and live in bear country," said Cynthia Wilkerson, California Representative for Defenders of Wildlife. "This presentation includes simple tips that residents and visitors can use to minimize conflicts with black bears in the Tahoe area. We hope that people will take responsibility for sharing habitat with bears by adopting these guidelines into their daily lives. Increasing bear awareness in Tahoe will improve the quality of life for both bears and humans."....
Tracking of mysterious wolverines sheds light In the gathering darkness, four biologists wearing headlamps surround an unconscious wolverine that is flat on its back, legs akimbo. They check a transmitter implanted in its belly and fit another, larger one on a collar around its heavily muscled neck. Then they inject the animal with the antidote to the drug that knocked it out and place it in a box trap. An hour or so later, when the lid of the trap is opened, the animal clambers out and runs into the forest. Every two hours the position of the wolverine -- known as M-1 -- is fixed by a geopositioning satellite and recorded in the collar. A few weeks later, the wolverine is recaptured, and a record of its travels is downloaded from the collar into a laptop. The result confirms data that the researchers have accumulated over three years: Wolverines are wildly peripatetic....
Meager chinook run leaves fishing industry high and dry Fertilizer salesman Rex Harke had planned to take 12 of his most loyal clients on a salmon-fishing expedition down the Columbia River this week. Usually at this time, the spring chinook are charging up the river in the tens of thousands, heading from the Pacific Ocean to their spawning beds. But in a phenomenon that has puzzled environmentalists and government biologists, this season the fish have failed to appear. The low numbers prompted officials to halt sport and commercial fishing on the river — and Harke reluctantly called his guide to cancel....
Prison program trains wild horses for new homes Inmate Dean Kruk of Reno reined in the wild horse he was riding Wednesday at the Warm Springs Correctional Center’s training area and paused to talk about the prison’s gentling program. “It has changed my life,” the 47-year-old Kruk said as he stroked “Buddy,” a 3-year-old sorrel gelding rounded up by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from the Jackson Mountains northwest of Winnemucca. The saddle-trained horse, and 11 others gathered by the BLM and Nevada Department of Agriculture throughout the state, are set to be adopted Saturday in a public auction at the Carson City minimum security prison....
Billing glitch terminates oil and gas leases Glitch or no glitch, the federal government demands yearly rental payments on oil and gas leases, or the leases may be terminated and re-sold into the market. Richard Ryan of Cheyenne said he and many others with mineral leases in Wyoming and across the West are paying for the Mineral Management Service's failure to send out lease rental notifications in 2002. Without the notification, many lease holders failed to make the $2-per-acre rental payment for that year. However, the federal government considers the notification a courtesy. The Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled in February that regardless of notification, it is up to mineral lessees to make timely rental payments. Ryan and others who failed to make their 2002 rental payments were asked by the Minerals Management Service to either pay a five-fold increase rental fee or lose their leases....
America's unheralded water cleanup With little fanfare, counties, states, and the federal government have collectively spent an estimated $14 billion or more - at least $1 billion a year since 1990 - to restore rivers and streams to their natural condition, not including dollars spent on Goliath restoration projects like the Everglades. Ironically, the move to clean up America's unheralded rivers comes at a time when the condition of the nation's waterways overall is starting to deteriorate. That finding is tempered by growing signs that the nation's rivers are getting dirtier overall - after decades of getting cleaner, the same study notes. From about 1973 to 1998, rivers and lakes in the United States were getting cleaner, but that's now reversed itself, according to American Rivers, which helped organize the new study....
Nevada water bill pits rural governments against urban lawmaker Governments couldn't sell water rights at market value, under a bill debated Wednesday in an Assembly panel - and opposed by rural Nevada officials who said it will keep them from getting what the water's really worth in this arid state. Sen. Warren Hardy, R-Las Vegas, said he introduced SB466 to keep local government agencies from sales of water rights at inflated prices that would "drive the fair-market value of water through the roof." Hardy's bill, reviewed by the Assembly Government Affairs Committee, would prohibit state and local government agencies from selling or leasing a water right for more than the appraised value. Currently, the price of the water is left to the market - and scarce supplies and rapid growth have typically kept the price well above the appraised value....
Mouths Where Their Money Is Yesterday, nearly 400 people met at the United Nations headquarters to talk about changing the world. They were upbeat and enthusiastic about their power to get corporate America's attention, and to demand that it take climate change seriously. And not just take it seriously, but do something about it. Who were these people? Global activists? International diplomats? No. They were American state treasurers, city and state comptrollers, and managers of pension and mutual funds, joined by a smattering of their European colleagues. They gathered for the second Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk, cosponsored by the United Nations Foundation -- established by billionaire Ted Turner in 1998 to support U.N. causes -- and Ceres, a Boston-based investor-environmentalist coalition. These financial managers collectively control trillions of dollars in investments in U.S. public corporations, and are responsible for seeing to it that millions of retired steelworkers, teachers, state employees, and others do not wake up one day and find themselves not just elderly, but poor. As far as these professionals are concerned, climate change is creating huge investment risks -- but it also holds the potential for enormous financial rewards. It is their professional responsibility to see to it that U.S. corporations deal with both....
Bottlenecks Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond. Are our dealings with nature sustainable? Can we expect world economic growth to continue for the foreseeable future? Should we be confident that our knowledge and skills will increase in ways that will lessen our reliance on nature despite our growing numbers and rising economic activity? Jared Diamond, a professor of geography in California, looks for answers to these big questions by examining the societies that collapsed. The body of his book contains accounts of four such societies: the Easter Islanders; the Anasazi; the Mayans; and the Norse in Greenland, who died out six hundred years ago. Diamond demonstrates that the proximate cause of each collapse was ecological devastation brought about, broadly speaking, by one or more of the following: deforestation and habitat destruction; soil degradation (erosion, salinisation and fertility decline); water management problems; over-hunting; over-fishing; population growth; increased per capita impact on the environment; and the impact of exotic species on native species of plants and animals. As might be expected, the relative importance of these factors differs from case to case....
Escape from Ecotopia In the afterword to the 30th-anniversary edition of his 1975 novel, Ernest Callenbach writes, "Looking back, it seems clear that Ecotopia was the first attempt to portray a sustainable society, and that this, more than its modest literary merit, explains its durability." Sadly, there is no false humility in that statement. Ecotopia is ostensibly about a secessionist Northwest -- northern California, Oregon, and Washington -- founded on ecological principles. In this independent land, cars are abolished, everybody recycles, and sewage is turned to fertilizer. More fundamentally, Ecotopia is a "stable-state" society, where old notions of economic progress are retired and "biological stasis" becomes the ultimate goal. That sounds good, as far as it goes; however, the vision is weighed down by so much extraneous cultural baggage -- Marxism, paganism, free love, ritual warfare, communal living, abortion on demand, legalized drugs, gamelan orchestras -- that readers coming to Ecotopia for the first time will find both more and less than they bargained for....
A farewell tribute to Mary Dann On Saturday morning, April 30, 2005, Dann family members, relatives, friends and supporters gathered at the Dann family ranch in Crescent Valley, in the Western Shoshone Territory (Nevada), to honor Mary Dann. As white billowing clouds hovered in the distance above beautiful desert mountain peaks, people gathered to honor Western Shoshone elder Mary Dann, who died on Earth Day, April 22, in an all-terrain vehicle accident while checking a fence line at the Dann ranch. Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney said a prayer in the Shoshone language and blessed the food. He reminded everyone that Mother Earth provides us with all the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the land we live on. He advised everyone to stay mindful of this fact. A number of Mary's immediate family members reminisced about Mary's life and told everyone how much they had learned from her life, her wisdom, and from the powerful example that she set, with her quiet and plainspoken style....
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Thursday, May 12, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Feds order lethal hunt for endangered wolf pack The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday ordered the killing of a pack of endangered Mexican gray wolves that has been preying on livestock in the Gila National Forest. The Francisco pack has killed four animals in the past several weeks. Officials with the agency's wolf reintroduction program said field teams attempted to haze the wolves using noisemakers and rubber bullets following the first attack. "Despite our best efforts these wolves continued to kill livestock and that is unacceptable," Southwest regional director H. Dale Hall said Wednesday. "Wolves that repeatedly depredate endanger the recovery of the species as a whole." Since hazing failed, Hall said lethal means will be the most responsive method to address the needs of those economically affected by the wolf program....
Grizzlies stir uproar: Big predators' future in Idaho is on the line Members of several wildlife conservation groups such as the National Rural Defense Council, Earthjustice and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition have been trying to return grizzlies to the Selway-Bitterroot wilderness area of central Idaho for decades. Some of the reasoning behind the effort to move grizzlies into the area is to develop a corridor that could link populations of bears all the way from Alaska to the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The idea has been coined Y2Y (Yukon to Yellowstone.) Lance Craighead, a wildlife biologist who runs the Craighead Environmental Resource Institute, said he would like to see bear populations connect because it would provide greater genetic variation in the whole population....
Tests to reveal pups' parentage Are they dogs or wolf-dogs? Wildlife officials want to know, and they've taken six pups from a den in eastern Arizona to determine their parentage. If the 6-week-old animals are determined to be anything other than purebred Mexican wolves, they likely will be euthanized, said John Morgart, coordinator of the Mexican wolf recovery program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We're not in the business of producing hybrids," he said. "We want to keep the genetics pure." The pups were captured Tuesday, and blood was drawn from the pups late Wednesday. The samples are being sent to a Fish and Wildlife forensic laboratory for analysis. Morgart said it would be weeks before results come back....
Pesticide appearing in watershed Five years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to phase out homeowner sales of diazinon, a popular lawn insecticide that posed human health risks and had shown up at elevated levels in Seattle-area streams. As diazinon has disappeared from retail shelves, many Puget Sound homeowners have turned to carbaryl, a chemical that federal sampling now detects in the Seattle watershed of Thornton Creek. Carbaryl, sold under the brand name Sevin, is toxic to aquatic bugs that are an important source of food for fish and birds, and its presence in the waterway was flagged this week in an analysis released by the Washington Toxics Coalition, which has been campaigning to reduce pesticide use in the Puget Sound region. Chemical-company officials say that carbaryl has been in widespread use for more than a half century, and proved to be a safe and effective chemical against a wide range of pests. Bayer CropScience, maker of Sevin, calls it "one of the most environmentally responsible pesticides you can use." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a letter to the EPA earlier this year, said it was concerned about carbaryl's risks to threatened and endangered species, and noted "a growing body of literature" about the chronic effects of carbaryl on aquatic organisms....
Judge Closes 700 Miles of Off-road trails on Eldorado National Forest A federal court judge yesterday tentatively ordered the United States Forest Service to close over 700 miles of roads and trails on the Eldorado National Forest to off-road vehicle (ORV) use. Judge Lawrence K. Karlton announced his tentative order at the conclusion of a remedy hearing in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups challenging the Forest Service’s management of ORVs throughout the Forest. The court’s closure order follows its February determination that the Service adopted its 1990 ORV plan for the Forest in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Judge Karlton also gave the Forest Service 30 days to propose a time-schedule for completing the required, forest-wide NEPA analysis for its forest-wide ORV plan. The plaintiffs, Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation, Center for Biological Diversity and California Wilderness Coalition, and the ORV groups that intervened in the lawsuit, will have 30 days to respond to the Forest Service’s proposal before Judge Karlton makes his order final....
Park Service memo sparks concern over job competitions A memo on National Park Service job competitions set off a brief firestorm after a watchdog group interpreted the document as meaning that entire parks could be outsourced to private contractors. Tuesday, the Washington-based advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sent out a statement saying, "We have now reached the point where Disney or Bally's Resorts can bid on entire national park operations with almost no public debate on whether that is appropriate." NPS was quick to refute that interpretation. "We are definitely not, nor are we going to be, doing any kind of competitive sourcing for an entire park--that's just not going to happen," said Elaine Sevy, NPS spokeswoman....
BLM pulls 14 parcels from auction; congressman says it’s not enough The Bureau of Land Management decided Wednesday to remove 17,502 acres of privately owned lands in Colorado from today’s mineral lease auction, a move that didn’t go far enough, said U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo. Salazar had requested the entire auction be postponed until August, action the BLM said it can’t take under federal law if it has lands nominated for quarterly auctions. Today’s auction will proceed in the BLM state office in Lakewood with 56 parcels that cover 30,043 acres. Fourteen parcels in Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties, where the federal government owns the mineral rights, were removed. Another 32 such split-estate leases remain in the auction, state BLM Communications Director Vaughn Whatley said. The BLM had not heard much concern expressed or protests made about those areas, he said....
BLM, oil and gas companies join to end dumping of produced water The Bureau Of Land Management’s Carlsbad Field Office has formed a partnership with oil and gas companies in Eddy and Lea counties to address illegal dumping of produced water on public lands. “Produced water is a byproduct of oil and gas production that is pulled up with petroleum and must be disposed of properly,” explained Tony Herrell, BLM Carlsbad Field Office manager. “Most produced water is very salty, and some of it may contain heavy metals and volatile organic compounds that can sterilize the ground and kill off vegetation and wildlife.” Herrell said his office is partnering with the BLM’s state counterpart, the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division, and local oil and gas companies, including Marbob, Devon Energy and Yates Petroleum....
Energy bill stirs debate At issue is a section of the 1,000-plus-page energy bill passed by the House late last month. It calls for certain "limitations on required review" under the National Environmental Policy Act. That law requires federal land managers to conduct environmental studies before allowing significant development, and those studies include solicitation of public comments. Under the House energy bill -- which needs Senate approval before becoming law -- companies looking to drill wells 5 acres in size or less may be exempt from NEPA review. So would permits to drill in already developed areas. And wastewater discharge from things such as coal-bed methane drilling would not be subject to NEPA -- only to the federal water pollution control act. Just what these provisions might mean is the subject of deep debate....
Escalante grazing-permit case postponed After listening to three days of testimony, a judge on Wednesday placed on hold until September an appeal of grazing transfers in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Kane and Garfield counties are appealing the federal Bureau of Land Management's decision to transfer grazing rights for 1,200 cattle to the Canyonlands Grazing Corp., which was organized by the Grand Canyon Trust to run its grazing operations on public lands. Administrative law Judge Jim Heffernan's decision to postpone further deliberations came after attorneys for the two southern Utah counties claimed the corporation is not qualified under government statutes to graze cattle. "The Canyonlands Grazing Corp. is not engaged in the livestock business, does not intend nor want the land in question for grazing use and is not qualified to hold the grazing preference on the allotment," the attorneys stated in their appeal. Critics of the BLM's decision fear a ruling in favor of the Grand Canyon Trust would be the death knell of grazing - not only on the monument, but eventually on all public lands. Grazing is an integral element of the area's culture, traditions and economy, Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw told Heffernan at Wednesday's hearing. Like others who testified for the appellants at the hearing, Habbeshaw implied that the BLM is illegally conspiring with conservationists to end grazing on the monument by showing favoritism to conservation groups in the transfer of grazing allotments....
