Friday, July 15, 2005
U.N. Panel Presents 4 Internet Options
A U.N. panel created to recommend how the Internet should be run in the future has failed to reach consensus but did agree that no single country should dominate. The United States stated two weeks ago that it intended to maintain control over the computers that serve as the Internet's principal traffic cops. In a report released Thursday, the U.N. panel outlined four possible options for the future of Internet governance for world leaders to consider at a November "Information Society" summit. One option would largely keep the current system intact, with a U.S.-based non-profit organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, continuing to handle basic policies over Internet addresses. At the other end, ICANN would be revamped and new international agencies formed under the auspices of the United Nations. The 40 members of the panel hailed from around the world and included representatives from business, academia and government. Some countries were satisfied with the current arrangement, while others, particularly developing ones, wanted to wrest control from ICANN and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations. Leaders ducked the issue and directed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to convene the working group to come up with a proposal for the second and final phase of the summit, in Tunisia in November....
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A U.N. panel created to recommend how the Internet should be run in the future has failed to reach consensus but did agree that no single country should dominate. The United States stated two weeks ago that it intended to maintain control over the computers that serve as the Internet's principal traffic cops. In a report released Thursday, the U.N. panel outlined four possible options for the future of Internet governance for world leaders to consider at a November "Information Society" summit. One option would largely keep the current system intact, with a U.S.-based non-profit organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, continuing to handle basic policies over Internet addresses. At the other end, ICANN would be revamped and new international agencies formed under the auspices of the United Nations. The 40 members of the panel hailed from around the world and included representatives from business, academia and government. Some countries were satisfied with the current arrangement, while others, particularly developing ones, wanted to wrest control from ICANN and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations. Leaders ducked the issue and directed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to convene the working group to come up with a proposal for the second and final phase of the summit, in Tunisia in November....
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Secretary Norton Praises President’s Intention to Nominate H. Dale Hall as Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service
Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton today praised President Bush’s intention to nominate H. Dale Hall to serve as Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The announcement is subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate, once the official nomination is made by the President. A 27-year career employee, Hall has served in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the Southwest Regional Director of the Service since 2001. “Dale brings to the job a wealth of experience and a record of being part of the answer to complex problems,” said Norton....
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Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton today praised President Bush’s intention to nominate H. Dale Hall to serve as Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The announcement is subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate, once the official nomination is made by the President. A 27-year career employee, Hall has served in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the Southwest Regional Director of the Service since 2001. “Dale brings to the job a wealth of experience and a record of being part of the answer to complex problems,” said Norton....
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NEWS ROUNDUP
EnCana's 'field of dreams' has Colorado locals crying the blues Northwestern Colorado is largely undeveloped and sparsely populated, home to agriculture and ranchers. Many of its people moved there looking for a pristine place to call home and most had no idea that the ground below them held natural gas, a fair assumption given that energy companies didn't see or pursue the potential until recently. That's changed radically. EnCana is pushing hard this year, drilling more than 300 wells, with hundreds more to come. It is an example of what EnCana calls an "unconventional" gas field, where numerous wells are necessary to tap gas that is spread out in small pockets over a large area. One analyst described the region as a "field of dreams." It is EnCana's single most important drilling location and positive community relations will be a key to success. The anger among some residents was stirred principally after a serious misstep by EnCana Corp. in 2004, and it has not abated even though the company is getting credit for recent improvements in its practices. Last summer, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission penalized EnCana $371,200 (U.S.), the largest such fine in the regulator's history, because natural gas containing benzene, a carcinogen, seeped from a poorly completed EnCana well into Divide Creek, about 250 kilometres west of Denver....
Forest throws out grazing plan The supervisor of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest has overturned part of a grazing plan to avoid damaging streams and streamside habitat. The decision, which resulted from an appeal by the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, means forest officials must now revise a grazing plan that affects more than 62,000 acres of public lands in southeastern Wyoming and northern Colorado. Authorized last spring, the plan, known as the Upper North Platte Analysis, would have permitted cattle grazing in streams and streamside habitats that are already suffering from drought, erosion and overgrazing, said a Biodiversity Conservation Alliance representative....
Snowbowl won't perform work until suits settled The Arizona Snowbowl has agreed not to begin work on snowmaking and other improvements at the ski area until lawsuits against it by Indian tribes and conservation groups have been settled. That accord was struck Wednesday during a federal court hearing in Prescott seeking a preliminary injunction against the construction before U.S. District Judge Paul Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt also scheduled a tentative court date for mid-October and consolidated the four suits into one filed by northern Arizona tribes and environmentalists against the U.S. Department of the Interior....
Troy Mine cave-in raises doubts at Rock Creek mine Generally speaking, a hole in the ground is not a problem at an underground mine, which is, after all, a hole in the ground. But an unexpected cave-in at the Troy Mine this spring has raised doubts about the future of a controversial mine proposal nearby. In approving the Rock Creek mine - which would tunnel beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness - Forest Service officials pointed to the Troy Mine as a good example of what might be expected. Responding to cave-in or subsidence concerns, officials noted the existing Troy Mine provided "an excellent analogy for the proposed Rock Creek mining method and risks of subsidence." The geology is much the same at the two sites, they said, as is the mining method proposed....
No end in sight for Biscuit Fire salvage Three years after lightning sparked the biggest wildfire in the nation in 2002, salvage logging is limping along, with no end in sight. The Forest Service said Wednesday it has sold 67 million board feet burned by the Biscuit Fire -- enough to build 15,000 homes -- of which 25 million board feet has been harvested. That compares to 370 million board feet called for in the final logging plans issued a year ago. There is no word on when the bulk of the sales, located in roadless areas that environmentalists still hope to protect from logging, will be offered, if ever. "It's been meaningful volume to the guys who got it, but given the controversy and the hype, it's been a yawner," said Chris West of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group....
House panel studies motorized recreation on public lands Off-road vehicle enthusiasts complained to a congressional committee Wednesday that they are increasingly being blocked from enjoying national forests, parks and rangelands. Last year, 51 million of 211 million national forest visitors participated in off-road vehicle recreation, a tenfold increase over 1972, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The service says unregulated recreation, including off-road vehicle use, is a key threat to the national forests. Off-road vehicle users disturb wildlife, hunters, hikers and skiers with their noise and fumes....
Toronto Artist Traded Endangered Species, Canada, U.S. Allege The Internet is being used increasingly to support illegal trade in wildlife specimens and products, according to Canadian and U.S. wildlife officers. The warning came Wednesday as a Toronto man was charged in Canada for selling parts of endangered species on the Internet. Officials of both countries cooperated in the investigation and arrest of Mark J. Gleberzon, age 36, for allegedly selling products containing elephant ivory and parrot feather ornaments to U.S. wildlife officers in New York. After a 15 month investigation, Gleberzon was arrested May 12 by United States Fish and Wildlife Service special agents at LaGuardia International Airport in New York City while attempting to board a return flight to Canada....
World Wildlife Fund Launches Wildfinder, World's Most Powerful Tool to Find Where Wildlife Live The world's only searchable database for all four groups of land vertebrates launches today on World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Web site, http://www.worldwildlife.org. Wildfinder is the only online, map-driven tool to cover the entire globe. "For the first time the geographic ranges of 26,000 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians can be found at a single site," said Eric Dinerstein, WWF's vice-president for science. "This kind of information is critical for studies in ecology, biogeography, conservation biology and natural history. Before Wildfinder, finding these data might require a time-consuming search of several different references. Now, they are available with just a few mouse clicks." WildFinder allows the user to search for wildlife two ways – by location or by species....
Animal rights group sues over Steller sea lion research An animal rights group filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing the federal government of using illegal research techniques on threatened and endangered Steller sea lions. The Humane Society of the United States says the National Marine Fisheries Service has approved permits for research activities that include hot branding and tissue sampling of thousands of Steller sea lions each year. Humane Society officials said the research practices violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act....
Bears will be bears U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy dismissed a lawsuit last Thursday dealing with the grizzly bear mauling death of Great Falls hunter Timothy Hilston. The case stems from an Oct. 30, 2001 incident in which Hilston went hunting in the Blackfoot Clearwater Wildlife Management Area about 45 miles east of Missoula. Hilston was successful in downing an elk and was in the process of field dressing the animal when he was attacked and killed by a grizzly bear. Believing that the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Wildlife and Parks were “negligent in operation and control, maintenance and management of the grizzly bears” in the wildlife management area, Hilston’s widow sued those agencies for the death of her husband. Lawyers for the state and feds say if Hilston’s widow was successful in her suit, it could have set a precedent that would have opened the floodgates for similar lawsuits and undermined grizzly bear protection....