Huge water, conservation deal linked Flagstaff would have a reliable source of water beyond 2015 and northern Arizona could see a huge tract of private and public land conserved as ranchland and open space if the City Council moves on plans to buy 5,500 acres of the Bar T Bar Ranch 35 miles east of Flagstaff, stakeholders said Monday. Up to 100,000 acres of private and state land -- 156 square miles -- would become unattractive to developers, including 45,000 acres put entirely off limits to new houses southeast of the Navajo Nation's proposed casino. State land that checkerboards Judy and Bob Prosser's Bar T Bar Ranch would be surrounded by conservation land, effectively putting tens of thousands of acres out of reach for development for the next 20 years. The city would buy the 5,500 acres for $13.5 million to pump between 8,000 and 10,000 acre-feet of drinking water per year but would be partially reimbursed with $3 million in rent over 25 years for allowing 27 wind turbines to operate there in the Sunshine Wind Energy Park....
Pentagon seeks more waivers on rules Defense Department officials hope to use an upcoming defense authorization bill to expand the military's exemptions from several environmental and public health regulations, arguing the restrictions infringe on national security. The Pentagon has drafted provisions that would free it from specified air pollution and hazardous waste laws, provisions the House and Senate Armed Services Committee could take up this week as part of broader legislation giving the military spending authority. Environmentalists, joined by congressional Democrats and state and local officials, have launched an aggressive campaign to defeat the Pentagon's plan. They argue that the military -- which the government ranks as the nation's biggest polluter -- should meet its existing legal obligations. The Defense Department accounts for more than 10 percent of the country's top priority Superfund cleanup sites and generated 16.5 million pounds of toxic waste in 2002, according to government estimates....
Conservancy buys huge Ramona ranch he Nature Conservancy has bought more than 4,000 acres of ranch land south of Ramona, the national nonprofit group announced Wednesday. The sprawling mosaic of rock-studded hills and oak- and sycamore-lined valleys could eventually become a state or county park, conservancy officials said. Cam Tredennick, project director for the conservancy, called the purchase of the expansive Monte Vista Ranch a coup for the people of San Diego County....
Senate Finally Confirms Johnson as EPA Head After a month and a half of debate, the Senate has finally confirmed Stephen Johnson to head up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Johnson, an EPA lifer and the first scientist to be tapped to lead the agency in its three-decade history, must have breathed a sigh of relief after enduring criticism of agency policies from several Democratic Senators. First off, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) grilled Johnson regarding a controversial study slated to document the impact on household pesticides on children in Duval County, Florida. As a result of the questioning, Johnson killed the $9 million study. Then last week, Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE) blocked a vote on Johnson's confirmation to protest the EPA's unwillingness to analyze how White House proposals to reduce air pollution compared with competing approaches....
Nevada senator backs off property rights bill Faced with strong opposition from environmentalists and local officials, a Nevada legislator has backed off his proposal to prohibit governments from seizing private property for use as open space. Senator Terry Care's bill would have prohibited governments from using eminent domain authority to acquire property for open-space or wildlife habitat preservation. It would have affected all pending cases in the state, including the fight over development of the Ballardini Ranch south of Reno. Care says he still believes eminent domain shouldn't be used to preserve open space. But he says there was too much opposition to push the issue this session....
Nonresident hunting limits stand Wyoming and other Western states will be able to continue limiting nonresident hunting and fishing licenses under a bill passed Tuesday by Congress. A supplemental appropriations bill approved by the Senate on Tuesday includes an amendment that will protect the traditional authority of states to regulate hunting and fishing, said U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who cosponsored the bill. The bill allows states including Wyoming to continue distinguishing between residents and nonresidents when issuing hunting and fishing licenses. Enzi's measure was prompted by a 2002 ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling said that Arizona's law allotting just 10 percent of bull elk and antlered deer hunting tags to nonresidents was an act of "overt discrimination."....
Tyson Boosts Canada Beef Output as U.S. Bans Cattle Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest beef processor, said it will boost production capacity at a plant in Alberta by 24 percent next month as a ban on Canadian cattle imports limits supplies for the company's U.S. facilities. A $17 million expansion at the Brooks, Alberta, plant will increase production capacity to 4,700 head of cattle a day from 3,800, Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods said today in a statement. Tyson has cut production at its U.S. plants because of the cattle shortage that developed after the U.S. suspended imports when mad cow disease was found in Canada in May 2003. The U.S. meatpacking industry will permanently lose jobs to Canada unless the ban on Canadian cattle is lifted, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has warned. In March, he said Canada's processing capacity had increased 20 percent in the past year and may increase another 10 percent by the end of 2005. Tyson said the expansion at the Brooks plant will add as many as 300 jobs....
Big Bend history unfolds in memories at the regional historical commission meeting I had lunch that day with Charlie and Sixie Davis from Fort Stockton, who drove over for the meeting. Charlie, who admits to being 80, played shortstop for H.L. Kokernot Jr.’s Alpine Cowboys from 1946 to 1953, and he has a stack of scrapbooks and photographs from those days. He told me that in 1958, when Kokernot decided to put lights on the Cowboys’ stadium, the electrician doing the job asked him how many lights he wanted. “Call Yankee Stadium and find out how many lights they have,” Kokernot said. “I want one more than that.” Charlie’s wife, Sixie, grew up on her family’s ranch at Hovey, between Fort Stockton and Alpine. Over lunch, Sixie told me about the day in 1955 that a jet fighter plane crashed on her parents’ ranch. She was there, helping her father shear sheep, and they heard the crash and saw the plume of smoke. Sixie jumped in an old jeep and went to investigate....
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Feds order lethal hunt for endangered wolf pack The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday ordered the killing of a pack of endangered Mexican gray wolves that has been preying on livestock in the Gila National Forest. The Francisco pack has killed four animals in the past several weeks. Officials with the agency's wolf reintroduction program said field teams attempted to haze the wolves using noisemakers and rubber bullets following the first attack. "Despite our best efforts these wolves continued to kill livestock and that is unacceptable," Southwest regional director H. Dale Hall said Wednesday. "Wolves that repeatedly depredate endanger the recovery of the species as a whole." Since hazing failed, Hall said lethal means will be the most responsive method to address the needs of those economically affected by the wolf program....
Grizzlies stir uproar: Big predators' future in Idaho is on the line Members of several wildlife conservation groups such as the National Rural Defense Council, Earthjustice and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition have been trying to return grizzlies to the Selway-Bitterroot wilderness area of central Idaho for decades. Some of the reasoning behind the effort to move grizzlies into the area is to develop a corridor that could link populations of bears all the way from Alaska to the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The idea has been coined Y2Y (Yukon to Yellowstone.) Lance Craighead, a wildlife biologist who runs the Craighead Environmental Resource Institute, said he would like to see bear populations connect because it would provide greater genetic variation in the whole population....
Tests to reveal pups' parentage Are they dogs or wolf-dogs? Wildlife officials want to know, and they've taken six pups from a den in eastern Arizona to determine their parentage. If the 6-week-old animals are determined to be anything other than purebred Mexican wolves, they likely will be euthanized, said John Morgart, coordinator of the Mexican wolf recovery program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We're not in the business of producing hybrids," he said. "We want to keep the genetics pure." The pups were captured Tuesday, and blood was drawn from the pups late Wednesday. The samples are being sent to a Fish and Wildlife forensic laboratory for analysis. Morgart said it would be weeks before results come back....
Pesticide appearing in watershed Five years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to phase out homeowner sales of diazinon, a popular lawn insecticide that posed human health risks and had shown up at elevated levels in Seattle-area streams. As diazinon has disappeared from retail shelves, many Puget Sound homeowners have turned to carbaryl, a chemical that federal sampling now detects in the Seattle watershed of Thornton Creek. Carbaryl, sold under the brand name Sevin, is toxic to aquatic bugs that are an important source of food for fish and birds, and its presence in the waterway was flagged this week in an analysis released by the Washington Toxics Coalition, which has been campaigning to reduce pesticide use in the Puget Sound region. Chemical-company officials say that carbaryl has been in widespread use for more than a half century, and proved to be a safe and effective chemical against a wide range of pests. Bayer CropScience, maker of Sevin, calls it "one of the most environmentally responsible pesticides you can use." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a letter to the EPA earlier this year, said it was concerned about carbaryl's risks to threatened and endangered species, and noted "a growing body of literature" about the chronic effects of carbaryl on aquatic organisms....
Judge Closes 700 Miles of Off-road trails on Eldorado National Forest A federal court judge yesterday tentatively ordered the United States Forest Service to close over 700 miles of roads and trails on the Eldorado National Forest to off-road vehicle (ORV) use. Judge Lawrence K. Karlton announced his tentative order at the conclusion of a remedy hearing in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups challenging the Forest Service’s management of ORVs throughout the Forest. The court’s closure order follows its February determination that the Service adopted its 1990 ORV plan for the Forest in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Judge Karlton also gave the Forest Service 30 days to propose a time-schedule for completing the required, forest-wide NEPA analysis for its forest-wide ORV plan. The plaintiffs, Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation, Center for Biological Diversity and California Wilderness Coalition, and the ORV groups that intervened in the lawsuit, will have 30 days to respond to the Forest Service’s proposal before Judge Karlton makes his order final....
Park Service memo sparks concern over job competitions A memo on National Park Service job competitions set off a brief firestorm after a watchdog group interpreted the document as meaning that entire parks could be outsourced to private contractors. Tuesday, the Washington-based advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sent out a statement saying, "We have now reached the point where Disney or Bally's Resorts can bid on entire national park operations with almost no public debate on whether that is appropriate." NPS was quick to refute that interpretation. "We are definitely not, nor are we going to be, doing any kind of competitive sourcing for an entire park--that's just not going to happen," said Elaine Sevy, NPS spokeswoman....
BLM pulls 14 parcels from auction; congressman says it’s not enough The Bureau of Land Management decided Wednesday to remove 17,502 acres of privately owned lands in Colorado from today’s mineral lease auction, a move that didn’t go far enough, said U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo. Salazar had requested the entire auction be postponed until August, action the BLM said it can’t take under federal law if it has lands nominated for quarterly auctions. Today’s auction will proceed in the BLM state office in Lakewood with 56 parcels that cover 30,043 acres. Fourteen parcels in Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties, where the federal government owns the mineral rights, were removed. Another 32 such split-estate leases remain in the auction, state BLM Communications Director Vaughn Whatley said. The BLM had not heard much concern expressed or protests made about those areas, he said....
BLM, oil and gas companies join to end dumping of produced water The Bureau Of Land Management’s Carlsbad Field Office has formed a partnership with oil and gas companies in Eddy and Lea counties to address illegal dumping of produced water on public lands. “Produced water is a byproduct of oil and gas production that is pulled up with petroleum and must be disposed of properly,” explained Tony Herrell, BLM Carlsbad Field Office manager. “Most produced water is very salty, and some of it may contain heavy metals and volatile organic compounds that can sterilize the ground and kill off vegetation and wildlife.” Herrell said his office is partnering with the BLM’s state counterpart, the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division, and local oil and gas companies, including Marbob, Devon Energy and Yates Petroleum....
Energy bill stirs debate At issue is a section of the 1,000-plus-page energy bill passed by the House late last month. It calls for certain "limitations on required review" under the National Environmental Policy Act. That law requires federal land managers to conduct environmental studies before allowing significant development, and those studies include solicitation of public comments. Under the House energy bill -- which needs Senate approval before becoming law -- companies looking to drill wells 5 acres in size or less may be exempt from NEPA review. So would permits to drill in already developed areas. And wastewater discharge from things such as coal-bed methane drilling would not be subject to NEPA -- only to the federal water pollution control act. Just what these provisions might mean is the subject of deep debate....
Escalante grazing-permit case postponed After listening to three days of testimony, a judge on Wednesday placed on hold until September an appeal of grazing transfers in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Kane and Garfield counties are appealing the federal Bureau of Land Management's decision to transfer grazing rights for 1,200 cattle to the Canyonlands Grazing Corp., which was organized by the Grand Canyon Trust to run its grazing operations on public lands. Administrative law Judge Jim Heffernan's decision to postpone further deliberations came after attorneys for the two southern Utah counties claimed the corporation is not qualified under government statutes to graze cattle. "The Canyonlands Grazing Corp. is not engaged in the livestock business, does not intend nor want the land in question for grazing use and is not qualified to hold the grazing preference on the allotment," the attorneys stated in their appeal. Critics of the BLM's decision fear a ruling in favor of the Grand Canyon Trust would be the death knell of grazing - not only on the monument, but eventually on all public lands. Grazing is an integral element of the area's culture, traditions and economy, Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw told Heffernan at Wednesday's hearing. Like others who testified for the appellants at the hearing, Habbeshaw implied that the BLM is illegally conspiring with conservationists to end grazing on the monument by showing favoritism to conservation groups in the transfer of grazing allotments....
Huge water, conservation deal linked Flagstaff would have a reliable source of water beyond 2015 and northern Arizona could see a huge tract of private and public land conserved as ranchland and open space if the City Council moves on plans to buy 5,500 acres of the Bar T Bar Ranch 35 miles east of Flagstaff, stakeholders said Monday. Up to 100,000 acres of private and state land -- 156 square miles -- would become unattractive to developers, including 45,000 acres put entirely off limits to new houses southeast of the Navajo Nation's proposed casino. State land that checkerboards Judy and Bob Prosser's Bar T Bar Ranch would be surrounded by conservation land, effectively putting tens of thousands of acres out of reach for development for the next 20 years. The city would buy the 5,500 acres for $13.5 million to pump between 8,000 and 10,000 acre-feet of drinking water per year but would be partially reimbursed with $3 million in rent over 25 years for allowing 27 wind turbines to operate there in the Sunshine Wind Energy Park....
Pentagon seeks more waivers on rules Defense Department officials hope to use an upcoming defense authorization bill to expand the military's exemptions from several environmental and public health regulations, arguing the restrictions infringe on national security. The Pentagon has drafted provisions that would free it from specified air pollution and hazardous waste laws, provisions the House and Senate Armed Services Committee could take up this week as part of broader legislation giving the military spending authority. Environmentalists, joined by congressional Democrats and state and local officials, have launched an aggressive campaign to defeat the Pentagon's plan. They argue that the military -- which the government ranks as the nation's biggest polluter -- should meet its existing legal obligations. The Defense Department accounts for more than 10 percent of the country's top priority Superfund cleanup sites and generated 16.5 million pounds of toxic waste in 2002, according to government estimates....
Conservancy buys huge Ramona ranch he Nature Conservancy has bought more than 4,000 acres of ranch land south of Ramona, the national nonprofit group announced Wednesday. The sprawling mosaic of rock-studded hills and oak- and sycamore-lined valleys could eventually become a state or county park, conservancy officials said. Cam Tredennick, project director for the conservancy, called the purchase of the expansive Monte Vista Ranch a coup for the people of San Diego County....
Senate Finally Confirms Johnson as EPA Head After a month and a half of debate, the Senate has finally confirmed Stephen Johnson to head up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Johnson, an EPA lifer and the first scientist to be tapped to lead the agency in its three-decade history, must have breathed a sigh of relief after enduring criticism of agency policies from several Democratic Senators. First off, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) grilled Johnson regarding a controversial study slated to document the impact on household pesticides on children in Duval County, Florida. As a result of the questioning, Johnson killed the $9 million study. Then last week, Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE) blocked a vote on Johnson's confirmation to protest the EPA's unwillingness to analyze how White House proposals to reduce air pollution compared with competing approaches....
Nevada senator backs off property rights bill Faced with strong opposition from environmentalists and local officials, a Nevada legislator has backed off his proposal to prohibit governments from seizing private property for use as open space. Senator Terry Care's bill would have prohibited governments from using eminent domain authority to acquire property for open-space or wildlife habitat preservation. It would have affected all pending cases in the state, including the fight over development of the Ballardini Ranch south of Reno. Care says he still believes eminent domain shouldn't be used to preserve open space. But he says there was too much opposition to push the issue this session....
Nonresident hunting limits stand Wyoming and other Western states will be able to continue limiting nonresident hunting and fishing licenses under a bill passed Tuesday by Congress. A supplemental appropriations bill approved by the Senate on Tuesday includes an amendment that will protect the traditional authority of states to regulate hunting and fishing, said U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who cosponsored the bill. The bill allows states including Wyoming to continue distinguishing between residents and nonresidents when issuing hunting and fishing licenses. Enzi's measure was prompted by a 2002 ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling said that Arizona's law allotting just 10 percent of bull elk and antlered deer hunting tags to nonresidents was an act of "overt discrimination."....
Tyson Boosts Canada Beef Output as U.S. Bans Cattle Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest beef processor, said it will boost production capacity at a plant in Alberta by 24 percent next month as a ban on Canadian cattle imports limits supplies for the company's U.S. facilities. A $17 million expansion at the Brooks, Alberta, plant will increase production capacity to 4,700 head of cattle a day from 3,800, Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods said today in a statement. Tyson has cut production at its U.S. plants because of the cattle shortage that developed after the U.S. suspended imports when mad cow disease was found in Canada in May 2003. The U.S. meatpacking industry will permanently lose jobs to Canada unless the ban on Canadian cattle is lifted, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has warned. In March, he said Canada's processing capacity had increased 20 percent in the past year and may increase another 10 percent by the end of 2005. Tyson said the expansion at the Brooks plant will add as many as 300 jobs....
Big Bend history unfolds in memories at the regional historical commission meeting I had lunch that day with Charlie and Sixie Davis from Fort Stockton, who drove over for the meeting. Charlie, who admits to being 80, played shortstop for H.L. Kokernot Jr.’s Alpine Cowboys from 1946 to 1953, and he has a stack of scrapbooks and photographs from those days. He told me that in 1958, when Kokernot decided to put lights on the Cowboys’ stadium, the electrician doing the job asked him how many lights he wanted. “Call Yankee Stadium and find out how many lights they have,” Kokernot said. “I want one more than that.” Charlie’s wife, Sixie, grew up on her family’s ranch at Hovey, between Fort Stockton and Alpine. Over lunch, Sixie told me about the day in 1955 that a jet fighter plane crashed on her parents’ ranch. She was there, helping her father shear sheep, and they heard the crash and saw the plume of smoke. Sixie jumped in an old jeep and went to investigate....
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Measure would compensate people exposed to nuclear tests Montana residents, including those in Lewis and Clark, Broadwater and Jefferson Counties, sickened by Nevada's nuclear tests in the 1950s may receive compensation for their illnesses under a measure Republican Sen. Conrad Burns is trying to push through Congress. Burns' bill, introduced Monday, would amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to add 15 Montana counties to the areas currently eligible to receive compensation. The law provides $50,000 for individuals with diseases tied to radiation who lived in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona at the time of the tests. A National Academy of Sciences report released last month noted that Montanans are not eligible to receive compensation even though they are some of the most profoundly affected from the tests, many of which were held in Nevada between 1952 and 1957....
National Parks Director Says "Whole Parks" May Be Outsourced The National Park Service is now considering contracting out the entire operations of three national parks, according to a memo from NPS Director Fran Mainella released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Previously, the National Park Service looked to outsource certain types of jobs, such as maintenance, among several parks but is now looking at park units in their entirety for future bids by private firms. The three parks under review are Boston National Historical Park, San Juan Island National Historic Site (in Washington state) and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Altogether, these three parks employ 312 NPS employees on a full-time basis. In an April 15, 2005 memo, NPS Director Fran Mainella cited these three parks as the subject of "preliminary [competitive sourcing] planning efforts for FY 2005. We will be reviewing whole parks to achieve the most efficient operations possible."....
Editorial: Roadless rules less than meets the eye It's now official: Governors now have the ability to offer the U.S. Forest Service recommendations for managing roadless tracts of national forest in their states. The Bush administration in recent days has been trumpeting the new roadless-land management regulations as a significant improvement over former President Clinton's 2001 executive order effectively setting aside from development more than 58 million acres nationwide. To hear some environmentalists howl, you would think the administration's change in regulations will open large expanses of wild land to road-building, logging and mining. It's possible there are people in the Bush administration who are pleased with this assessment, given that the truth is considerably less exciting and possibly will prove less pleasing to the industries and political factions who wouldn't mind a chance to develop some of the backcountry. In fact - and remember, you heard it here first - the on-the-ground effect of the Bush administration roadless-land regulations is unlikely to be a whole lot different from what Clinton did....
"Bear central" raises its guard Even in a community that is a vanguard of bearproofing in America, the battle of wits between bruins and humans is never-ending. New bear-deflecting tactics are expected to be needed in what is shaping up to be a second straight bad bear year, with 20 calls already to Snowmass wildlife officials. One bear has poked its head in a doggie door. Another has ripped at the metal around a skylight in an attempt to make an aerial entrance. One bruin has been pushing at windows and doors in a burglar-like test for weak spots. "If they are doing that already, it's kind of a clue that we're in for some trouble," said Tina White, who, along with Laurie Smith, provides full-time animal-control services for Snowmass Village....
Sharpshooters aim to cull flock of cormorants Under ominous gray clouds that spit rain showers, flocks of cormorants came and went. It was a typical spring day Monday for the growing cormorant colony on Leech Lake, estimated at nearly 10,000 birds last year. But the presence of two cylindrical hunting blinds -- elevated on stilts -- and the occasional pop-pop-pop of a shotgun from a nearby island signalled that something unusual was going on. Federal officials are shooting double-crested cormorants. Although the birds are federally protected, sharpshooters using air rifles and shotguns are killing nesting adult cormorants on Leech Lake because of concerns that the fish-eating water birds are hurting the walleye population on one of the state's prime fishing lakes....
Lewis and Clark tourism not living up to the hype In Idaho, boxes upon boxes of Lewis and Clark refrigerator magnets occupy the back room of Dave Hunt's gift shop. He wonders whether they'll ever sell. In Great Falls, Mont., dismal orders for advance tickets haunt an upcoming monthlong festival pegged to the bicentennial of the explorers' push into the Rockies. And downstream on the Missouri River, Williston, N.D., hotel operator Tom Kasperson flatly assesses the effect of Lewis and Clark tourism on his business: "Zero." Westward-rolling truckloads of "Corps of Discovery II" exhibits, bound for the Pacific coast by year's end, reached Kasperson's town in March. Moving at the pace of the original expedition, the National Park Service's road show confirmed his suspicions that Lewis and Clark buffs rarely travel in herds....
Feds acknowledge state title to Porcupine riverbed The state of Alaska owns the land under the Porcupine River, the federal government acknowledged Tuesday. A top official in the U.S. Department of Interior signed a decision stating the federal government has no property interest in 214 miles of the riverbed. Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration asked for the decision. The Porcupine River flows into northeast Alaska from Canada and joins the Yukon River at Fort Yukon. Under federal law, states own the beds of navigable waters. However, determining which waters are navigable has been a time-consuming process often only resolvable by courts. In at least one Alaska case, even a court was unable to rule....
Kane County Commission ready to settle sign squabble in court The Kane County Commission has several more days to decide whether it will comply with a letter from the Bureau of Land Management asking it to remove signs on roads across federal property or face potential legal action. In a letter dated April 26, Sally Wisely, director of the BLM office in Salt Lake City, gave commissioners two weeks to remove the signs that designate the roads for off-road-vehicle (ORV) use. Some of the signs are posted adjacent to BLM signs designating wilderness study areas off-limits to ORVs. The letter said the deadline for removal of the signs was Tuesday. But Don Banks, spokesman with the federal agency in Salt Lake City, said the deadline was moved to Monday of next week because the certified letter was not signed for until April 29. So far, the BLM has not heard what the county plans to do....
Big-tire shortage slows mining industry Steve Walker was ready to sell four 200-ton dump trucks, with price tags as high as $3 million, when the orders were canceled. The buyer, a coal company planning to open a new mine site, was ready to buy. It just couldn't find the 12-foot-tall tires to get the trucks rolling. The mammoth tires, which can cost up to $30,000 apiece, are in short supply worldwide, leaving earth-moving industries, including coal, in a lurch. The shortage is due to a rise in equipment orders, an increase in worldwide mining because of increased mineral prices and growth in China and other Asian counties. "It's definitely a problem at this time," said Utah Mining Association President David Litvin, citing impacts on two open pit mines: Kennecott's Bingham Canyon copper mine and a surface phosphate mine that Simplot Mining and Manufacturing operates outside of Vernal. "We understand this shortage could continue through 2006 if the increase in mineral production worldwide continues," he added. "And we're starting to see some impact on smaller tires, such as the ones used on large loaders."....
GE kicks off ambitious green initiative Last night, General Electric Chair and CEO Jeffrey Immelt canoodled with Congress members and industry top brass at a swish cocktail party on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., celebrating the launch of "ecomagination," an initiative he announced earlier in the day to ramp up development of clean technologies and lighten the company's Goliath-like environmental footprint. Guests nibbled organic canapés and sipped wine produced by a solar-powered California vineyard (equipped with GE's own photovoltaic panels) as they perused exhibitions of the company's new technologies -- here a life-sized model of a hybrid-engine train and a state-of-the-art wind-turbine blade, there a super-efficient washing machine and a sophisticated diorama of coal-gasification technology. After a speech in which Immelt announced that "it's no longer a zero-sum game -- things that are good for the environment are also good for business" and vowed that GE was embarking on this initiative "not because it is trendy or moral, but because it will accelerate [economic] growth," he presented a series of "ecomagination" television ads that will be airing nationwide over the next several months....
Column: THE CLIMATE OF MAN—III In February, 2003, a series of ads on the theme of inundation began appearing on Dutch TV. The ads were sponsored by the Netherlands’ Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management, and they featured a celebrity weatherman named Peter Timofeeff. In one commercial, Timofeeff, who looks a bit like Albert Brooks and a bit like Gene Shalit, sat relaxing on the shore in a folding chair. “Sea level is rising,” he announced, as waves started creeping up the beach. He continued to sit and talk even as a boy who had been building a sandcastle abandoned it in panic. At the end of the ad, Timofeeff, still seated, was immersed in water up to his waist....
Popularity of Flat Iron Steak Increasing Gerrine Kirby didn't know what she was getting herself into the first time she saw it. A new cut of steak? After all these years? Kirby, who teaches a culinary arts class, hesitantly took a bite of the curiously shaped piece of meat, which looks like an old-fashioned flat iron. Her fears turned out to be unwarranted. "It was excellent," she said. "It's kind of become the darling of chefs across the nation," said Jane Gibson, a spokeswoman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Denver. The Nebraska-born tender cut has skyrocketed in popularity since it started being sold about four years ago, finding its way into farmer's markets, grocery stores and restaurants....
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Measure would compensate people exposed to nuclear tests Montana residents, including those in Lewis and Clark, Broadwater and Jefferson Counties, sickened by Nevada's nuclear tests in the 1950s may receive compensation for their illnesses under a measure Republican Sen. Conrad Burns is trying to push through Congress. Burns' bill, introduced Monday, would amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to add 15 Montana counties to the areas currently eligible to receive compensation. The law provides $50,000 for individuals with diseases tied to radiation who lived in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona at the time of the tests. A National Academy of Sciences report released last month noted that Montanans are not eligible to receive compensation even though they are some of the most profoundly affected from the tests, many of which were held in Nevada between 1952 and 1957....
National Parks Director Says "Whole Parks" May Be Outsourced The National Park Service is now considering contracting out the entire operations of three national parks, according to a memo from NPS Director Fran Mainella released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Previously, the National Park Service looked to outsource certain types of jobs, such as maintenance, among several parks but is now looking at park units in their entirety for future bids by private firms. The three parks under review are Boston National Historical Park, San Juan Island National Historic Site (in Washington state) and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Altogether, these three parks employ 312 NPS employees on a full-time basis. In an April 15, 2005 memo, NPS Director Fran Mainella cited these three parks as the subject of "preliminary [competitive sourcing] planning efforts for FY 2005. We will be reviewing whole parks to achieve the most efficient operations possible."....
Editorial: Roadless rules less than meets the eye It's now official: Governors now have the ability to offer the U.S. Forest Service recommendations for managing roadless tracts of national forest in their states. The Bush administration in recent days has been trumpeting the new roadless-land management regulations as a significant improvement over former President Clinton's 2001 executive order effectively setting aside from development more than 58 million acres nationwide. To hear some environmentalists howl, you would think the administration's change in regulations will open large expanses of wild land to road-building, logging and mining. It's possible there are people in the Bush administration who are pleased with this assessment, given that the truth is considerably less exciting and possibly will prove less pleasing to the industries and political factions who wouldn't mind a chance to develop some of the backcountry. In fact - and remember, you heard it here first - the on-the-ground effect of the Bush administration roadless-land regulations is unlikely to be a whole lot different from what Clinton did....