B.W. Cox Wants to Leave a Land Legacy If you want to learn about plants, soil conditions, water tables, aquifer recharges, what grows where and why, spend at least a day driving around a vast ranch with its owner. Hopefully he’s the type of rancher who knows a thing or two about how to keep the soil rich and the cows fat, how to make sure the eagles, the elk and the bears all get along with him and his cows. B.W. Cox is one of those ranchers. He’s probably a better land steward than his Forest Service neighbors. He’s made his living here all of his long years. It isn’t an easy living, as evidenced by B.W.’s slight limp-and-tilt, his creaky bones. But to be surrounded by his land, his family and his cows is all he really wants. No condos in Florida or even a small house in Socorro. “Those people who do that,” he says, referring to his ranching cohorts who sell off their land and retire, “they’re dead in seven, eight months.” B.W.’s Montosa Ranch is in Magdalena, New Mexico, which sits about 15 miles west of Socorro, north of the Magdalena and San Mateo Mountains, above the plains of St. Augustine....
Planes plant seeds to grow a crop of raindrops Todd Flanagan knows the desperation felt by area farmers and ranchers as sweltering summer days fail to yield any significant rainfall. Flanagan is a meteorologist for a rainmaking project here, and, lately, he's had to answer to a lot of concerned residents wondering where the rain is. There has been no measurable rainfall at San Antonio International Airport for 43 days, according to the National Weather Service. It's the 11th longest period of no rain since 1946, when the agency began tracking such records. But Flanagan isn't discouraged. The South Texas Weather Modification Association sent two planes Thursday into the skies northwest of San Antonio to seed clouds and hopefully produce rain....
Governor rehires brand inspectors Gov. Dave Freudenthal on Thursday upbraided state livestock officials for their "insensitive and callous" dismissal of four brand inspectors due to a budget crunch, then shifted funds to rehire them. State Veterinarian and Wyoming Livestock Board Executive Officer Dwayne Oldham said the layoffs were the last choice to balance the Brand Inspection Program budget and that a sincere effort was made to personally contact the affected employees. The board told the inspectors in late June they would be laid off to help make up a shortfall expected to reach $1.25 million by next summer. On June 27, Freudenthal announced he would not authorize higher fees on ranchers to cover the deficit, saying other options remained. The deficit resulted from fewer cattle being inspected and sold because of drought, and higher travel costs and benefits for brand inspectors....
Hudson rancher held liable for horse that caused accident A $300,000 lawsuit settlement set a standard for livestock owners. Joan and Frank Hunter of Westminster sued Bruce Eastwood, a Hudson-area rancher, because one of his horses escaped through an open gate and ran in front of their car. The Hunters were driving west on Interstate 76 about 11:30 p.m. April 8, 2001, when they hit the horse that shattered the windshield and struck the Hunters. John Case, the Hunters' lawyer, said the settlement amount was the maximum available through Eastwood's insurance policy. "They are not going to be rich because of it," Case said. "They're getting compensated for part of what they lost." Case said state courts used to rule in favor of livestock owners, but times have changed....
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EnCana's 'field of dreams' has Colorado locals crying the blues Northwestern Colorado is largely undeveloped and sparsely populated, home to agriculture and ranchers. Many of its people moved there looking for a pristine place to call home and most had no idea that the ground below them held natural gas, a fair assumption given that energy companies didn't see or pursue the potential until recently. That's changed radically. EnCana is pushing hard this year, drilling more than 300 wells, with hundreds more to come. It is an example of what EnCana calls an "unconventional" gas field, where numerous wells are necessary to tap gas that is spread out in small pockets over a large area. One analyst described the region as a "field of dreams." It is EnCana's single most important drilling location and positive community relations will be a key to success. The anger among some residents was stirred principally after a serious misstep by EnCana Corp. in 2004, and it has not abated even though the company is getting credit for recent improvements in its practices. Last summer, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission penalized EnCana $371,200 (U.S.), the largest such fine in the regulator's history, because natural gas containing benzene, a carcinogen, seeped from a poorly completed EnCana well into Divide Creek, about 250 kilometres west of Denver....
Forest throws out grazing plan The supervisor of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest has overturned part of a grazing plan to avoid damaging streams and streamside habitat. The decision, which resulted from an appeal by the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, means forest officials must now revise a grazing plan that affects more than 62,000 acres of public lands in southeastern Wyoming and northern Colorado. Authorized last spring, the plan, known as the Upper North Platte Analysis, would have permitted cattle grazing in streams and streamside habitats that are already suffering from drought, erosion and overgrazing, said a Biodiversity Conservation Alliance representative....
Snowbowl won't perform work until suits settled The Arizona Snowbowl has agreed not to begin work on snowmaking and other improvements at the ski area until lawsuits against it by Indian tribes and conservation groups have been settled. That accord was struck Wednesday during a federal court hearing in Prescott seeking a preliminary injunction against the construction before U.S. District Judge Paul Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt also scheduled a tentative court date for mid-October and consolidated the four suits into one filed by northern Arizona tribes and environmentalists against the U.S. Department of the Interior....
Troy Mine cave-in raises doubts at Rock Creek mine Generally speaking, a hole in the ground is not a problem at an underground mine, which is, after all, a hole in the ground. But an unexpected cave-in at the Troy Mine this spring has raised doubts about the future of a controversial mine proposal nearby. In approving the Rock Creek mine - which would tunnel beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness - Forest Service officials pointed to the Troy Mine as a good example of what might be expected. Responding to cave-in or subsidence concerns, officials noted the existing Troy Mine provided "an excellent analogy for the proposed Rock Creek mining method and risks of subsidence." The geology is much the same at the two sites, they said, as is the mining method proposed....
No end in sight for Biscuit Fire salvage Three years after lightning sparked the biggest wildfire in the nation in 2002, salvage logging is limping along, with no end in sight. The Forest Service said Wednesday it has sold 67 million board feet burned by the Biscuit Fire -- enough to build 15,000 homes -- of which 25 million board feet has been harvested. That compares to 370 million board feet called for in the final logging plans issued a year ago. There is no word on when the bulk of the sales, located in roadless areas that environmentalists still hope to protect from logging, will be offered, if ever. "It's been meaningful volume to the guys who got it, but given the controversy and the hype, it's been a yawner," said Chris West of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group....
House panel studies motorized recreation on public lands Off-road vehicle enthusiasts complained to a congressional committee Wednesday that they are increasingly being blocked from enjoying national forests, parks and rangelands. Last year, 51 million of 211 million national forest visitors participated in off-road vehicle recreation, a tenfold increase over 1972, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The service says unregulated recreation, including off-road vehicle use, is a key threat to the national forests. Off-road vehicle users disturb wildlife, hunters, hikers and skiers with their noise and fumes....
Toronto Artist Traded Endangered Species, Canada, U.S. Allege The Internet is being used increasingly to support illegal trade in wildlife specimens and products, according to Canadian and U.S. wildlife officers. The warning came Wednesday as a Toronto man was charged in Canada for selling parts of endangered species on the Internet. Officials of both countries cooperated in the investigation and arrest of Mark J. Gleberzon, age 36, for allegedly selling products containing elephant ivory and parrot feather ornaments to U.S. wildlife officers in New York. After a 15 month investigation, Gleberzon was arrested May 12 by United States Fish and Wildlife Service special agents at LaGuardia International Airport in New York City while attempting to board a return flight to Canada....
World Wildlife Fund Launches Wildfinder, World's Most Powerful Tool to Find Where Wildlife Live The world's only searchable database for all four groups of land vertebrates launches today on World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Web site, http://www.worldwildlife.org. Wildfinder is the only online, map-driven tool to cover the entire globe. "For the first time the geographic ranges of 26,000 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians can be found at a single site," said Eric Dinerstein, WWF's vice-president for science. "This kind of information is critical for studies in ecology, biogeography, conservation biology and natural history. Before Wildfinder, finding these data might require a time-consuming search of several different references. Now, they are available with just a few mouse clicks." WildFinder allows the user to search for wildlife two ways – by location or by species....