"Bear central" raises its guard Even in a community that is a vanguard of bearproofing in America, the battle of wits between bruins and humans is never-ending. New bear-deflecting tactics are expected to be needed in what is shaping up to be a second straight bad bear year, with 20 calls already to Snowmass wildlife officials. One bear has poked its head in a doggie door. Another has ripped at the metal around a skylight in an attempt to make an aerial entrance. One bruin has been pushing at windows and doors in a burglar-like test for weak spots. "If they are doing that already, it's kind of a clue that we're in for some trouble," said Tina White, who, along with Laurie Smith, provides full-time animal-control services for Snowmass Village....
Sharpshooters aim to cull flock of cormorants Under ominous gray clouds that spit rain showers, flocks of cormorants came and went. It was a typical spring day Monday for the growing cormorant colony on Leech Lake, estimated at nearly 10,000 birds last year. But the presence of two cylindrical hunting blinds -- elevated on stilts -- and the occasional pop-pop-pop of a shotgun from a nearby island signalled that something unusual was going on. Federal officials are shooting double-crested cormorants. Although the birds are federally protected, sharpshooters using air rifles and shotguns are killing nesting adult cormorants on Leech Lake because of concerns that the fish-eating water birds are hurting the walleye population on one of the state's prime fishing lakes....
Lewis and Clark tourism not living up to the hype In Idaho, boxes upon boxes of Lewis and Clark refrigerator magnets occupy the back room of Dave Hunt's gift shop. He wonders whether they'll ever sell. In Great Falls, Mont., dismal orders for advance tickets haunt an upcoming monthlong festival pegged to the bicentennial of the explorers' push into the Rockies. And downstream on the Missouri River, Williston, N.D., hotel operator Tom Kasperson flatly assesses the effect of Lewis and Clark tourism on his business: "Zero." Westward-rolling truckloads of "Corps of Discovery II" exhibits, bound for the Pacific coast by year's end, reached Kasperson's town in March. Moving at the pace of the original expedition, the National Park Service's road show confirmed his suspicions that Lewis and Clark buffs rarely travel in herds....
Feds acknowledge state title to Porcupine riverbed The state of Alaska owns the land under the Porcupine River, the federal government acknowledged Tuesday. A top official in the U.S. Department of Interior signed a decision stating the federal government has no property interest in 214 miles of the riverbed. Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration asked for the decision. The Porcupine River flows into northeast Alaska from Canada and joins the Yukon River at Fort Yukon. Under federal law, states own the beds of navigable waters. However, determining which waters are navigable has been a time-consuming process often only resolvable by courts. In at least one Alaska case, even a court was unable to rule....
Kane County Commission ready to settle sign squabble in court The Kane County Commission has several more days to decide whether it will comply with a letter from the Bureau of Land Management asking it to remove signs on roads across federal property or face potential legal action. In a letter dated April 26, Sally Wisely, director of the BLM office in Salt Lake City, gave commissioners two weeks to remove the signs that designate the roads for off-road-vehicle (ORV) use. Some of the signs are posted adjacent to BLM signs designating wilderness study areas off-limits to ORVs. The letter said the deadline for removal of the signs was Tuesday. But Don Banks, spokesman with the federal agency in Salt Lake City, said the deadline was moved to Monday of next week because the certified letter was not signed for until April 29. So far, the BLM has not heard what the county plans to do....
Big-tire shortage slows mining industry Steve Walker was ready to sell four 200-ton dump trucks, with price tags as high as $3 million, when the orders were canceled. The buyer, a coal company planning to open a new mine site, was ready to buy. It just couldn't find the 12-foot-tall tires to get the trucks rolling. The mammoth tires, which can cost up to $30,000 apiece, are in short supply worldwide, leaving earth-moving industries, including coal, in a lurch. The shortage is due to a rise in equipment orders, an increase in worldwide mining because of increased mineral prices and growth in China and other Asian counties. "It's definitely a problem at this time," said Utah Mining Association President David Litvin, citing impacts on two open pit mines: Kennecott's Bingham Canyon copper mine and a surface phosphate mine that Simplot Mining and Manufacturing operates outside of Vernal. "We understand this shortage could continue through 2006 if the increase in mineral production worldwide continues," he added. "And we're starting to see some impact on smaller tires, such as the ones used on large loaders."....
GE kicks off ambitious green initiative Last night, General Electric Chair and CEO Jeffrey Immelt canoodled with Congress members and industry top brass at a swish cocktail party on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., celebrating the launch of "ecomagination," an initiative he announced earlier in the day to ramp up development of clean technologies and lighten the company's Goliath-like environmental footprint. Guests nibbled organic canapés and sipped wine produced by a solar-powered California vineyard (equipped with GE's own photovoltaic panels) as they perused exhibitions of the company's new technologies -- here a life-sized model of a hybrid-engine train and a state-of-the-art wind-turbine blade, there a super-efficient washing machine and a sophisticated diorama of coal-gasification technology. After a speech in which Immelt announced that "it's no longer a zero-sum game -- things that are good for the environment are also good for business" and vowed that GE was embarking on this initiative "not because it is trendy or moral, but because it will accelerate [economic] growth," he presented a series of "ecomagination" television ads that will be airing nationwide over the next several months....
Column: THE CLIMATE OF MAN—III In February, 2003, a series of ads on the theme of inundation began appearing on Dutch TV. The ads were sponsored by the Netherlands’ Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management, and they featured a celebrity weatherman named Peter Timofeeff. In one commercial, Timofeeff, who looks a bit like Albert Brooks and a bit like Gene Shalit, sat relaxing on the shore in a folding chair. “Sea level is rising,” he announced, as waves started creeping up the beach. He continued to sit and talk even as a boy who had been building a sandcastle abandoned it in panic. At the end of the ad, Timofeeff, still seated, was immersed in water up to his waist....
Popularity of Flat Iron Steak Increasing Gerrine Kirby didn't know what she was getting herself into the first time she saw it. A new cut of steak? After all these years? Kirby, who teaches a culinary arts class, hesitantly took a bite of the curiously shaped piece of meat, which looks like an old-fashioned flat iron. Her fears turned out to be unwarranted. "It was excellent," she said. "It's kind of become the darling of chefs across the nation," said Jane Gibson, a spokeswoman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Denver. The Nebraska-born tender cut has skyrocketed in popularity since it started being sold about four years ago, finding its way into farmer's markets, grocery stores and restaurants....
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Tuesday, May 10, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Lynx more than mirage in White River forest Bowing to reality presented by Colorado Division of Wildlife biologists, the regional forester for the Rocky Mountains announced last week that lynx habitat will be protected throughout the White River National Forest. That’s a welcome change from a decision handed down from Washington, D.C. last December, which overturned lynx protection specified in the White River National Forest Management Plan. Not only did Deputy Agriculture Undersecretary David Tenny overturn years of public involvement and compromise that went into the White River plan, he ignored any information available from the Division of Wildlife to conclude there was no evidence of lynx using the White River. Therefore, Tenny determined, there was no reason to believe the wild felines would benefit from the habitat protection. In fact, state biologists have said that tracking collars on lynx show more than 300 visits by the shy cats to the White River National Forest since lynx were first transplanted to Colorado in 1999. State officials also determined that at least two females have dens in the White River....
Editorial: Nature at Bay The Bush administration's efforts to capitalize on the recent discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker were bizarre. Gale Norton, the interior secretary, announced a $10 million program to enlarge the bird's habitat, proclaiming that "second chances to save wildlife once thought to be extinct are rare." But what about first chances? The woodpecker, if it indeed has returned, is as much warning as gift. President Bush's policies suggest that he not only has failed to learn from past mistakes, but is determined to repeat them on a more destructive scale. The obvious example is his fixation on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. This bespeaks an intellectually bankrupt energy policy and would certainly cause trouble for wildlife....
Conservationists find eggs in nest of burrowing owl When Greg Clark inserted a video camera into the den of burrowing owls, he knew the relocation of nine of the small birds just over the Utah state line in Arizona was a success. "There are some eggs," Clark told a handful of volunteers watching the portable video monitor as the infrared camera snaked into the darkened hole. "That's pretty much what we were looking for." Clark heads relocation efforts for Wild at Heart, a nonprofit group responsible for saving burrowing owls from development around metropolitan areas in Arizona....
Hatcheries may be releasing pollutants along with fish When environmental regulators last winter tried to solve the mystery of how a toxic chemical wound up in the mountain-fed waters of Icicle Creek, they stumbled on a surprising potential culprit: a federal fish hatchery. Tipped by news reports of a Montana hatchery that had polluted a local stream with paint from the walls of concrete fish tanks, Washington regulators tested paint chips from the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery. They discovered the paint contained PCBs, once-ubiquitous industrial chemicals now banned because they are toxic in minute levels and stay around for years. Alerted to the findings, hatchery managers shut down tanks containing 1.6 million tiny chinook salmon, moved them into tanks without the paint and started testing hatchery fish and nearby stream sediments for contamination....
36 Senators Seek More Money for National Parks The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) today praised Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), and the 34 other U.S. Senators who this week sent a letter to the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee seeking much-needed funding for America's national parks. "This letter illustrates the strong, bipartisan support for increased national park funding as Congress prepares the parks' fiscal year 2006 budget," said NPCA President Tom Kiernan. The letter that Sen. Thomas, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources National Parks Subcommittee, and Ranking Member Akaka sponsored was signed by a total of 36 U.S. Senators, and requested an additional $150 million for the fiscal year 2006 operations of the national parks. Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) sponsored a similar letter in the U.S. House of Representatives, which was signed by 78 members of Congress....
Drilling Near Nuclear Blast Cavity Called Risky Business On a bright fall afternoon 36 years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission and a Texas oil company detonated a 40-kiloton nuclear device inside an 8,000-foot shaft on a high meadow, an effort to crack into a bounty of natural gas trapped in a dense subterranean rock formation. Here on Colorado's energy-rich Western Slope, the nuclear experiment yielded mixed results. A rich lode of gas was indeed shaken out of its rock casing, but the gas that rushed to the surface was too radioactive to be commercially useful. Federal officials assured the community that the Rulison test site, named after a nearby community, was safe. Still, they forbade oil or gas drilling on 40 acres surrounding the blast. Last year, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission added another half a mile to the federal off-limits zone. But now, another Texas energy company has proposed drilling within the half-mile zone. The company, Presco, says it will extract the gas using a nonnuclear process called hydraulic fracing, which like the original experiment is designed to shatter underground rock and tap into embedded stores of natural gas. The company says this can be done without disturbing the radioactive material that remains buried in the blast cavity....
Energy boom is crowding ranchers Now the onetime professional steer roper and other ranchers here face a new test - energy companies intensifying their search for natural gas beneath the same lands used by grazing herds. The trend, causing tension across the American West, stems from the policy of "split estates" - where the owners of at least 50 million acres of private land have surface rights, while energy developers can own the mineral rights beneath or lease them from the federal government. That means scores of ranchers here in the Powder River basin may have little say over thousands wellheads that could soon proliferate. While some landowners will reap benefits, anything from monetary compensation to ranch improvements, most feel helpless against an industry that they see threatening to mar the landscape and contaminate precious groundwater. A growing number of ranchers are fighting back against the federal government with lawsuits aimed to strengthen landowners' influence over energy development practices within their acres....
Column: The House Passes Green Energy Bill The House recently passed a bill purportedly for the purpose of improving our ability to produce energy. President Bush has called it "a good energy bill" and has urged the Senate to act so that Congress can send him a bill by this summer that he can sign into law. However, the proposal passed by the House makes many concessions to environmentalists and therefore won't achieve its purported end if signed into law. Why is this the case? While the bill increases access to federal lands for oil and gas exploration and eases some regulations (such as speeding up the approval process for certain new refineries), it also provides billions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives for various environmentalist-inspired endeavors, including the promotion of energy efficiency and the development of "alternative" fuels....
BLM pulls rock art site from lease sale As expected, the Bureau of Land Management has pulled back a series of parcels around Parowan Gap - a nationally recognized collection of American Indian rock art in Iron County - from an oil and gas lease sale set for next week. The BLM has removed a six parcels that comprise about 20 square miles both in and around the petroglyph site from the May 17 auction, although officials would not rule out putting at least some of the tracts up for sale at a later date. "They've been deferred from the May sale in order to give us time to confer with Native American groups and ensure that we have the proper protections in place," Don Banks, the BLM's state chief of external affairs, said Monday....
Washington, activists argue a 'new' energy With the nation paying dearly for its power consumption, large energy corporations would like to build 30 to 40 LNG terminals in the United States, mostly in coastal communities. But such ideas are meeting with resistance at every step of the way. Any day now, for example, a federal appeals court in California is expected to issue an important ruling on who has jurisdiction over California's waters to site potential LNG terminals. And, both the president in recent speeches and Congress in pending energy legislation are getting involved - at a time when natural gas prices are close to an all-time high. "This is a debate that needs to happen," says James Hoecker, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during the Clinton administration and is now a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins in Washington. "It will be helpful that Congress has decided to express what it believes national policy ought to be."....
Land exchange refloated in House Utah officials are pitching an 88,000-acre land swap that would protect popular recreation destinations along the Colorado River, world-renowned mountain bike trails, and soaring redrock arches in sensitive wilderness areas while helping fund Utah schools. "It's quite unique," said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who is sponsoring the exchange in the U.S. House. "We've got a lot of support on it. We hope it will go very smoothly and we'll get it done very quickly." It is the first exchange proposed since Utah's bid to swap out land in the San Rafael Swell collapsed in 2002 after whistle-blowers at the Bureau of Land Management alleged it was a $100 million boondoggle for federal taxpayers. Utah would get land in the Uinta Basin believed to contain valuable oil deposits. Oil royalties could generate considerable revenue earmarked for the state's schools. The state also would get parcels near the town of Green River and the Moab airport....
Nature Conservancy says complaints misunderstandings Complaints about a fence blocking a path used by wild horses to get to the Truckee River at the McCarran Ranch east of Sparks are based on misunderstandings, The Nature Conservancy said. Lance Gilman, co-owner of Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park and the Wild Horse Adult Resort & Spa brothel next door, also is upset that The Nature Conservancy began raising Northern Leopard frogs in ponds at the ranch without telling anybody in the county. The frog has been listed by the state as a protected species. For now, that gives the frog no legal protection. But Gilman fears an endangered species listing could someday make building his industrial park more difficult....
A Web of Sensors, Taking Earth's Pulse In the wilds of the San Jacinto Mountains, along a steep canyon, scientists are turning 30 acres of pines and hardwoods in California into a futuristic vision of environmental study. They are linking up more than 100 tiny sensors, robots, cameras and computers, which are beginning to paint an unusually detailed portrait of this lush world, home to more than 30 rare and endangered species. Much of the instrumentation is wireless. Devices the size of a deck of cards - known as motes, after dust motes - can measure light, wind speed, rainfall, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure, detecting the presence of a warm body or tracking the progress of a chill wind up the canyon....
Water worries spark moratoriums A once-in-500-year drought has prompted counties and residents in the Magic Valley to take water matters into their own hands. Worries over water quality and quantity nudged two counties into adopting temporary moratoriums on confined animal feeding operations while two other counties consider similar steps. Today, Lincoln County residents will take their concerns for this scarce resource one step further when they ask county commissioners for a moratorium on all changes to land use -- including subdivisions and dairies -- until a comprehensive land use plan can be adopted. Members of the Lincoln Rural Council assert that development in Lincoln County is "out of control." Not only have a number of wells gone dry in the county but some have also seen increases in nitrate levels, said Susan Westendorf, a spokeswoman for the council....
Tribes buy into political process Ten years ago, Native American tribes were still the minor political players they'd been for centuries, with their campaign donations barely registering on the national radar. But tribes, enriched by casino profits, are among the nation's fastest-growing contributors, pumping more than $7 million into federal campaigns in last year's elections. That's more than mining, textile and environmental groups. They've also bolstered their lobbying teams. Like other groups, they're trying to build influence to protect their gains -- including the right to operate gambling centers -- and to expand into untapped territory....
Congress Is Staying Clear of Dispute Over Mad Cow Congress appears to be unlikely to step in the middle of a standoff between the Bush administration and American cattlemen over reopening the border to imports of cattle from Canada. The cattlemen are concerned about whether the Canadian cows would infect the American herd with the deadly mad cow disease. The Senate, responding to that concern, narrowly voted in March to block the Agriculture Department's ruling that deemed Canadian cattle healthy enough to allow the border to be reopened. With the deadline for Congressional action on Saturday, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia, has no plans to bring the issue up for a vote, a spokesman for the committee said Monday. Mr. Goodlatte, who opposed the Senate vote, plans to let the issue play out in the courts before considering any action, the spokesman said. That could set up a showdown in the Montana courtroom of Judge Richard F. Cebull of Federal District Court, who was sharply critical of the Agriculture Department's assurances that measures were in place to assure the safety of the beef coming from Canada....
Riding high The city is stretching awake, the streets still deserted and dark, as Dennis McQueen wheels into the parking lot on Fort Worth's north side. It's 5 a.m. -- four hours before the officers of the Fort Worth Police Mounted Patrol will arrive at the stables on the edge of Cowtown's historic Stockyards District, but McQueen has work to do. At 48, he is the old man of the yard, the horse trainer and riding teacher for the mounted patrol, one of Fort Worth's most recognizable images. McQueen is the man who makes horses and riders ready for duty in this town that values Western heritage. Many officers have never ridden a horse before applying for the mounted patrol, and they have McQueen to thank for their confidence on the street. But few outside the division know his name....
Champion steer wrestler competes with diabetes About seven years ago, when Luke Branquinho was a freshman at West Hills College in Coalinga, he was diagnosed with a disease that changed his life. After hallucinating and experiencing repeated symptoms of extreme fatigue, Branquinho, 17 at the time, went to the doctor and found out disturbing news. He had Type II diabetes. Branquinho tests his sugar levels four to five times a day. If they're low before a performance, he drinks a Coke before jumping on the horse. In between events, he carries a $4,000 pump that looks like a pager and automatically injects insulin into his veins. It takes the guesswork out of the injections because it's connected almost 24 hours a day, delivering small doses of insulin through a flexible, plastic catheter. His approach is working. Two years after being diagnosed, Branquinho won the 2000 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association overall and steer wrestling Rookie of the Year awards. And his career skyrocketed from there. Last year, he won the PRCA steer wrestling world title in Las Vegas and pocketed almost $200,000 in earnings....
Dual champions at George Paul For only the third time in its 28-year history, the George Paul Memorial Bull Riding competition has co-champions. B.J. Schumacher, of Hillsboro, Wis., scored 179 points on two bulls Sunday afternoon to tie Mike Scarlavai of Michigan atop the leader board at this yearÕs event, held at the Val Verde County Fairgrounds. Scarlavai scored his points Saturday night....
It's All Trew: Little black box start of family photography Long before the modern term of PC, personal computer, appeared, another PC came along in the form of a personal camera most people called a Kodak. This simple black box performed the miracle of taking photographs anywhere and at anytime. Kodaking became a national fad and a serious hobby for millions of people. History has certainly been enhanced by these images that preserved the authentic past. Its use caught on like wildfire, especially with the younger set. The first Kodaks were simple devices with a peep hole to focus, a lens, click button and a knob to advance the film forward for the next picture. There were no adjustments. Most new operators ruined or double-exposed a roll or two of film while learning. These old boxes soon gave way to Brownies with many new improvements....
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Lynx more than mirage in White River forest Bowing to reality presented by Colorado Division of Wildlife biologists, the regional forester for the Rocky Mountains announced last week that lynx habitat will be protected throughout the White River National Forest. That’s a welcome change from a decision handed down from Washington, D.C. last December, which overturned lynx protection specified in the White River National Forest Management Plan. Not only did Deputy Agriculture Undersecretary David Tenny overturn years of public involvement and compromise that went into the White River plan, he ignored any information available from the Division of Wildlife to conclude there was no evidence of lynx using the White River. Therefore, Tenny determined, there was no reason to believe the wild felines would benefit from the habitat protection. In fact, state biologists have said that tracking collars on lynx show more than 300 visits by the shy cats to the White River National Forest since lynx were first transplanted to Colorado in 1999. State officials also determined that at least two females have dens in the White River....
Editorial: Nature at Bay The Bush administration's efforts to capitalize on the recent discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker were bizarre. Gale Norton, the interior secretary, announced a $10 million program to enlarge the bird's habitat, proclaiming that "second chances to save wildlife once thought to be extinct are rare." But what about first chances? The woodpecker, if it indeed has returned, is as much warning as gift. President Bush's policies suggest that he not only has failed to learn from past mistakes, but is determined to repeat them on a more destructive scale. The obvious example is his fixation on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. This bespeaks an intellectually bankrupt energy policy and would certainly cause trouble for wildlife....
Conservationists find eggs in nest of burrowing owl When Greg Clark inserted a video camera into the den of burrowing owls, he knew the relocation of nine of the small birds just over the Utah state line in Arizona was a success. "There are some eggs," Clark told a handful of volunteers watching the portable video monitor as the infrared camera snaked into the darkened hole. "That's pretty much what we were looking for." Clark heads relocation efforts for Wild at Heart, a nonprofit group responsible for saving burrowing owls from development around metropolitan areas in Arizona....
Hatcheries may be releasing pollutants along with fish When environmental regulators last winter tried to solve the mystery of how a toxic chemical wound up in the mountain-fed waters of Icicle Creek, they stumbled on a surprising potential culprit: a federal fish hatchery. Tipped by news reports of a Montana hatchery that had polluted a local stream with paint from the walls of concrete fish tanks, Washington regulators tested paint chips from the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery. They discovered the paint contained PCBs, once-ubiquitous industrial chemicals now banned because they are toxic in minute levels and stay around for years. Alerted to the findings, hatchery managers shut down tanks containing 1.6 million tiny chinook salmon, moved them into tanks without the paint and started testing hatchery fish and nearby stream sediments for contamination....
36 Senators Seek More Money for National Parks The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) today praised Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), and the 34 other U.S. Senators who this week sent a letter to the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee seeking much-needed funding for America's national parks. "This letter illustrates the strong, bipartisan support for increased national park funding as Congress prepares the parks' fiscal year 2006 budget," said NPCA President Tom Kiernan. The letter that Sen. Thomas, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources National Parks Subcommittee, and Ranking Member Akaka sponsored was signed by a total of 36 U.S. Senators, and requested an additional $150 million for the fiscal year 2006 operations of the national parks. Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) sponsored a similar letter in the U.S. House of Representatives, which was signed by 78 members of Congress....
Drilling Near Nuclear Blast Cavity Called Risky Business On a bright fall afternoon 36 years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission and a Texas oil company detonated a 40-kiloton nuclear device inside an 8,000-foot shaft on a high meadow, an effort to crack into a bounty of natural gas trapped in a dense subterranean rock formation. Here on Colorado's energy-rich Western Slope, the nuclear experiment yielded mixed results. A rich lode of gas was indeed shaken out of its rock casing, but the gas that rushed to the surface was too radioactive to be commercially useful. Federal officials assured the community that the Rulison test site, named after a nearby community, was safe. Still, they forbade oil or gas drilling on 40 acres surrounding the blast. Last year, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission added another half a mile to the federal off-limits zone. But now, another Texas energy company has proposed drilling within the half-mile zone. The company, Presco, says it will extract the gas using a nonnuclear process called hydraulic fracing, which like the original experiment is designed to shatter underground rock and tap into embedded stores of natural gas. The company says this can be done without disturbing the radioactive material that remains buried in the blast cavity....
Energy boom is crowding ranchers Now the onetime professional steer roper and other ranchers here face a new test - energy companies intensifying their search for natural gas beneath the same lands used by grazing herds. The trend, causing tension across the American West, stems from the policy of "split estates" - where the owners of at least 50 million acres of private land have surface rights, while energy developers can own the mineral rights beneath or lease them from the federal government. That means scores of ranchers here in the Powder River basin may have little say over thousands wellheads that could soon proliferate. While some landowners will reap benefits, anything from monetary compensation to ranch improvements, most feel helpless against an industry that they see threatening to mar the landscape and contaminate precious groundwater. A growing number of ranchers are fighting back against the federal government with lawsuits aimed to strengthen landowners' influence over energy development practices within their acres....
Column: The House Passes Green Energy Bill The House recently passed a bill purportedly for the purpose of improving our ability to produce energy. President Bush has called it "a good energy bill" and has urged the Senate to act so that Congress can send him a bill by this summer that he can sign into law. However, the proposal passed by the House makes many concessions to environmentalists and therefore won't achieve its purported end if signed into law. Why is this the case? While the bill increases access to federal lands for oil and gas exploration and eases some regulations (such as speeding up the approval process for certain new refineries), it also provides billions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives for various environmentalist-inspired endeavors, including the promotion of energy efficiency and the development of "alternative" fuels....
BLM pulls rock art site from lease sale As expected, the Bureau of Land Management has pulled back a series of parcels around Parowan Gap - a nationally recognized collection of American Indian rock art in Iron County - from an oil and gas lease sale set for next week. The BLM has removed a six parcels that comprise about 20 square miles both in and around the petroglyph site from the May 17 auction, although officials would not rule out putting at least some of the tracts up for sale at a later date. "They've been deferred from the May sale in order to give us time to confer with Native American groups and ensure that we have the proper protections in place," Don Banks, the BLM's state chief of external affairs, said Monday....
Washington, activists argue a 'new' energy With the nation paying dearly for its power consumption, large energy corporations would like to build 30 to 40 LNG terminals in the United States, mostly in coastal communities. But such ideas are meeting with resistance at every step of the way. Any day now, for example, a federal appeals court in California is expected to issue an important ruling on who has jurisdiction over California's waters to site potential LNG terminals. And, both the president in recent speeches and Congress in pending energy legislation are getting involved - at a time when natural gas prices are close to an all-time high. "This is a debate that needs to happen," says James Hoecker, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during the Clinton administration and is now a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins in Washington. "It will be helpful that Congress has decided to express what it believes national policy ought to be."....
Land exchange refloated in House Utah officials are pitching an 88,000-acre land swap that would protect popular recreation destinations along the Colorado River, world-renowned mountain bike trails, and soaring redrock arches in sensitive wilderness areas while helping fund Utah schools. "It's quite unique," said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who is sponsoring the exchange in the U.S. House. "We've got a lot of support on it. We hope it will go very smoothly and we'll get it done very quickly." It is the first exchange proposed since Utah's bid to swap out land in the San Rafael Swell collapsed in 2002 after whistle-blowers at the Bureau of Land Management alleged it was a $100 million boondoggle for federal taxpayers. Utah would get land in the Uinta Basin believed to contain valuable oil deposits. Oil royalties could generate considerable revenue earmarked for the state's schools. The state also would get parcels near the town of Green River and the Moab airport....
Nature Conservancy says complaints misunderstandings Complaints about a fence blocking a path used by wild horses to get to the Truckee River at the McCarran Ranch east of Sparks are based on misunderstandings, The Nature Conservancy said. Lance Gilman, co-owner of Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park and the Wild Horse Adult Resort & Spa brothel next door, also is upset that The Nature Conservancy began raising Northern Leopard frogs in ponds at the ranch without telling anybody in the county. The frog has been listed by the state as a protected species. For now, that gives the frog no legal protection. But Gilman fears an endangered species listing could someday make building his industrial park more difficult....
A Web of Sensors, Taking Earth's Pulse In the wilds of the San Jacinto Mountains, along a steep canyon, scientists are turning 30 acres of pines and hardwoods in California into a futuristic vision of environmental study. They are linking up more than 100 tiny sensors, robots, cameras and computers, which are beginning to paint an unusually detailed portrait of this lush world, home to more than 30 rare and endangered species. Much of the instrumentation is wireless. Devices the size of a deck of cards - known as motes, after dust motes - can measure light, wind speed, rainfall, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure, detecting the presence of a warm body or tracking the progress of a chill wind up the canyon....
Water worries spark moratoriums A once-in-500-year drought has prompted counties and residents in the Magic Valley to take water matters into their own hands. Worries over water quality and quantity nudged two counties into adopting temporary moratoriums on confined animal feeding operations while two other counties consider similar steps. Today, Lincoln County residents will take their concerns for this scarce resource one step further when they ask county commissioners for a moratorium on all changes to land use -- including subdivisions and dairies -- until a comprehensive land use plan can be adopted. Members of the Lincoln Rural Council assert that development in Lincoln County is "out of control." Not only have a number of wells gone dry in the county but some have also seen increases in nitrate levels, said Susan Westendorf, a spokeswoman for the council....