Animal rights group sues over Steller sea lion research An animal rights group filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing the federal government of using illegal research techniques on threatened and endangered Steller sea lions. The Humane Society of the United States says the National Marine Fisheries Service has approved permits for research activities that include hot branding and tissue sampling of thousands of Steller sea lions each year. Humane Society officials said the research practices violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act....
Bears will be bears U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy dismissed a lawsuit last Thursday dealing with the grizzly bear mauling death of Great Falls hunter Timothy Hilston. The case stems from an Oct. 30, 2001 incident in which Hilston went hunting in the Blackfoot Clearwater Wildlife Management Area about 45 miles east of Missoula. Hilston was successful in downing an elk and was in the process of field dressing the animal when he was attacked and killed by a grizzly bear. Believing that the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Wildlife and Parks were “negligent in operation and control, maintenance and management of the grizzly bears” in the wildlife management area, Hilston’s widow sued those agencies for the death of her husband. Lawyers for the state and feds say if Hilston’s widow was successful in her suit, it could have set a precedent that would have opened the floodgates for similar lawsuits and undermined grizzly bear protection....
B.W. Cox Wants to Leave a Land Legacy If you want to learn about plants, soil conditions, water tables, aquifer recharges, what grows where and why, spend at least a day driving around a vast ranch with its owner. Hopefully he’s the type of rancher who knows a thing or two about how to keep the soil rich and the cows fat, how to make sure the eagles, the elk and the bears all get along with him and his cows. B.W. Cox is one of those ranchers. He’s probably a better land steward than his Forest Service neighbors. He’s made his living here all of his long years. It isn’t an easy living, as evidenced by B.W.’s slight limp-and-tilt, his creaky bones. But to be surrounded by his land, his family and his cows is all he really wants. No condos in Florida or even a small house in Socorro. “Those people who do that,” he says, referring to his ranching cohorts who sell off their land and retire, “they’re dead in seven, eight months.” B.W.’s Montosa Ranch is in Magdalena, New Mexico, which sits about 15 miles west of Socorro, north of the Magdalena and San Mateo Mountains, above the plains of St. Augustine....
Planes plant seeds to grow a crop of raindrops Todd Flanagan knows the desperation felt by area farmers and ranchers as sweltering summer days fail to yield any significant rainfall. Flanagan is a meteorologist for a rainmaking project here, and, lately, he's had to answer to a lot of concerned residents wondering where the rain is. There has been no measurable rainfall at San Antonio International Airport for 43 days, according to the National Weather Service. It's the 11th longest period of no rain since 1946, when the agency began tracking such records. But Flanagan isn't discouraged. The South Texas Weather Modification Association sent two planes Thursday into the skies northwest of San Antonio to seed clouds and hopefully produce rain....
Governor rehires brand inspectors Gov. Dave Freudenthal on Thursday upbraided state livestock officials for their "insensitive and callous" dismissal of four brand inspectors due to a budget crunch, then shifted funds to rehire them. State Veterinarian and Wyoming Livestock Board Executive Officer Dwayne Oldham said the layoffs were the last choice to balance the Brand Inspection Program budget and that a sincere effort was made to personally contact the affected employees. The board told the inspectors in late June they would be laid off to help make up a shortfall expected to reach $1.25 million by next summer. On June 27, Freudenthal announced he would not authorize higher fees on ranchers to cover the deficit, saying other options remained. The deficit resulted from fewer cattle being inspected and sold because of drought, and higher travel costs and benefits for brand inspectors....
Hudson rancher held liable for horse that caused accident A $300,000 lawsuit settlement set a standard for livestock owners. Joan and Frank Hunter of Westminster sued Bruce Eastwood, a Hudson-area rancher, because one of his horses escaped through an open gate and ran in front of their car. The Hunters were driving west on Interstate 76 about 11:30 p.m. April 8, 2001, when they hit the horse that shattered the windshield and struck the Hunters. John Case, the Hunters' lawyer, said the settlement amount was the maximum available through Eastwood's insurance policy. "They are not going to be rich because of it," Case said. "They're getting compensated for part of what they lost." Case said state courts used to rule in favor of livestock owners, but times have changed....
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Thursday, July 14, 2005
MAD COW DISEASE
Appeals Court Overturns Canada Beef Ban
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Canadian cattle can again be imported to the United States, dismissing a lower court decision that resuming the imports could spread mad cow disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will reopen the border within days to Canadian cattle, which were banned in May 2003 after a cow in Alberta was found to have mad cow disease. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said the government was already working with Canadian food inspectors to certify cattle for shipment. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a Montana judge who blocked the USDA from reopening the border in March, saying it "subjects the entire U.S. beef industry to potentially catastrophic damages" and "presents a genuine risk of death for U.S. consumers." American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle said the industry will be able to resume cattle shipments quickly. "A lot of the preliminary work is already done. I think you'll see the industry move quickly," he said. Boyle said the ruling is also "a win for American consumers who were paying $1.85 a pound for ground beef before the border closed and are paying about $2.55 today." Speaking in Ottawa before the appellate court was released, Boyle blamed the ban for the loss of more than 8,000 jobs in the U.S. meat packing industry....
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Appeals Court Overturns Canada Beef Ban
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Canadian cattle can again be imported to the United States, dismissing a lower court decision that resuming the imports could spread mad cow disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will reopen the border within days to Canadian cattle, which were banned in May 2003 after a cow in Alberta was found to have mad cow disease. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said the government was already working with Canadian food inspectors to certify cattle for shipment. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a Montana judge who blocked the USDA from reopening the border in March, saying it "subjects the entire U.S. beef industry to potentially catastrophic damages" and "presents a genuine risk of death for U.S. consumers." American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle said the industry will be able to resume cattle shipments quickly. "A lot of the preliminary work is already done. I think you'll see the industry move quickly," he said. Boyle said the ruling is also "a win for American consumers who were paying $1.85 a pound for ground beef before the border closed and are paying about $2.55 today." Speaking in Ottawa before the appellate court was released, Boyle blamed the ban for the loss of more than 8,000 jobs in the U.S. meat packing industry....
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GAO REPORT
Wildland Fire Management: Timely Identification of Long-Term Options and Funding Needs Is Critical, by Robert A. Robinson, managing director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations. GAO-05-923T, July 14.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-923T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05923thigh.pdf
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Wildland Fire Management: Timely Identification of Long-Term Options and Funding Needs Is Critical, by Robert A. Robinson, managing director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations. GAO-05-923T, July 14.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-923T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05923thigh.pdf
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NEWS ROUNDUP
Mountain lion shot and killed in Fall River County A Fall River County landowner shot and killed a mountain lion Tuesday about two miles south of Edgemont, according to the state Game, Fish and Parks Department. The rancher, Jamie Lawrence, apparently found the mountain lion under a stock trailer a short distance from his home, said Mike Kintigh of the Game, Fish and Parks Department. "The lion was about 52 feet from the house underneath his trailer," Kintigh said....
Judge rejects effort to halt killing of pigs federal judge rejected a request by animal rights activists to halt the killing of feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island, which the park's managers say is necessary to protect an endangered fox population. Animal rights activists filed suit last week seeking a halt to the killings, which they say are unnecessary and inhumane. But the judge rejected their request Monday for a temporary restraining order while the lawsuit is pending. Corey Evans, an attorney for plaintiffs who include two Santa Barbara residents and the group In Defense of Animals, said the plaintiffs will seek a preliminary injunction that requires a more thorough hearing than the request for a restraining order. He said the killings violate both state and federal environmental laws....
Ecologists optimistic about giant cactus' chances after wildfire scorching A giant saguaro cactus scorched by a wildfire that started near Cave Creek might survive after all, experts say. Initially, U.S. Forest Service officials were pessimistic that the "Grand One," thought to be the world's second largest saguaro cactus, would survive the fire last month. Flames jumped from a nearby tree onto the saguaro and spread over much of it, but most of the cactus appears to have escaped fatal damage, said Patti Fenner, U.S. Forest Service plant expert. The cactus, estimated at more than 200 years old, stands about 46 feet high, is nearly 8 feet in circumference at its base and has at least 13 arms....
Enviros, timber industry, predict forest-by-forest battles ahead Environmental groups and the timber industry are gearing up for forest-by-forest court fights over potential development in untouched areas of the nation's national forests under a Bush administration rule. The preparation comes after a ruling this week by the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing an attempt by environmental groups to restore a Clinton administration ban on road-building and other development on 58.5 million acres of national forest land. "What's happening with the environmental movement now is they have had limited success at the national and regional level, and they've taken their battle to a project-by-project status," he said. "I would imagine an appeal of each decision. That's been their tack and I don't see any reason that would be changed."....
Editorial: Feds should acquire Flats mineral rights Cleanup at Rocky Flats, the Colorado Superfund site with the most hazardous wastes, could be basically done by Halloween, although a few environmental projects will continue. Topping the list are private mineral rights that, if developed, could wreck plans to make Rocky Flats a wildlife refuge. Outside the core, the government left about 6,000 acres as a security and safety zone. Today that relatively untouched buffer zone harbors some of the last natural short-grass prairie on the Front Range - prime habitat for several endangered species. In a few years, after environmental reports are finished, the U.S. Department of Interior is slated to manage the old buffer zone as a wildlife refuge. But the feds never acquired rights to gravel, oil and other minerals under the site. Interior officials fret that it will make no sense to operate a wildlife refuge if the property could be mined....
Builders Urge Congress To Update Endangered Species Act The nation’s home builders called on Congress today to update and modernize the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in order to protect the environment and allow local communities to grow and thrive. “Clearly, we must find new ways to balance the needs of our growing communities, with the need to protect and conserve species and their habitats,” Paul Campos, general counsel and vice president of government affairs for the Home Builders Association of Northern California, told the Senate Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water. Testifying on behalf of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), Campos called on the Senate panel to expand landowner incentives under the ESA, and provide certainty to landowners that Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs) and other voluntary species management programs will be excluded from critical habitat designations....
House Bill Would Downsize Endangered Species Act The House Resources Committee is poised to consider some of the most sweeping changes ever to the Endangered Species Act with legislation aimed at making it more difficult to list plants and animals and protect their habitat. Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), who has made revamping the act one of his top priorities this year, could possibly move on legislation as early as next week. A staff discussion draft of the bill, leaked to various interest groups, suggests the committee may add more requirements for listing a species, extend deadlines for critical habitat, beef up the requirements for recovery plans, require payments for property owners whose land is affected by the law, offer exemptions for invasive species and cut the entire program in 10 years....
Fungus threatens to put boreal toad on endangered list Once common in the southern Rocky Mountains, the toad has only two viable populations left in Colorado - one in Chaffee County and another in Gunnison County. By September, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether to place the alpine-dwelling amphibian on the federal endangered-species list, triggering mandatory protection that may include restricted access to the toad's habitat. The toads of Chaffee and Gunnison counties are unique because they are free of the deadly fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis - the prime suspect for the deaths of several Western amphibians, including boreal toads and leopard frogs....
At least 8,000 pelican chicks believed dead in N. Dakota The Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the deaths of thousands of young white pelicans at a wildlife refuge in central North Dakota, a year after thousands of adult birds abruptly left the same location. At least 8,000 chicks may have died over the last two months, said Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge....
Judge rules U.S. government not liable for migrant deaths A federal judge in Tucson refused Wednesday to hold the U.S. government responsible for the 2001 dehydration deaths of 11 undocumented immigrants just because two of its agencies refused to allow a humanitarian group to leave water drums on a national wildlife refuge bordering Mexico. U.S. District Judge John M. Roll ruled that he had no jurisdiction in the wrongful death lawsuit because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the administrators of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge acted within their discretion when they denied an application by the group Humane Borders to install "water stations" for border-crossing migrants. Furthermore, Roll wrote, the government "owed no duty to affirmatively assist trespassers illegally crossing Cabeza Prieta in avoiding the obvious dangers of a hostile desert."....
BLM, agencies critique Roan Plateau plan draft Lack of information and outmoded data are the prime failings of the draft Resource Management Plan for the Roan Plateau, according to some elected officials and government agencies advising the Bureau of Land Management on the plan. Six cooperating agencies — the cities of Rifle and Glenwood Springs, the town of Parachute, Rio Blanco and Garfield counties and state agencies including the Division of Wildlife and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — huddled Wednesday in Rifle to help BLM craft the preferred management plan for the plateau. Although BLM will make the final call on just how much and how quickly natural gas will be developed on the resource-rich plateau north of Rifle, the agency also hopes the agencies and governments will reach consensus by the end of the summer on what the plan would look like....
Gotcha - gator at last is captured After 18 years of surviving in the reeds, putrid mud and stagnant water that make up his oasis in the desert of northwestern Arizona, Clem the alligator has been captured and is about to enter a reptilian paradise. "We found him under some reeds in grungy water [Tuesday] night about 9:30," said Russ Johnson on Wednesday as Clem hunkered down on a wet piece of carpet in a horse trailer that will deliver him to his new home. The Bureau of Land Management earlier this year contracted with Johnson to remove the alligator and provide a comfortable home for him....
Plan would restrict use of thumpers There'll be no "thumper trucks" in the sandstone cathedrals of Adobe Town. However, the 32-ton seismic trucks may be allowed to pound the ground on the fringes and through much of 130 square miles in the southern Red Desert, including Kinney Rim and Powder Rim. The Wyoming Bureau of Land Management this week issued its environmental assessment of the Cherokee West 3D seismic survey proposed by Kerr McGee Corp. and Veritas DGC Land Inc. The companies are looking for pockets of natural gas. No decision has been made on the proposal, and the BLM Rawlins Field Office is accepting public comment on the plan until Aug. 12. "Receiver cables for the project will be placed on the surface in the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area (WSA), but there will be no source points in the WSA itself," BLM officials stated in a press release. That means there will be no vehicle traffic, no shot holes and no vibroseis buggies in the study area. Rather, helicopters will be allowed in the air space above the area. Helicopters will not be allowed to land, but may deploy and retrieve recording equipment from the air. Seismic workers must hike into Adobe Town to set recording equipment....
Residents worry rivers will be hurt by Las Vegas pipeline plan Residents of northeast Clark County farming communities say they fear their lives will change if they lose water from two rivers that thirsty Las Vegas wants to tap. More than 50 people expressed worries here Tuesday about Southern Nevada Water Authority asserting water rights and building a 70-mile pipeline to tap the Muddy and Virgin rivers. "The Southern Nevada Water Authority bought the water. It belongs to them," said Ann Schreiber, a longtime resident of the rural Moapa Valley. "I don't want them taking it where it will hurt people on either river." Many who spoke said the Las Vegas-based water authority should draw water instead from Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam reservoir into which the two rivers flow. The water authority has water rights to the two rivers, but needs federal Bureau of Land Management approval to build the pipeline across federal land....
U.S. court reserves decision on mad cow appeal A U.S. federal appeals court has reserved its decision after being asked to overturn a temporary injunction keeping the border closed to live Canadian cattle. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had been ready to reopen the border on March 7, but the ranchers' lobby group R-CALF convinced a Montana judge to block that decision, arguing that Canada doesn't adequately test for mad cow disease. In two weeks, Cebull will hear R-CALF's application to extend the trade ban indefinitely. "That case is going to proceed on July 27th, and there will probably be an appeal of July 27th, either way it goes," John Masswohl, director of international relations for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, said....
Judges skeptical of Canadian cattle ban The Bush administration urged a federal appeals court here Wednesday to reopen the border to Canadian cattle imports, which were banned from the United States in May 2003 after a cow in Alberta was found to have mad cow disease. The three judges appeared skeptical of Cebull's ruling, suggesting he went too far. Russell Frye, the ranchers' attorney, told the judges that the USDA "didn't determine what was an acceptable number of infected cattle to come in." The three judges suggested, however, that Cebull should have given deference to the USDA's decision. Judge A. Wallace Tashima said the law "does invest the secretary of agriculture with a certain amount of discretion" and suggested the lower court's order was just "disagreeing with the secretary." Judge Connie Callahan agreed with Tashima, saying the USDA is "entitled to some deference. It's their whole job to keep up with the science to make those decisions."....
Nolan Ryan Serves Up Great Taste Sports stars and celebrities often lend their names to products through paid endorsements. Baseball legend Nolan Ryan took it one step further when he decided to carve out a niche in the beef business. The Hall of Fame pitcher knows his way around a ranch as well as he does a baseball diamond and wanted to provide meat that was a cut above the rest, sort of like his fastball. "Baseball and ranching are two of my passions," Ryan says. "I decided the only way I could guarantee beef that was tender and good every time, was to start my own brand." Nutrition and great taste are important to consumers and important to Nolan Ryan. Nolan Ryan's Tender Aged Beef delivers on both fronts with nutritious and lean beef cuts that are tender and flavorful....