Tribes buy into political process Ten years ago, Native American tribes were still the minor political players they'd been for centuries, with their campaign donations barely registering on the national radar. But tribes, enriched by casino profits, are among the nation's fastest-growing contributors, pumping more than $7 million into federal campaigns in last year's elections. That's more than mining, textile and environmental groups. They've also bolstered their lobbying teams. Like other groups, they're trying to build influence to protect their gains -- including the right to operate gambling centers -- and to expand into untapped territory....
Congress Is Staying Clear of Dispute Over Mad Cow Congress appears to be unlikely to step in the middle of a standoff between the Bush administration and American cattlemen over reopening the border to imports of cattle from Canada. The cattlemen are concerned about whether the Canadian cows would infect the American herd with the deadly mad cow disease. The Senate, responding to that concern, narrowly voted in March to block the Agriculture Department's ruling that deemed Canadian cattle healthy enough to allow the border to be reopened. With the deadline for Congressional action on Saturday, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia, has no plans to bring the issue up for a vote, a spokesman for the committee said Monday. Mr. Goodlatte, who opposed the Senate vote, plans to let the issue play out in the courts before considering any action, the spokesman said. That could set up a showdown in the Montana courtroom of Judge Richard F. Cebull of Federal District Court, who was sharply critical of the Agriculture Department's assurances that measures were in place to assure the safety of the beef coming from Canada....
Riding high The city is stretching awake, the streets still deserted and dark, as Dennis McQueen wheels into the parking lot on Fort Worth's north side. It's 5 a.m. -- four hours before the officers of the Fort Worth Police Mounted Patrol will arrive at the stables on the edge of Cowtown's historic Stockyards District, but McQueen has work to do. At 48, he is the old man of the yard, the horse trainer and riding teacher for the mounted patrol, one of Fort Worth's most recognizable images. McQueen is the man who makes horses and riders ready for duty in this town that values Western heritage. Many officers have never ridden a horse before applying for the mounted patrol, and they have McQueen to thank for their confidence on the street. But few outside the division know his name....
Champion steer wrestler competes with diabetes About seven years ago, when Luke Branquinho was a freshman at West Hills College in Coalinga, he was diagnosed with a disease that changed his life. After hallucinating and experiencing repeated symptoms of extreme fatigue, Branquinho, 17 at the time, went to the doctor and found out disturbing news. He had Type II diabetes. Branquinho tests his sugar levels four to five times a day. If they're low before a performance, he drinks a Coke before jumping on the horse. In between events, he carries a $4,000 pump that looks like a pager and automatically injects insulin into his veins. It takes the guesswork out of the injections because it's connected almost 24 hours a day, delivering small doses of insulin through a flexible, plastic catheter. His approach is working. Two years after being diagnosed, Branquinho won the 2000 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association overall and steer wrestling Rookie of the Year awards. And his career skyrocketed from there. Last year, he won the PRCA steer wrestling world title in Las Vegas and pocketed almost $200,000 in earnings....
Dual champions at George Paul For only the third time in its 28-year history, the George Paul Memorial Bull Riding competition has co-champions. B.J. Schumacher, of Hillsboro, Wis., scored 179 points on two bulls Sunday afternoon to tie Mike Scarlavai of Michigan atop the leader board at this yearÕs event, held at the Val Verde County Fairgrounds. Scarlavai scored his points Saturday night....
It's All Trew: Little black box start of family photography Long before the modern term of PC, personal computer, appeared, another PC came along in the form of a personal camera most people called a Kodak. This simple black box performed the miracle of taking photographs anywhere and at anytime. Kodaking became a national fad and a serious hobby for millions of people. History has certainly been enhanced by these images that preserved the authentic past. Its use caught on like wildfire, especially with the younger set. The first Kodaks were simple devices with a peep hole to focus, a lens, click button and a knob to advance the film forward for the next picture. There were no adjustments. Most new operators ruined or double-exposed a roll or two of film while learning. These old boxes soon gave way to Brownies with many new improvements....
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Monday, May 09, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Editorial: What's that howling? Wild wolves roam Arizona because reason triumphed over the Little Red Riding Hood myths that led to the federally funded slaughter of these top predators years ago. Yet it wasn't easy to launch this effort, and some ranchers still oppose the reintroduction of the endangered Mexican gray wolf that began in 1998 in Arizona and New Mexico. They left fingerprints on a recent proposal that wolf advocates say would undercut the process of building a sustainable population of this endangered species in the wild. That proposal was the result of an invitation-only meetings orchestrated by New Mexico Republican Rep. Stevan Pearce. He brought wolf-averse New Mexico ranchers together with high-level officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for private meetings....
Rights of passage After an absence of 40 years, salmon could return to the rivers and streams of Central Oregon by the end of the decade. It would be the largest single salmon and steelhead reintroduction in Oregon's history -- reaching from the Ochoco Mountains to the foothills of the Cascades. To succeed, the fish will have to overcome not only a legacy of failed salmon policies in the upper Deschutes River basin, but also the challenges of present-day politics. But along with the hopes of restoring the lost fishery are the fears of farmers, ranchers and others who rely on the basin's rivers for irrigation. They're worried that the ensuing competition for water could devolve into a Klamath-style confrontation....
Large male bear may have killed fellow griz A dead male grizzly bear, apparently the victim of another grizzly, was found Tuesday west of Choteau. Ranchers discovered the bear on Willow Creek near their property and contacted Fish, Wildlife & Parks, said Mike Madel, FWP bear specialist in the Choteau area. He said it appears the 5- or 6-year-old male grizzly was killed by a larger grizzly. "He was beaten and bitten," Madel said. "We know these males get into severe fights." He suspects the two grizzlies were fighting over a female grizzly that had been spotted in the same area. "We could see where the two encountered each other, and there were seven or eight circles that they treaded out while fighting," Madel said. The grizzly bear that was killed weighed between 450 and 500 pounds. Bear specialists found fur and a broken claw in the area. Wayne Gollehon said the bear was killed near his family property. "There was some tore up ground and hair and blood scattered around," he said. "I was quite surprised. I'd never heard of an adult bear being killed by another adult."....
Editorial: Roadless Rules ON ITS OWN, the Bush administration's rationale for radically amending the "roadless rule" sounds reasonable. The rule, a Clinton administration regulation designed to prevent logging, mineral extraction or road construction of any kind within some 56.5 million acres of pristine national forestland, has been contested by several states and has been overturned by two federal judges. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who is responsible for the Forest Service, says he wants to eliminate the one-size-fits-all federal rule in favor of a "state by state process." Mr. Rey says that this would give governors more say in how the rule is applied and therefore reduce the amount of "ill will" that the rule created. That argument is fine, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it overlooks the bigger picture. It overlooks the fact that one of the court decisions against the rule has been successfully overturned by a higher court, and another appeal is pending: Surely that means that it's at least possible for the government to keep the legal process going. It overlooks the fact that the rule is supported not only by public opinion -- millions of people have signed petitions in its favor -- but by scientific evidence....
Pilots speak out on fire fleet From the father of aerial firefighting to pilots who recently flew through fiery debris in Southern California wildfires, aviators are saying the U.S. firefighting fleet is undergoing fundamental changes that may cost extra lives and homes. Federal agencies' shift from aging, big air tankers toward more helicopters and small, single-engine planes -- rather than finding new, large air tankers -- is based on faulty fiscal conclusions and flawed accident statistics, according to several pilots who have broken a 50-year-old code of silence. The Aerial Firefighting Industry Association -- representing 15 firms that supply planes, maintenance and pilots to government agencies -- also is touting a decade-old National Air Tanker Study that showed an overwhelming benefit-to-cost ratio for big air tankers and envisioned a fleet of 41 modern aircraft by now....
Loving NEPA to death If the first public hearing on changing the nation's landmark environmental protection act is any indication, the law may be liked to death. No one at the hearing on reforming the National Environmental Policy Act attacked the law, although Republicans noted repeatedly that it needed to be reformed. The debate over NEPA is one of those obtuse insider battles that the general public often ignores, but which are profoundly important. President Nixon signed NEPA in 1970, and it serves as the basis for federal management of public lands. The law requires federal agencies to conduct lengthy environmental reviews before approving projects. It is key to limiting development on public land and protecting endangered species. But critics, many of them in the GOP, contend the law has spawned a nightmare of litigation as lawsuits are filed to stop or alter proposed projects. They contend the law has also produced "paralysis by analysis'' as projects are delayed....
Wetlands project upsets some A barbed-wire fence on the east end of The Nature Conservancy’s land at the McCarran Ranch east Sparks has wild horse advocates and officials for the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center all riled up, but an official from the conservancy says the complaints are based on misunderstandings. The 300-foot fence put up about a year ago has cut off a path traditionally used by wild horses to drink from the Truckee River at the McCarran Ranch. And Lance Gilman, co-owner of Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park and the Wild Horse Adult Resort & Spa brothel next door, is upset that The Nature Conservancy began raising Northern Leopard frogs in a series of ponds at the McCarran Ranch — without telling anybody in the county....
'Green' energy another threat to grouse Wind power, a clean energy source that is plentiful in western Oklahoma, presents a threat to a dwindling population of birds on the Great Plains, conservationists and researchers say. The concern is that planned wind farms may damage bird habitat. Scientists are attempting to map the areas where potential wind farms and bird habitats overlap. Prairie grouse, whose numbers have taken a nosedive, particularly concern conservationists. The lesser prairie chicken, whose population has fallen from about 2 million to fewer than 50,000 in the past century, seem vulnerable to any sign of human activity in their breeding grounds, which stretch from northern Oklahoma into Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas, said Ron Wolfe of the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, Okla....
Huntsman policies delight rural factions but leave greens uneasy A little over four months into his first term, Huntsman's rural constituents are happy enough with his approach to public lands issues. But the state's environmental and outdoor recreation communities are getting nervous. "We are working with the governor. We believe he understands the importance of conservation for the long-term economic vibrancy of Utah," says Peter Metcalf, CEO of Black Diamond Equipment, a Holladay-based outdoor recreation company. "But we are concerned about what we're seeing coming out of his administration. What's happening seems to be contrary to the principles he has articulated and contrary to the economic goals of the state." Since Huntsman's inauguration the state has:....
BLM considers direct sales It might be faster. It might be cheaper. And it might not be as controversial. For all these reasons, the Bureau of Land Management is proposing a policy change that would allow it to sell property directly rather than rely on often complicated land exchanges. Those exchanges have been under the microscope in recent months as the bureau considers trading off "Area 51" west of Redding to a developer in exchange for his private land in Trinity County. Neighbors have blasted the trade, saying that Area 51 is likely worth much more than the Trinity land, and complaining that the exchange process is difficult for the public to monitor. The BLM still will use exchanges when conditions merit, officials said Friday....
Former oil town hopes to become vast wasteland This small West Texas town grew its economy on oil but may hang its hopes on what some folks think is their next boom: storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists owns 14,400 acres about 30 miles outside town near the New Mexico border. About 1,340 acres are set aside for hazardous waste storage and disposal, and the company will manage tons of federal uranium byproduct waste by year's end. Some residents think the site will bring dozens of jobs from spin-off industries, and city leaders anticipate it will pump millions of dollars into the economy. It's a reverse NIMBY — not in my back yard — with Andrews welcoming the radioactive waste rather than fighting to keep it out....
Conservation easement benefits ranching family, wildlife, sportsmen Warren Gore, whose grandfather Glen homesteaded the original Gore ranch on Glade Park in the 1920s, swept an arm over the spring-green landscape that is his family’s home as well as home to elk, deer, bear, mountain lions and a small population of Gunnison sage grouse. “It’s always been our hope that we could keep this in ranching,” said Gore, accompanied by his father Don and two of Warren’s children, Madeline, 11, and Marshall, 8, on that blustery day, buffeted by a west wind bearing the taste of snow. “We’ve always been interested in preserving the wildlife habitat at the same time. And from the family side, keeping the ranch is important to our kids, too.” Saving that ranching future, and saving the wildlife habitat seriously threatened by the octopus of development slithering across the flats of Glade Park, will be easier now that the Gore family, headed by patriarch Don Gore, has agreed to put 4,433 acres of their land into a conservation easement with the Colorado Division of Wildlife....
Land in the rearview mirror Scobey School Superintendent Dave Selvig can record the fading of Daniels County's population by counting heads on the playground. This spring, 24 seniors will graduate. Next fall, 17 kindergarteners will enroll. Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the graduates will go to college, Selvig said. Few of them will be back. "There's just nothing to keep people here,'' he sighed. Between the 1930 and 2000 censuses, 29 of Montana's 56 counties lost population. Some, like tiny Petroleum County just east of the state's center line, are down to less than one-quarter of peaks recorded in 1930. Many more, mostly in rural Eastern Montana, have lost half their numbers. Depopulation, especially in counties dependent on agriculture, appears to be accelerating and, so far, unstoppable. While Montana's population grew 12.9 percent between 1990 and 2000, much of the farm and ranch land east of the mountains saw alarming losses....
Elmendorf creature wasn't part of legend Forget the chupacabra. Those mysterious beasts that have been spotted in Texas have nothing to do with the monster of Puerto Rican folklore. The strange animals are merely common coyotes inflicted with bad cases of mange — very bad cases, according to a Lubbock professor who has spent nearly 20 years studying the skin disease. The only thing the chupacabra and these sickly coyotes have in common is their horrendous hides. "We looked at it, and of course it's a mange coyote," said Danny Pence, a professor of parasitology at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock. "There's no doubt in our minds whatsoever."....
Horses once were backbone of state's ag labor How's this for a trend? Horse numbers are increasing and cattle numbers are decreasing. The reasons are fairly clear. More and more Montanans own horses for pleasure and recreation, especially affluent people who purchase acreage in rural areas. At the same time, cattle numbers have declined because of drought and market conditions. Although beef prices have been good for the past year or two, cattle are at a decade-low count of about 2.4 million head. This shift may not be a permanent one, but the upsurge of interest in horses harks back to a time when land was plowed by teams of horses, when hay rakes were pulled by horses and when the U.S. Army was buying thousands of horses on the open market. The only way to get to town until 1910 or 1915 was on horseback or by horse-drawn wagon. The business of raising, rounding up and selling horses was an active one....
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Editorial: What's that howling? Wild wolves roam Arizona because reason triumphed over the Little Red Riding Hood myths that led to the federally funded slaughter of these top predators years ago. Yet it wasn't easy to launch this effort, and some ranchers still oppose the reintroduction of the endangered Mexican gray wolf that began in 1998 in Arizona and New Mexico. They left fingerprints on a recent proposal that wolf advocates say would undercut the process of building a sustainable population of this endangered species in the wild. That proposal was the result of an invitation-only meetings orchestrated by New Mexico Republican Rep. Stevan Pearce. He brought wolf-averse New Mexico ranchers together with high-level officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for private meetings....