Tiger tales swish through Atascosa For six months, something has been prowling the countryside along FM 3006 in northern Atascosa County, snatching up dogs, roosters and calves. One night in early May, rancher Brian Beam was baling hay on his tractor when he says he came face-to-face with what could be the culprit: a full-grown tiger, he said, lurking along the creek running through his 27-acre property. "It was huge," Beam said. "I threw (the tractor) into reverse and I was gone. It just took off down the creek." The cat was waist-high with orange fur and black stripes, Beam said. He rallied two neighbors, grabbed some guns and flashlights and took off in pursuit of the creature, which Beam now blames for the March disappearance of two of his calves. "We never could catch up to him, but we found a bunch of hair and tracks," he said....
Antlers of all sizes work into unique pieces for Lee Co. taxidermist Tucked back in a corner of Lee County ranching land, right outside of Lexington, Robert Feller is creating furniture out of antlers, along with his regular taxidermist work. Well, "regular" taxidermy if you consider his work includes the mounting of a 145-pound Alligator Gar! His hobby-turned-real-job branched out when a female rancher in the area approached Feller about using antlers to create furniture. Although he had never thought about this type of work, he figured he'd give it a try. First, Feller took the pile of antlers, divided them by left and right antlers, then decided he needed to sit and think about how to work with the antlers. Needing a structure for sitting, he decided to create his first "antler chair."....
Cheyenne rancher weaves wire into art It's amazing what you can do with a few miles of barbed wire - besides build a fence, that is. Don Berry sculpted statutes of bison and bears out of material found on his property, mostly barbed wire. The folk art figures that are sentinels at the Berrys' ranch 20 miles north of Cheyenne on the Torrington highway include a bison, two bears and a bear cub. The sculptures represent about 700 hours of work and patience. He used carriage bolts for eyes for the bears and old telephone line insulators found on the ranch for the bison's eyes. The axle from a manure spreader was fashioned into the bison's horns. The bison, 6 feet tall and 9 feet long, is full size and live weight, checking in at 1,100 pounds. The bronze-looking sculpture took 2½ to three miles of wire, woven in different patterns....
Staying in touch with cowboy culture Vendors and performers far outnumbered visitors for the Academy of Western Artists convention and trade show this week. But organizers were still as happy as ticks on a sow's ear. That's the central mission of the Academy of Western Artists, which is based in Gene Autry, Okla. The nonprofit organization works to preserve cowboy and Western heritage by supporting, promoting and recognizing its arts and skills. Members include Western and Western swing musicians, cowboy poets, visual artists, chuck wagon operators, gear makers, radio managers and disc jockeys....
Myth or real, West Texas desert lights draw a crowd They start converging about dusk on a desolate spot in the West Texas desert with a ridge view and an expanse of some 20 miles of treeless rangeland. A few bring lawn chairs. Some find a spot on concrete picnic tables. Others lean against a brick wall. With darkness toward to the east and the remnants of a spectacular sunset to the west, the first cries erupt. "Look! Look!" Fingers point. Binoculars get fine tuned. A few cameras click. All the attention focuses on specks of brilliance. Legend? Myth? Natural phenomenon? UFOs? Nevada has Area 51. New Mexico has Roswell. Texas has the Marfa Lights. Whatever's out there sparkling or dancing across Mitchell Flat and toward the Chinati Mountains has both befuddled people and attracted them to this remote area east of Marfa for well over a century....
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Mountain lion shot and killed in Fall River County A Fall River County landowner shot and killed a mountain lion Tuesday about two miles south of Edgemont, according to the state Game, Fish and Parks Department. The rancher, Jamie Lawrence, apparently found the mountain lion under a stock trailer a short distance from his home, said Mike Kintigh of the Game, Fish and Parks Department. "The lion was about 52 feet from the house underneath his trailer," Kintigh said....
Judge rejects effort to halt killing of pigs federal judge rejected a request by animal rights activists to halt the killing of feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island, which the park's managers say is necessary to protect an endangered fox population. Animal rights activists filed suit last week seeking a halt to the killings, which they say are unnecessary and inhumane. But the judge rejected their request Monday for a temporary restraining order while the lawsuit is pending. Corey Evans, an attorney for plaintiffs who include two Santa Barbara residents and the group In Defense of Animals, said the plaintiffs will seek a preliminary injunction that requires a more thorough hearing than the request for a restraining order. He said the killings violate both state and federal environmental laws....
Ecologists optimistic about giant cactus' chances after wildfire scorching A giant saguaro cactus scorched by a wildfire that started near Cave Creek might survive after all, experts say. Initially, U.S. Forest Service officials were pessimistic that the "Grand One," thought to be the world's second largest saguaro cactus, would survive the fire last month. Flames jumped from a nearby tree onto the saguaro and spread over much of it, but most of the cactus appears to have escaped fatal damage, said Patti Fenner, U.S. Forest Service plant expert. The cactus, estimated at more than 200 years old, stands about 46 feet high, is nearly 8 feet in circumference at its base and has at least 13 arms....
Enviros, timber industry, predict forest-by-forest battles ahead Environmental groups and the timber industry are gearing up for forest-by-forest court fights over potential development in untouched areas of the nation's national forests under a Bush administration rule. The preparation comes after a ruling this week by the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing an attempt by environmental groups to restore a Clinton administration ban on road-building and other development on 58.5 million acres of national forest land. "What's happening with the environmental movement now is they have had limited success at the national and regional level, and they've taken their battle to a project-by-project status," he said. "I would imagine an appeal of each decision. That's been their tack and I don't see any reason that would be changed."....
Editorial: Feds should acquire Flats mineral rights Cleanup at Rocky Flats, the Colorado Superfund site with the most hazardous wastes, could be basically done by Halloween, although a few environmental projects will continue. Topping the list are private mineral rights that, if developed, could wreck plans to make Rocky Flats a wildlife refuge. Outside the core, the government left about 6,000 acres as a security and safety zone. Today that relatively untouched buffer zone harbors some of the last natural short-grass prairie on the Front Range - prime habitat for several endangered species. In a few years, after environmental reports are finished, the U.S. Department of Interior is slated to manage the old buffer zone as a wildlife refuge. But the feds never acquired rights to gravel, oil and other minerals under the site. Interior officials fret that it will make no sense to operate a wildlife refuge if the property could be mined....
Builders Urge Congress To Update Endangered Species Act The nation’s home builders called on Congress today to update and modernize the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in order to protect the environment and allow local communities to grow and thrive. “Clearly, we must find new ways to balance the needs of our growing communities, with the need to protect and conserve species and their habitats,” Paul Campos, general counsel and vice president of government affairs for the Home Builders Association of Northern California, told the Senate Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water. Testifying on behalf of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), Campos called on the Senate panel to expand landowner incentives under the ESA, and provide certainty to landowners that Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs) and other voluntary species management programs will be excluded from critical habitat designations....
House Bill Would Downsize Endangered Species Act The House Resources Committee is poised to consider some of the most sweeping changes ever to the Endangered Species Act with legislation aimed at making it more difficult to list plants and animals and protect their habitat. Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), who has made revamping the act one of his top priorities this year, could possibly move on legislation as early as next week. A staff discussion draft of the bill, leaked to various interest groups, suggests the committee may add more requirements for listing a species, extend deadlines for critical habitat, beef up the requirements for recovery plans, require payments for property owners whose land is affected by the law, offer exemptions for invasive species and cut the entire program in 10 years....
Fungus threatens to put boreal toad on endangered list Once common in the southern Rocky Mountains, the toad has only two viable populations left in Colorado - one in Chaffee County and another in Gunnison County. By September, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether to place the alpine-dwelling amphibian on the federal endangered-species list, triggering mandatory protection that may include restricted access to the toad's habitat. The toads of Chaffee and Gunnison counties are unique because they are free of the deadly fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis - the prime suspect for the deaths of several Western amphibians, including boreal toads and leopard frogs....
At least 8,000 pelican chicks believed dead in N. Dakota The Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the deaths of thousands of young white pelicans at a wildlife refuge in central North Dakota, a year after thousands of adult birds abruptly left the same location. At least 8,000 chicks may have died over the last two months, said Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge....