Rights of passage After an absence of 40 years, salmon could return to the rivers and streams of Central Oregon by the end of the decade. It would be the largest single salmon and steelhead reintroduction in Oregon's history -- reaching from the Ochoco Mountains to the foothills of the Cascades. To succeed, the fish will have to overcome not only a legacy of failed salmon policies in the upper Deschutes River basin, but also the challenges of present-day politics. But along with the hopes of restoring the lost fishery are the fears of farmers, ranchers and others who rely on the basin's rivers for irrigation. They're worried that the ensuing competition for water could devolve into a Klamath-style confrontation....
Large male bear may have killed fellow griz A dead male grizzly bear, apparently the victim of another grizzly, was found Tuesday west of Choteau. Ranchers discovered the bear on Willow Creek near their property and contacted Fish, Wildlife & Parks, said Mike Madel, FWP bear specialist in the Choteau area. He said it appears the 5- or 6-year-old male grizzly was killed by a larger grizzly. "He was beaten and bitten," Madel said. "We know these males get into severe fights." He suspects the two grizzlies were fighting over a female grizzly that had been spotted in the same area. "We could see where the two encountered each other, and there were seven or eight circles that they treaded out while fighting," Madel said. The grizzly bear that was killed weighed between 450 and 500 pounds. Bear specialists found fur and a broken claw in the area. Wayne Gollehon said the bear was killed near his family property. "There was some tore up ground and hair and blood scattered around," he said. "I was quite surprised. I'd never heard of an adult bear being killed by another adult."....
Editorial: Roadless Rules ON ITS OWN, the Bush administration's rationale for radically amending the "roadless rule" sounds reasonable. The rule, a Clinton administration regulation designed to prevent logging, mineral extraction or road construction of any kind within some 56.5 million acres of pristine national forestland, has been contested by several states and has been overturned by two federal judges. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who is responsible for the Forest Service, says he wants to eliminate the one-size-fits-all federal rule in favor of a "state by state process." Mr. Rey says that this would give governors more say in how the rule is applied and therefore reduce the amount of "ill will" that the rule created. That argument is fine, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it overlooks the bigger picture. It overlooks the fact that one of the court decisions against the rule has been successfully overturned by a higher court, and another appeal is pending: Surely that means that it's at least possible for the government to keep the legal process going. It overlooks the fact that the rule is supported not only by public opinion -- millions of people have signed petitions in its favor -- but by scientific evidence....
Pilots speak out on fire fleet From the father of aerial firefighting to pilots who recently flew through fiery debris in Southern California wildfires, aviators are saying the U.S. firefighting fleet is undergoing fundamental changes that may cost extra lives and homes. Federal agencies' shift from aging, big air tankers toward more helicopters and small, single-engine planes -- rather than finding new, large air tankers -- is based on faulty fiscal conclusions and flawed accident statistics, according to several pilots who have broken a 50-year-old code of silence. The Aerial Firefighting Industry Association -- representing 15 firms that supply planes, maintenance and pilots to government agencies -- also is touting a decade-old National Air Tanker Study that showed an overwhelming benefit-to-cost ratio for big air tankers and envisioned a fleet of 41 modern aircraft by now....
Loving NEPA to death If the first public hearing on changing the nation's landmark environmental protection act is any indication, the law may be liked to death. No one at the hearing on reforming the National Environmental Policy Act attacked the law, although Republicans noted repeatedly that it needed to be reformed. The debate over NEPA is one of those obtuse insider battles that the general public often ignores, but which are profoundly important. President Nixon signed NEPA in 1970, and it serves as the basis for federal management of public lands. The law requires federal agencies to conduct lengthy environmental reviews before approving projects. It is key to limiting development on public land and protecting endangered species. But critics, many of them in the GOP, contend the law has spawned a nightmare of litigation as lawsuits are filed to stop or alter proposed projects. They contend the law has also produced "paralysis by analysis'' as projects are delayed....
Wetlands project upsets some A barbed-wire fence on the east end of The Nature Conservancy’s land at the McCarran Ranch east Sparks has wild horse advocates and officials for the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center all riled up, but an official from the conservancy says the complaints are based on misunderstandings. The 300-foot fence put up about a year ago has cut off a path traditionally used by wild horses to drink from the Truckee River at the McCarran Ranch. And Lance Gilman, co-owner of Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park and the Wild Horse Adult Resort & Spa brothel next door, is upset that The Nature Conservancy began raising Northern Leopard frogs in a series of ponds at the McCarran Ranch — without telling anybody in the county....
'Green' energy another threat to grouse Wind power, a clean energy source that is plentiful in western Oklahoma, presents a threat to a dwindling population of birds on the Great Plains, conservationists and researchers say. The concern is that planned wind farms may damage bird habitat. Scientists are attempting to map the areas where potential wind farms and bird habitats overlap. Prairie grouse, whose numbers have taken a nosedive, particularly concern conservationists. The lesser prairie chicken, whose population has fallen from about 2 million to fewer than 50,000 in the past century, seem vulnerable to any sign of human activity in their breeding grounds, which stretch from northern Oklahoma into Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas, said Ron Wolfe of the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, Okla....
Huntsman policies delight rural factions but leave greens uneasy A little over four months into his first term, Huntsman's rural constituents are happy enough with his approach to public lands issues. But the state's environmental and outdoor recreation communities are getting nervous. "We are working with the governor. We believe he understands the importance of conservation for the long-term economic vibrancy of Utah," says Peter Metcalf, CEO of Black Diamond Equipment, a Holladay-based outdoor recreation company. "But we are concerned about what we're seeing coming out of his administration. What's happening seems to be contrary to the principles he has articulated and contrary to the economic goals of the state." Since Huntsman's inauguration the state has:....
BLM considers direct sales It might be faster. It might be cheaper. And it might not be as controversial. For all these reasons, the Bureau of Land Management is proposing a policy change that would allow it to sell property directly rather than rely on often complicated land exchanges. Those exchanges have been under the microscope in recent months as the bureau considers trading off "Area 51" west of Redding to a developer in exchange for his private land in Trinity County. Neighbors have blasted the trade, saying that Area 51 is likely worth much more than the Trinity land, and complaining that the exchange process is difficult for the public to monitor. The BLM still will use exchanges when conditions merit, officials said Friday....
Former oil town hopes to become vast wasteland This small West Texas town grew its economy on oil but may hang its hopes on what some folks think is their next boom: storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists owns 14,400 acres about 30 miles outside town near the New Mexico border. About 1,340 acres are set aside for hazardous waste storage and disposal, and the company will manage tons of federal uranium byproduct waste by year's end. Some residents think the site will bring dozens of jobs from spin-off industries, and city leaders anticipate it will pump millions of dollars into the economy. It's a reverse NIMBY — not in my back yard — with Andrews welcoming the radioactive waste rather than fighting to keep it out....
Conservation easement benefits ranching family, wildlife, sportsmen Warren Gore, whose grandfather Glen homesteaded the original Gore ranch on Glade Park in the 1920s, swept an arm over the spring-green landscape that is his family’s home as well as home to elk, deer, bear, mountain lions and a small population of Gunnison sage grouse. “It’s always been our hope that we could keep this in ranching,” said Gore, accompanied by his father Don and two of Warren’s children, Madeline, 11, and Marshall, 8, on that blustery day, buffeted by a west wind bearing the taste of snow. “We’ve always been interested in preserving the wildlife habitat at the same time. And from the family side, keeping the ranch is important to our kids, too.” Saving that ranching future, and saving the wildlife habitat seriously threatened by the octopus of development slithering across the flats of Glade Park, will be easier now that the Gore family, headed by patriarch Don Gore, has agreed to put 4,433 acres of their land into a conservation easement with the Colorado Division of Wildlife....
Land in the rearview mirror Scobey School Superintendent Dave Selvig can record the fading of Daniels County's population by counting heads on the playground. This spring, 24 seniors will graduate. Next fall, 17 kindergarteners will enroll. Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the graduates will go to college, Selvig said. Few of them will be back. "There's just nothing to keep people here,'' he sighed. Between the 1930 and 2000 censuses, 29 of Montana's 56 counties lost population. Some, like tiny Petroleum County just east of the state's center line, are down to less than one-quarter of peaks recorded in 1930. Many more, mostly in rural Eastern Montana, have lost half their numbers. Depopulation, especially in counties dependent on agriculture, appears to be accelerating and, so far, unstoppable. While Montana's population grew 12.9 percent between 1990 and 2000, much of the farm and ranch land east of the mountains saw alarming losses....
Elmendorf creature wasn't part of legend Forget the chupacabra. Those mysterious beasts that have been spotted in Texas have nothing to do with the monster of Puerto Rican folklore. The strange animals are merely common coyotes inflicted with bad cases of mange — very bad cases, according to a Lubbock professor who has spent nearly 20 years studying the skin disease. The only thing the chupacabra and these sickly coyotes have in common is their horrendous hides. "We looked at it, and of course it's a mange coyote," said Danny Pence, a professor of parasitology at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock. "There's no doubt in our minds whatsoever."....
Horses once were backbone of state's ag labor How's this for a trend? Horse numbers are increasing and cattle numbers are decreasing. The reasons are fairly clear. More and more Montanans own horses for pleasure and recreation, especially affluent people who purchase acreage in rural areas. At the same time, cattle numbers have declined because of drought and market conditions. Although beef prices have been good for the past year or two, cattle are at a decade-low count of about 2.4 million head. This shift may not be a permanent one, but the upsurge of interest in horses harks back to a time when land was plowed by teams of horses, when hay rakes were pulled by horses and when the U.S. Army was buying thousands of horses on the open market. The only way to get to town until 1910 or 1915 was on horseback or by horse-drawn wagon. The business of raising, rounding up and selling horses was an active one....
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Sunday, May 08, 2005
OPINION/COMMENTARY
JP Morgan Becomes Tool of Green Activists
JP Morgan Chase's chief executive, William Harrison, is a dream come true for Left-wing anti-business activists. Not only did Mr. Harrison announce last week that JP Morgan Chase would fully surrender to their demand that the bank adopt activist approved lending policies - he also announced plans to make the bank an active tool of the radical environmental movement. Following activist demands, JP Morgan will compel its borrowers to embrace the unsubstantiated hysteria about global warming—thus putting their businesses at significant financial risk. Borrowers will be forced to disclose emissions of greenhouse gases—a practice likely to benefit only trial lawyers eager to sue businesses based on allegations that their greenhouse gas emissions contributed to global warming, which the lawyers hope to link to property damage from natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and other severe weather events. Borrowers will also be pressured to include on their balance sheets liabilities for global warming—essentially imaginary liabilities that will compel borrowers to reserve monies for paying off trial lawyers, Green activists, and their allies in the property and casualty insurance industry. JP Morgan Chase also agreed to allow the activists to dictate where the bank may lend money. Areas designated by activists as being of "high ecological" value will be "no-go" zones where lending is restricted. Since there are no objective standards for identifying areas of "high ecological value"—thereby leaving the activists in charge of designating those areas—the policy essentially gives the activists a veto over bank lending....
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JP Morgan Becomes Tool of Green Activists
JP Morgan Chase's chief executive, William Harrison, is a dream come true for Left-wing anti-business activists. Not only did Mr. Harrison announce last week that JP Morgan Chase would fully surrender to their demand that the bank adopt activist approved lending policies - he also announced plans to make the bank an active tool of the radical environmental movement. Following activist demands, JP Morgan will compel its borrowers to embrace the unsubstantiated hysteria about global warming—thus putting their businesses at significant financial risk. Borrowers will be forced to disclose emissions of greenhouse gases—a practice likely to benefit only trial lawyers eager to sue businesses based on allegations that their greenhouse gas emissions contributed to global warming, which the lawyers hope to link to property damage from natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and other severe weather events. Borrowers will also be pressured to include on their balance sheets liabilities for global warming—essentially imaginary liabilities that will compel borrowers to reserve monies for paying off trial lawyers, Green activists, and their allies in the property and casualty insurance industry. JP Morgan Chase also agreed to allow the activists to dictate where the bank may lend money. Areas designated by activists as being of "high ecological" value will be "no-go" zones where lending is restricted. Since there are no objective standards for identifying areas of "high ecological value"—thereby leaving the activists in charge of designating those areas—the policy essentially gives the activists a veto over bank lending....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Why green has gone out of fashion
For 35 years now, environmentalists have specialized in “Chicken Little scare tactics and doomsday prophesying,” said Chip Giller in The Boston Globe. But the movement reached new “depths of gloominess” when it recently announced “the death of itself.” Two prominent environmentalists, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, have published a paper, bluntly titled “The Death of Environmentalism,” declaring that environmentalists have become irrelevant. Activists are so mired in “narrow policy fixes” and bureaucratic jargon, the authors say, that they’ve stopped connecting with ordinary Americans. As a result, they’ve lost popular support in their battle with the Bush administration on issues ranging from oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to mercury emissions from power plants. Last week’s Earth Day observances should have been a celebration of the movement’s many successes in bringing cleaner water and air to all Americans. But activists were too busy lamenting their new political “impotence.” The greens shouldn’t be so hard on themselves, said Sally Pipes in National Review Online. There’s a good reason most Americans are no longer moved by dire warnings about species becoming extinct or the oceans boiling over: Thanks to decades of environmental activism, the Earth is doing just fine. Ozone air pollution has fallen to its lowest level in U.S. history. Air quality in the 10 largest metropolitan areas has improved by more than 53 percent since 1980. Forests and wetlands are thriving. Our national symbol, the bald eagle, was down to only 500 nesting pairs in 1965; now there are 7,500 of them, and they’re being taken off the Endangered Species List. “All the good news may put green lobbies in a panic,” because their agenda still calls for “draconian” regulation. But “it’s time Americans gave themselves a pat on the back” for helping to forge a “greener and cleaner Earth.”....
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Why green has gone out of fashion
For 35 years now, environmentalists have specialized in “Chicken Little scare tactics and doomsday prophesying,” said Chip Giller in The Boston Globe. But the movement reached new “depths of gloominess” when it recently announced “the death of itself.” Two prominent environmentalists, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, have published a paper, bluntly titled “The Death of Environmentalism,” declaring that environmentalists have become irrelevant. Activists are so mired in “narrow policy fixes” and bureaucratic jargon, the authors say, that they’ve stopped connecting with ordinary Americans. As a result, they’ve lost popular support in their battle with the Bush administration on issues ranging from oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to mercury emissions from power plants. Last week’s Earth Day observances should have been a celebration of the movement’s many successes in bringing cleaner water and air to all Americans. But activists were too busy lamenting their new political “impotence.” The greens shouldn’t be so hard on themselves, said Sally Pipes in National Review Online. There’s a good reason most Americans are no longer moved by dire warnings about species becoming extinct or the oceans boiling over: Thanks to decades of environmental activism, the Earth is doing just fine. Ozone air pollution has fallen to its lowest level in U.S. history. Air quality in the 10 largest metropolitan areas has improved by more than 53 percent since 1980. Forests and wetlands are thriving. Our national symbol, the bald eagle, was down to only 500 nesting pairs in 1965; now there are 7,500 of them, and they’re being taken off the Endangered Species List. “All the good news may put green lobbies in a panic,” because their agenda still calls for “draconian” regulation. But “it’s time Americans gave themselves a pat on the back” for helping to forge a “greener and cleaner Earth.”....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Reports of Environmentalism's Death May Be Exaggerated
Environmentalism is in a funk these days. Not only has their favorite political party been voted out of office but there's plenty of dissention in the ranks. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus's "The Death of Environmentalism" typifies this malaise. Although actually a call by a pair of "green-diaper-babies" for greater environmental extremism, this manifesto has been taken in the press at face value. Environmentalism, as the authors say, has become "just another interest group," lobbying Congress and the bureaucracy over obscure regulatory minutia while browbeating its supporters in the hinterlands for more contributions. Some of the reasons environmentalist has lost its steam were revealed in AEI's Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, released last week in its 10th anniversary edition, which was presented complete with a press conference and panel discussion. "Air pollution is at the lowest levels ever recorded," said Steve Hayward, a fellow at both AEI and the Pacific Research Institute, which co-sponsor the report. "Bald eagles, whales, ocean fishing stocks, forest and wetlands are coming back. More than 70 percent of Americans say they are happy with the environment." Reflecting the generally upbeat reports, general alarm over the continuing environmental crisis is also ebbing. "For the first time since polling began in 1984, the public puts economic growth and environmental protection almost on a par--49-44 percent in favor of the environment," reported Hayward. "As recently as 1999, people chose the environment over the economy by 70-23 percent."....
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Reports of Environmentalism's Death May Be Exaggerated
Environmentalism is in a funk these days. Not only has their favorite political party been voted out of office but there's plenty of dissention in the ranks. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus's "The Death of Environmentalism" typifies this malaise. Although actually a call by a pair of "green-diaper-babies" for greater environmental extremism, this manifesto has been taken in the press at face value. Environmentalism, as the authors say, has become "just another interest group," lobbying Congress and the bureaucracy over obscure regulatory minutia while browbeating its supporters in the hinterlands for more contributions. Some of the reasons environmentalist has lost its steam were revealed in AEI's Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, released last week in its 10th anniversary edition, which was presented complete with a press conference and panel discussion. "Air pollution is at the lowest levels ever recorded," said Steve Hayward, a fellow at both AEI and the Pacific Research Institute, which co-sponsor the report. "Bald eagles, whales, ocean fishing stocks, forest and wetlands are coming back. More than 70 percent of Americans say they are happy with the environment." Reflecting the generally upbeat reports, general alarm over the continuing environmental crisis is also ebbing. "For the first time since polling began in 1984, the public puts economic growth and environmental protection almost on a par--49-44 percent in favor of the environment," reported Hayward. "As recently as 1999, people chose the environment over the economy by 70-23 percent."....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Pumping the Bizarre
The tenor of the energy debate now reaching a crescendo on Capitol Hill is increasingly bizarre. The periodic panic over “foreign-oil dependence” is back as is the unshakable faith in the magical power of taxpayer subsidies to deliver a fuel that will replace gasoline in transportation markets without bankrupting the economy. Those ideas have been aided and abetted by the ostensible party of free markets — the Republican party — whose leaders argue not whether the invisible hand ought to be banished but only the manner in which the market ought to be rigged in its absence. The hostility directed at “foreign” oil is ridiculous. The amount of oil we import has no bearing on the impact of world oil-market shocks on our economy. Even if the United States imported no oil at all (and we did not restrict trade), supply disruptions abroad would have a similar effect on our economy as if all our oil came from overseas. That’s because oil is traded in global markets: Anything that affects supply or demand anywhere affects prices everywhere. Great Britain discovered this in 1979. The North Sea crude the U.K. relied upon for all its oil consumption became just as costly as similar grades of Iranian crude when the Shah fell in 1979, an event that increased prices in energy independent and energy-dependent nations alike. Not only would energy independence not help us, removing ourselves from international energy markets in a quest for independence would make us more vulnerable to supply disruptions for two reasons. First, it’s easier for terrorists to disrupt energy production if the sources of supply are geographically concentrated rather than dispersed. Second, if a domestic disruption were to occur and a trading infrastructure were not in place, we would not be able to avail ourselves easily of supplies elsewhere. If reducing foreign-oil imports won’t protect us from supply disruptions overseas, should we reconsider our reliance on oil altogether?...
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Pumping the Bizarre
The tenor of the energy debate now reaching a crescendo on Capitol Hill is increasingly bizarre. The periodic panic over “foreign-oil dependence” is back as is the unshakable faith in the magical power of taxpayer subsidies to deliver a fuel that will replace gasoline in transportation markets without bankrupting the economy. Those ideas have been aided and abetted by the ostensible party of free markets — the Republican party — whose leaders argue not whether the invisible hand ought to be banished but only the manner in which the market ought to be rigged in its absence. The hostility directed at “foreign” oil is ridiculous. The amount of oil we import has no bearing on the impact of world oil-market shocks on our economy. Even if the United States imported no oil at all (and we did not restrict trade), supply disruptions abroad would have a similar effect on our economy as if all our oil came from overseas. That’s because oil is traded in global markets: Anything that affects supply or demand anywhere affects prices everywhere. Great Britain discovered this in 1979. The North Sea crude the U.K. relied upon for all its oil consumption became just as costly as similar grades of Iranian crude when the Shah fell in 1979, an event that increased prices in energy independent and energy-dependent nations alike. Not only would energy independence not help us, removing ourselves from international energy markets in a quest for independence would make us more vulnerable to supply disruptions for two reasons. First, it’s easier for terrorists to disrupt energy production if the sources of supply are geographically concentrated rather than dispersed. Second, if a domestic disruption were to occur and a trading infrastructure were not in place, we would not be able to avail ourselves easily of supplies elsewhere. If reducing foreign-oil imports won’t protect us from supply disruptions overseas, should we reconsider our reliance on oil altogether?...
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Environmentalism, RIP? Not So Fast
Is environmentalism dead? Yes, say environmental activists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in a recent essay, “The Death of Environmentalism,” that has sparked serious debate within the green Left. They argue that the movement is losing ground, and that it might need to abandon the drapery of environmentalism to pursue their overarching goal: “progressivism.” Environmental activism may be in transition, but the contention that the movement is losing major ground is belied by its ongoing impact on American life—an impact on both our pocketbooks and our personal freedom. Indeed, Americans who value freedom over the “progressive” nanny state should be very concerned about the scope and power of the environmental progressives today. Shellenberger and Nordhaus are surprisingly forthcoming. They and many other activists are unhappy because they don’t measure success based on whether the air and water are getting cleaner (which they clearly are), but on whether the movement has passed any new, major laws that increase their power. As the authors bluntly note, they evaluate their policy successes “not only for whether they will get us the environmental protections we need but also whether they will define the debate, divide our opponents, and build our political power over time.” And they want that political power to lord over the rest of us. As Shellenberger and Nordhaus plainly state, the greens want to pass a global warming law to “remake the global economy in ways that will transform the lives of six billion people,” which they admit is an “undertaking of monumental size and complexity.”....
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Environmentalism, RIP? Not So Fast
Is environmentalism dead? Yes, say environmental activists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in a recent essay, “The Death of Environmentalism,” that has sparked serious debate within the green Left. They argue that the movement is losing ground, and that it might need to abandon the drapery of environmentalism to pursue their overarching goal: “progressivism.” Environmental activism may be in transition, but the contention that the movement is losing major ground is belied by its ongoing impact on American life—an impact on both our pocketbooks and our personal freedom. Indeed, Americans who value freedom over the “progressive” nanny state should be very concerned about the scope and power of the environmental progressives today. Shellenberger and Nordhaus are surprisingly forthcoming. They and many other activists are unhappy because they don’t measure success based on whether the air and water are getting cleaner (which they clearly are), but on whether the movement has passed any new, major laws that increase their power. As the authors bluntly note, they evaluate their policy successes “not only for whether they will get us the environmental protections we need but also whether they will define the debate, divide our opponents, and build our political power over time.” And they want that political power to lord over the rest of us. As Shellenberger and Nordhaus plainly state, the greens want to pass a global warming law to “remake the global economy in ways that will transform the lives of six billion people,” which they admit is an “undertaking of monumental size and complexity.”....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Ecoterrorist Will Spend Seven Years in Federal Prison
A federal judge ruled on April 18 that 24-year-old William Jensen Cottrell should serve more than seven years in federal prison and pay more than $3.5 million in restitution for an August 2003 firebombing spree that damaged or destroyed some 125 sport utility vehicles at dealerships and homes outside Los Angeles. Cottrell will be required to serve at least 85 percent of the eight-year, four-month sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner. Cottrell was convicted in November 2004 of seven counts of arson and one of conspiracy. He was acquitted of the most serious charge, using a destructive device in a crime of violence, which would have carried a sentence of at least 30 years in prison. Cottrell, a Ph.D. candidate in physics at the California Institute of Technology, and two former Caltech students threw Molotov cocktails at Hummers and other SUVs after spray-painting them with such slogans as "Fat, Lazy Americans" and "ELF," for the environmental terrorist group Earth Liberation Front. Cottrell said at trial that he was a member of ELF, and the group claimed responsibility for the firebomings. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of Cottrell's co-conspirators, Tyler Johnson and his girlfriend, Michie Oe, who are believed to have fled the country. "Acts of ecoterrorism have been on the rise over the past four years," commented Sandy Liddy Bourne, director of legislation and policy for the American Legislative Exchange Council, "causing millions of dollars in damage to private property and research facilities. It is heartening to see a conviction with a stiff sentence that will send a message to radical environmental activists and animal rights zealots. They consider violence a means to advance a political agenda, but that will not be tolerated in the United States."....
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Ecoterrorist Will Spend Seven Years in Federal Prison
A federal judge ruled on April 18 that 24-year-old William Jensen Cottrell should serve more than seven years in federal prison and pay more than $3.5 million in restitution for an August 2003 firebombing spree that damaged or destroyed some 125 sport utility vehicles at dealerships and homes outside Los Angeles. Cottrell will be required to serve at least 85 percent of the eight-year, four-month sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner. Cottrell was convicted in November 2004 of seven counts of arson and one of conspiracy. He was acquitted of the most serious charge, using a destructive device in a crime of violence, which would have carried a sentence of at least 30 years in prison. Cottrell, a Ph.D. candidate in physics at the California Institute of Technology, and two former Caltech students threw Molotov cocktails at Hummers and other SUVs after spray-painting them with such slogans as "Fat, Lazy Americans" and "ELF," for the environmental terrorist group Earth Liberation Front. Cottrell said at trial that he was a member of ELF, and the group claimed responsibility for the firebomings. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of Cottrell's co-conspirators, Tyler Johnson and his girlfriend, Michie Oe, who are believed to have fled the country. "Acts of ecoterrorism have been on the rise over the past four years," commented Sandy Liddy Bourne, director of legislation and policy for the American Legislative Exchange Council, "causing millions of dollars in damage to private property and research facilities. It is heartening to see a conviction with a stiff sentence that will send a message to radical environmental activists and animal rights zealots. They consider violence a means to advance a political agenda, but that will not be tolerated in the United States."....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
States Battle EPA over Clean Air Designations
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has erroneously designated several regions across the country as out of compliance with federal standards for soot and particulate matter, according to government officials in several states. While some of their objections have convinced EPA to reconsider nonattainment designations, others are likely to be decided in federal court. New, more stringent federal standards regarding airborne particulate matter (PM) and soot are being implemented across the country. In December 2004 EPA provided notice that 225 counties in 20 states had failed to meet the new standards. Those counties must submit to EPA a compliance implementation plan by 2008 and meet the new standards by 2010. Counties that fail to meet the mandates will lose federal transportation money. The compliance implementation mandates are expected to take a heavy economic toll on regions currently not in compliance with the new standards. Industry is unlikely to establish operations in a region where new and costly soot abatement programs are necessary, especially when other regions of the state and country do not impose such costly mandates. "When you're out there trying to get businesses and industry to come to your community, and to have a black cloud hanging unfairly, that's a big hit," explained Vince Griffin, vice president of environmental and energy policy for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, in the March 8 Indianapolis Star. "A lot of counties will not even get up to bat." Local officials frequently assert EPA's reading stations are placed in unfair locations unrepresentative of regional air quality. Officials also argue EPA misidentifies the offending region by failing to hold upwind counties responsible for particulate matter that drifts into other counties and regions. Moreover, "Some (pollution) forms after a chemical reaction, so you could see emissions from one county impacting another county," EPA air expert Jim Mooney told the Star....
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States Battle EPA over Clean Air Designations
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has erroneously designated several regions across the country as out of compliance with federal standards for soot and particulate matter, according to government officials in several states. While some of their objections have convinced EPA to reconsider nonattainment designations, others are likely to be decided in federal court. New, more stringent federal standards regarding airborne particulate matter (PM) and soot are being implemented across the country. In December 2004 EPA provided notice that 225 counties in 20 states had failed to meet the new standards. Those counties must submit to EPA a compliance implementation plan by 2008 and meet the new standards by 2010. Counties that fail to meet the mandates will lose federal transportation money. The compliance implementation mandates are expected to take a heavy economic toll on regions currently not in compliance with the new standards. Industry is unlikely to establish operations in a region where new and costly soot abatement programs are necessary, especially when other regions of the state and country do not impose such costly mandates. "When you're out there trying to get businesses and industry to come to your community, and to have a black cloud hanging unfairly, that's a big hit," explained Vince Griffin, vice president of environmental and energy policy for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, in the March 8 Indianapolis Star. "A lot of counties will not even get up to bat." Local officials frequently assert EPA's reading stations are placed in unfair locations unrepresentative of regional air quality. Officials also argue EPA misidentifies the offending region by failing to hold upwind counties responsible for particulate matter that drifts into other counties and regions. Moreover, "Some (pollution) forms after a chemical reaction, so you could see emissions from one county impacting another county," EPA air expert Jim Mooney told the Star....
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