Judge rules U.S. government not liable for migrant deaths A federal judge in Tucson refused Wednesday to hold the U.S. government responsible for the 2001 dehydration deaths of 11 undocumented immigrants just because two of its agencies refused to allow a humanitarian group to leave water drums on a national wildlife refuge bordering Mexico. U.S. District Judge John M. Roll ruled that he had no jurisdiction in the wrongful death lawsuit because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the administrators of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge acted within their discretion when they denied an application by the group Humane Borders to install "water stations" for border-crossing migrants. Furthermore, Roll wrote, the government "owed no duty to affirmatively assist trespassers illegally crossing Cabeza Prieta in avoiding the obvious dangers of a hostile desert."....
BLM, agencies critique Roan Plateau plan draft Lack of information and outmoded data are the prime failings of the draft Resource Management Plan for the Roan Plateau, according to some elected officials and government agencies advising the Bureau of Land Management on the plan. Six cooperating agencies — the cities of Rifle and Glenwood Springs, the town of Parachute, Rio Blanco and Garfield counties and state agencies including the Division of Wildlife and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — huddled Wednesday in Rifle to help BLM craft the preferred management plan for the plateau. Although BLM will make the final call on just how much and how quickly natural gas will be developed on the resource-rich plateau north of Rifle, the agency also hopes the agencies and governments will reach consensus by the end of the summer on what the plan would look like....
Gotcha - gator at last is captured After 18 years of surviving in the reeds, putrid mud and stagnant water that make up his oasis in the desert of northwestern Arizona, Clem the alligator has been captured and is about to enter a reptilian paradise. "We found him under some reeds in grungy water [Tuesday] night about 9:30," said Russ Johnson on Wednesday as Clem hunkered down on a wet piece of carpet in a horse trailer that will deliver him to his new home. The Bureau of Land Management earlier this year contracted with Johnson to remove the alligator and provide a comfortable home for him....
Plan would restrict use of thumpers There'll be no "thumper trucks" in the sandstone cathedrals of Adobe Town. However, the 32-ton seismic trucks may be allowed to pound the ground on the fringes and through much of 130 square miles in the southern Red Desert, including Kinney Rim and Powder Rim. The Wyoming Bureau of Land Management this week issued its environmental assessment of the Cherokee West 3D seismic survey proposed by Kerr McGee Corp. and Veritas DGC Land Inc. The companies are looking for pockets of natural gas. No decision has been made on the proposal, and the BLM Rawlins Field Office is accepting public comment on the plan until Aug. 12. "Receiver cables for the project will be placed on the surface in the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area (WSA), but there will be no source points in the WSA itself," BLM officials stated in a press release. That means there will be no vehicle traffic, no shot holes and no vibroseis buggies in the study area. Rather, helicopters will be allowed in the air space above the area. Helicopters will not be allowed to land, but may deploy and retrieve recording equipment from the air. Seismic workers must hike into Adobe Town to set recording equipment....
Residents worry rivers will be hurt by Las Vegas pipeline plan Residents of northeast Clark County farming communities say they fear their lives will change if they lose water from two rivers that thirsty Las Vegas wants to tap. More than 50 people expressed worries here Tuesday about Southern Nevada Water Authority asserting water rights and building a 70-mile pipeline to tap the Muddy and Virgin rivers. "The Southern Nevada Water Authority bought the water. It belongs to them," said Ann Schreiber, a longtime resident of the rural Moapa Valley. "I don't want them taking it where it will hurt people on either river." Many who spoke said the Las Vegas-based water authority should draw water instead from Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam reservoir into which the two rivers flow. The water authority has water rights to the two rivers, but needs federal Bureau of Land Management approval to build the pipeline across federal land....
U.S. court reserves decision on mad cow appeal A U.S. federal appeals court has reserved its decision after being asked to overturn a temporary injunction keeping the border closed to live Canadian cattle. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had been ready to reopen the border on March 7, but the ranchers' lobby group R-CALF convinced a Montana judge to block that decision, arguing that Canada doesn't adequately test for mad cow disease. In two weeks, Cebull will hear R-CALF's application to extend the trade ban indefinitely. "That case is going to proceed on July 27th, and there will probably be an appeal of July 27th, either way it goes," John Masswohl, director of international relations for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, said....
Judges skeptical of Canadian cattle ban The Bush administration urged a federal appeals court here Wednesday to reopen the border to Canadian cattle imports, which were banned from the United States in May 2003 after a cow in Alberta was found to have mad cow disease. The three judges appeared skeptical of Cebull's ruling, suggesting he went too far. Russell Frye, the ranchers' attorney, told the judges that the USDA "didn't determine what was an acceptable number of infected cattle to come in." The three judges suggested, however, that Cebull should have given deference to the USDA's decision. Judge A. Wallace Tashima said the law "does invest the secretary of agriculture with a certain amount of discretion" and suggested the lower court's order was just "disagreeing with the secretary." Judge Connie Callahan agreed with Tashima, saying the USDA is "entitled to some deference. It's their whole job to keep up with the science to make those decisions."....
Nolan Ryan Serves Up Great Taste Sports stars and celebrities often lend their names to products through paid endorsements. Baseball legend Nolan Ryan took it one step further when he decided to carve out a niche in the beef business. The Hall of Fame pitcher knows his way around a ranch as well as he does a baseball diamond and wanted to provide meat that was a cut above the rest, sort of like his fastball. "Baseball and ranching are two of my passions," Ryan says. "I decided the only way I could guarantee beef that was tender and good every time, was to start my own brand." Nutrition and great taste are important to consumers and important to Nolan Ryan. Nolan Ryan's Tender Aged Beef delivers on both fronts with nutritious and lean beef cuts that are tender and flavorful....
Tiger tales swish through Atascosa For six months, something has been prowling the countryside along FM 3006 in northern Atascosa County, snatching up dogs, roosters and calves. One night in early May, rancher Brian Beam was baling hay on his tractor when he says he came face-to-face with what could be the culprit: a full-grown tiger, he said, lurking along the creek running through his 27-acre property. "It was huge," Beam said. "I threw (the tractor) into reverse and I was gone. It just took off down the creek." The cat was waist-high with orange fur and black stripes, Beam said. He rallied two neighbors, grabbed some guns and flashlights and took off in pursuit of the creature, which Beam now blames for the March disappearance of two of his calves. "We never could catch up to him, but we found a bunch of hair and tracks," he said....
Antlers of all sizes work into unique pieces for Lee Co. taxidermist Tucked back in a corner of Lee County ranching land, right outside of Lexington, Robert Feller is creating furniture out of antlers, along with his regular taxidermist work. Well, "regular" taxidermy if you consider his work includes the mounting of a 145-pound Alligator Gar! His hobby-turned-real-job branched out when a female rancher in the area approached Feller about using antlers to create furniture. Although he had never thought about this type of work, he figured he'd give it a try. First, Feller took the pile of antlers, divided them by left and right antlers, then decided he needed to sit and think about how to work with the antlers. Needing a structure for sitting, he decided to create his first "antler chair."....
Cheyenne rancher weaves wire into art It's amazing what you can do with a few miles of barbed wire - besides build a fence, that is. Don Berry sculpted statutes of bison and bears out of material found on his property, mostly barbed wire. The folk art figures that are sentinels at the Berrys' ranch 20 miles north of Cheyenne on the Torrington highway include a bison, two bears and a bear cub. The sculptures represent about 700 hours of work and patience. He used carriage bolts for eyes for the bears and old telephone line insulators found on the ranch for the bison's eyes. The axle from a manure spreader was fashioned into the bison's horns. The bison, 6 feet tall and 9 feet long, is full size and live weight, checking in at 1,100 pounds. The bronze-looking sculpture took 2½ to three miles of wire, woven in different patterns....
Staying in touch with cowboy culture Vendors and performers far outnumbered visitors for the Academy of Western Artists convention and trade show this week. But organizers were still as happy as ticks on a sow's ear. That's the central mission of the Academy of Western Artists, which is based in Gene Autry, Okla. The nonprofit organization works to preserve cowboy and Western heritage by supporting, promoting and recognizing its arts and skills. Members include Western and Western swing musicians, cowboy poets, visual artists, chuck wagon operators, gear makers, radio managers and disc jockeys....
Myth or real, West Texas desert lights draw a crowd They start converging about dusk on a desolate spot in the West Texas desert with a ridge view and an expanse of some 20 miles of treeless rangeland. A few bring lawn chairs. Some find a spot on concrete picnic tables. Others lean against a brick wall. With darkness toward to the east and the remnants of a spectacular sunset to the west, the first cries erupt. "Look! Look!" Fingers point. Binoculars get fine tuned. A few cameras click. All the attention focuses on specks of brilliance. Legend? Myth? Natural phenomenon? UFOs? Nevada has Area 51. New Mexico has Roswell. Texas has the Marfa Lights. Whatever's out there sparkling or dancing across Mitchell Flat and toward the Chinati Mountains has both befuddled people and attracted them to this remote area east of Marfa for well over a century....
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
GAO REPORT
Chemical Regulation: Options Exist to Improve EPA's Ability to Assess Health Risks and Manage Its Chemical Review Program. GAO-05-458, June 13.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-458
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05458high.pdf
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Chemical Regulation: Options Exist to Improve EPA's Ability to Assess Health Risks and Manage Its Chemical Review Program. GAO-05-458, June 13.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-458
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05458high.pdf
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NEWS ROUNDUP
Court rejects appeal over roadless areas A federal appeals court dismissed an attempt by environmental groups to restore a Clinton-era ban on logging in roadless areas of national forests, saying their appeal became irrelevant when the Bush administration adopted a replacement rule. The Clinton administration's rule put 58.5 million acres of roadless forest off-limits to logging and other development. Under the new rule, those lands, most of which are in the West, are open to road building for potential logging, mining and other commercial uses. A federal judge in Wyoming struck down the Clinton administration's ban in 2003, ruling in a lawsuit filed by the state of Wyoming that the executive branch had overstepped its authority in effectively creating wilderness areas on U.S. Forest Service land. The Wyoming Outdoor Council and seven other environmental groups appealed. But on May 5, the day after the 10th U.S. Circuit of Appeals heard oral arguments, the Forest Service issued a new rule to replace the one that had been overturned. "Adoption of the new rule has rendered the appeal moot," a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling Monday....
Freudenthal still wary on roadless rule Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) has not yet decided how to handle petitions for roadless preservation in the state, and continues to have questions about exactly how much weight a governor's request carries. "His questions center on how much influence the state's petitions would have, how they would be judge and prioritized and who would pay for the environmental analyses of the petitions' contents," his press secretary Lara Azar said Tuesday. "Under the new rule, final authority doesn't rest with the states. These things would still go back through the forest-planning process. Before committing state resources to developing these petitions, Gov. Freudenthal wants to know how much weight they will carry."....
Caterpillars invade New Mexico forests Some of northern New Mexico's aspen stands have been stripped of their leaves by masses of wriggling caterpillars in search of food and a place to build a home, but forest officials are confident the trees will recover in time to show off their brilliant colors. Western tent caterpillars began to hatch in May and have since been eating their way through the aspens in the Carson National Forest, especially the Canjilon area at the southern end of the San Juan Mountains. There have also been reports of the critters in the Santa Fe National Forest. Trees in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont have been left bare this summer because of the caterpillars. Terry Rodgers, a forest health official with the U.S. Forest Service in Albuquerque, said officials have had numerous calls from northern New Mexico about the pests. "Apparently the caterpillars were just extreme in their numbers and causing extreme defoliation," he said. "They have already stripped the trees."....
Agency: Petition to protect chub warrants consideration The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will further consider petitions to protect the headwater chub and the Lower Colorado River basin population of the roundtail chub under the Endangered Species Act. The agency is seeking scientific, commercial and historical information before it determines whether to propose adding the chubs to the list of threatened or endangered species. The chubs occur throughout much of New Mexico Gila River headwaters and much of Arizona. Tuesday's finding acknowledges that the Center for Biological Diversity's petition to protect the chubs provides a reasonable case. "However, our finding expresses no view as to the ultimate issue of whether the species should be listed," said H. Dale Hall, the Service's Southwest Regional director....
Appeals court: Army Corps acted correctly on pygmy owl An appellate court says the Army Corps of Engineers correctly declined an endangered species consultation over the impact of two planned developments on a small Arizona owl. The Ninth U-S Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that the corps had not acted arbitrarily or capriciously in finding that the developments would have no impact on the pygmy owl. Environmentalists argue the pygmy owl is a distinct population group....
Birds' second mass exodus An estimated 16,000 or more American white pelicans again have pulled out of Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, but this mass departure follows a die-off of pelican chicks. Researchers are unsure of the cause of the chicks' deaths, but the die-off of young birds could total 8,000 or more. "We're ruling out disturbance and leaning heavily toward disease," Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Tuesday. The USFWS oversees the refuge and its pelican population. An on-site look Friday revealed about 300 to 500 live chicks remaining after a nesting period that had the potential to produce as many as 9,000 over the course of the summer. However, biologists say they believe the estimate of live chicks remaining is likely low because tall vegetation is hampering visibility....
Alaska Native gets 7 years in walrus crime An Alaska Native was sentenced to a harsh seven years in federal prison for killing six walruses, removing the heads to sell the ivory and sinking the carcasses. Herman A. Oyagak was on probation for felony assault when he participated in what prosecutors declared a wasteful killing of walruses in 2003. That, plus his criminal history, led to the harsh sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Goeke said Tuesday. Under federal law, Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt walruses for subsistence but they must use a substantial portion of the animal. In this case, the walruses were being killed for the ivory and bodies were abandoned, Goeke said....
Silvery minnow numbers soar with high runoff The tiny endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow, the focus of years of battles over water to sustain it, has had a good year, thanks to high runoff in the river. Biologists rescuing the fish from isolated pools along the middle Rio Grande have found 290,000 minnow since June 20 _ a huge jump from the 16,000 rescued and moved to the river's main channel last year, Larry Bell, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service here, said Tuesday. The high runoff from mountain snows allowed the Rio Grande to leave its banks in some areas of the bosque along the river, a condition known as overbanking. Officials credit that overbanking, and its subsequent creation of good habitat for minnow spawning, for this summer's large numbers....
The North Coast is ground zero in the barred owl's invasion of spotted owl country There is nothing that says old-growth louder than the northern spotted owl. There are no forests more closely identified with old growth than those in Redwood National and State Parks. It stands to reason that you should be able to see or hear a spotted owl, then, in those parks. It's more likely that this year, you would be sorely disappointed. The hoot that you may hear now is from an invader, a barred owl. It's like a spotted owl on steroids. The eastern bird's rapid colonization of the West Coast's best old-growth territory has been recognized -- but not so openly discussed -- for years. The barred owl's southward surge and expansion does not bode well for the spotted owl. Experts think the larger owl may eventually push the threatened spotted owl to the brink of extinction, or make Northern California its last refuge....
Allard's land negotiations surprise park resident Betty Dick was surprised to find U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard making real estate deals on her behalf Tuesday. Allard, R-Colo., announced in a news release that he had negotiated an agreement with the director of the National Park Service that would allow Dick to remain on her property in Rocky Mountain National Park. Allard proposes allowing Dick to lease the home and 23 acres near Grand Lake at fair market value. Neither Dick nor her lawyer, John Head, had heard anything about the deal. "Senator Allard has never written to me, never spoken to me and never asked my opinion on any of this," Dick said when reached by phone Tuesday evening. She was facing eviction from her summer home within the park earlier this month because a deal negotiated by her husband 25 years ago expires Saturday. The park service has said Dick can stay in her home until Congress resolves her situation....
Pilgrim family's case heard before Court of Appeals Arguments were made today before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case that could define the authority of the National Park Service to regulate access to private inholdings in parks. And the family at the center of the dispute is no stranger to controversy. The Pilgrims, also known as the Hale family, continue their legal battle, seeking the permission to drive a bulldozer across Wrangell-St. Elias National Park to their property, located 14 miles from McCarthy. Today the battle came to the federal courthouse, where a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments. “The Park Service must provide adequate and feasible access. Now any regulation that violates or that prevents the Hales adequate and feasible access is, per se, unreasonable regulation,” said Russ Brooks of the Pacific Legal Foundation....
At the foot of the falls, the roar of the crowd Without a doubt, the hordes are here. On summer afternoons, Yosemite Valley can be a riot of bumpers and brake lights - Los Angeles gridlock set against a landscape beyond imagination. Yet the place where the Oris stand is a symbol of how Yosemite - as well as the National Park System - is struggling to maintain a sense of solitude amid throngs of automobile-bound visitors. To some, the new path and viewing area at the base of Lower Yosemite Falls is an attempt to make one of the park's most famous landmarks more accessible to a new generation of park visitors, who come not to camp or explore, but to snap a photo and move on. To others, though, it risks turning the great outdoors into a drive-through that rates convenience above conservation....
Editorial: BLM's coziness with oil, gas companies a bad deal for public Giving consultants who are paid by the oil and gas industry some say-so over when it's environmentally safe to drill in the Uinta Basin casts doubt over the Bureau of Land Management's dedication to protecting the area's land and wildlife. How can the BLM objectively assess the potential effects of granting a drilling permit on the basis of information provided by consultants who are paid by the companies that desperately want the permits to be approved? Clearly, it cannot. With oil prices at near-record highs and demand for gas on the rise, companies are clamoring for permits to drill in the energy-rich basin. The BLM received 1,100 applications last year and expects to see 1,200 this year, many more than the office's budget-challenged staff can handle. So, to expedite the processing of permits, which includes assessing their possible effects on the environment, a group of oil and gas companies, through their trade group, Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, generously - like a fox with an ulterior motive - hired consultants to work on the applications, at no charge to the BLM's Vernal office....
Bush administration asking court to block dam spills The Bush administration wants a federal appeals court to stop water from being purposely spilled over five Northwest hydroelectric dams despite a lower court's unprecedented order that it was necessary to help young salmon migrating to the Pacific. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was forced to allow substantial flows to bypass energy generating turbines following a June 20 order by U.S. District Judge James Redden of Portland. Redden ruled that the salmon were imperiled when swimming through those dams' turbines as they headed to the sea hundreds of miles away. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was set to hear the administration's demands to overturn Redden on Wednesday in Seattle. At the request of salmon advocates, fishermen and Indian tribes, Redden ruled that "As currently operated, I find that the dams strongly contributed to the endangerment of the listed species and irreparable injury will result if changes are not made." His order began being carried out June 20, and is to last through Aug. 31....
Environmental lobbyist accused of using ‘undue' pressure Several legislators have filed a complaint against the environmental movement's top lobbyist in Oregon, saying he has attempted to "intimidate'' and "coerce'' them into supporting a pesticide reporting program that's been stalled for years. The complaint accuses Matt Blevins of the Oregon Environmental Council of trying to use undue influence by waging a "media campaign'' of radio and newspaper advertisements against certain lawmakers who fail to support the pesticide use reporting law. State Rep. Mike Schaufler, D-Portland, sent a letter to the Capitol Club, the organization that represents lobbyists in Salem, asking that Blevins be "removed and banned'' from the organization for his actions. Schaufler said Blevins visited him and several other lawmakers in their offices threatening to run ads against them....
Federal government revamping plan for Mississippi River Federal officials are coming up with a new plan for protecting the upper Mississippi River after the original proposal prompted a backlash over restrictions on hunting, camping and other uses. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which held 17 hearings and eight workshops up and down the river since announcing the original conservation plan in May, will now issue an "alternative" plan in October. The plan would then be finalized after 45 days of public comments. Federal officials say it's too soon to say how the new plan will differ from the original one, but they say it will take into account public comments which included objections to restrictions on hunting, boating and public access....
Sierra Club helps Ford go green with second hybrid When the Sierra Club approached Ford Motor Co. last year and offered to help promote the company's first hybrid electric vehicle, the company spurned the olive branch. The Sierra Club has long been a nemesis of Detroit automakers and a critic of Ford's chairman and chief executive, William Clay Ford Jr. But when Ford later heard of the decision, he was said to be angry that an opportunity had been missed to buff the company's image in the way that Toyota had done so deftly with its hybrids. Ford is not letting the chance slip a second time....
Rider of the horse Marvin Brookman likes to point out there are three stock contractors still around from the first National Finals Rodeo in 1959. "Bob Barnes, Harry Vold and me,'' said Brookman. He paused to draw his lunch-time companions closer. "And Harry is older than rodeo,'' Brookman finished with a grin. Brookman is 91 years old and a stroke suffered three years ago doesn't let him get around like he used to. But age and medical frailties have not dimmed his knowledge of bucking stock. Or his quiet sense of humor. The Brookman Rodeo Company of Wolf Point has had bucking stock selected for every NFR, with the one exception, since the event began in 1959 in Dallas, Texas. A truck driving accident in 1962 interrupted the 46-year-old streak....
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Court rejects appeal over roadless areas A federal appeals court dismissed an attempt by environmental groups to restore a Clinton-era ban on logging in roadless areas of national forests, saying their appeal became irrelevant when the Bush administration adopted a replacement rule. The Clinton administration's rule put 58.5 million acres of roadless forest off-limits to logging and other development. Under the new rule, those lands, most of which are in the West, are open to road building for potential logging, mining and other commercial uses. A federal judge in Wyoming struck down the Clinton administration's ban in 2003, ruling in a lawsuit filed by the state of Wyoming that the executive branch had overstepped its authority in effectively creating wilderness areas on U.S. Forest Service land. The Wyoming Outdoor Council and seven other environmental groups appealed. But on May 5, the day after the 10th U.S. Circuit of Appeals heard oral arguments, the Forest Service issued a new rule to replace the one that had been overturned. "Adoption of the new rule has rendered the appeal moot," a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling Monday....
Freudenthal still wary on roadless rule Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) has not yet decided how to handle petitions for roadless preservation in the state, and continues to have questions about exactly how much weight a governor's request carries. "His questions center on how much influence the state's petitions would have, how they would be judge and prioritized and who would pay for the environmental analyses of the petitions' contents," his press secretary Lara Azar said Tuesday. "Under the new rule, final authority doesn't rest with the states. These things would still go back through the forest-planning process. Before committing state resources to developing these petitions, Gov. Freudenthal wants to know how much weight they will carry."....
Caterpillars invade New Mexico forests Some of northern New Mexico's aspen stands have been stripped of their leaves by masses of wriggling caterpillars in search of food and a place to build a home, but forest officials are confident the trees will recover in time to show off their brilliant colors. Western tent caterpillars began to hatch in May and have since been eating their way through the aspens in the Carson National Forest, especially the Canjilon area at the southern end of the San Juan Mountains. There have also been reports of the critters in the Santa Fe National Forest. Trees in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont have been left bare this summer because of the caterpillars. Terry Rodgers, a forest health official with the U.S. Forest Service in Albuquerque, said officials have had numerous calls from northern New Mexico about the pests. "Apparently the caterpillars were just extreme in their numbers and causing extreme defoliation," he said. "They have already stripped the trees."....
Agency: Petition to protect chub warrants consideration The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will further consider petitions to protect the headwater chub and the Lower Colorado River basin population of the roundtail chub under the Endangered Species Act. The agency is seeking scientific, commercial and historical information before it determines whether to propose adding the chubs to the list of threatened or endangered species. The chubs occur throughout much of New Mexico Gila River headwaters and much of Arizona. Tuesday's finding acknowledges that the Center for Biological Diversity's petition to protect the chubs provides a reasonable case. "However, our finding expresses no view as to the ultimate issue of whether the species should be listed," said H. Dale Hall, the Service's Southwest Regional director....
Appeals court: Army Corps acted correctly on pygmy owl An appellate court says the Army Corps of Engineers correctly declined an endangered species consultation over the impact of two planned developments on a small Arizona owl. The Ninth U-S Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that the corps had not acted arbitrarily or capriciously in finding that the developments would have no impact on the pygmy owl. Environmentalists argue the pygmy owl is a distinct population group....
Birds' second mass exodus An estimated 16,000 or more American white pelicans again have pulled out of Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, but this mass departure follows a die-off of pelican chicks. Researchers are unsure of the cause of the chicks' deaths, but the die-off of young birds could total 8,000 or more. "We're ruling out disturbance and leaning heavily toward disease," Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Tuesday. The USFWS oversees the refuge and its pelican population. An on-site look Friday revealed about 300 to 500 live chicks remaining after a nesting period that had the potential to produce as many as 9,000 over the course of the summer. However, biologists say they believe the estimate of live chicks remaining is likely low because tall vegetation is hampering visibility....
Alaska Native gets 7 years in walrus crime An Alaska Native was sentenced to a harsh seven years in federal prison for killing six walruses, removing the heads to sell the ivory and sinking the carcasses. Herman A. Oyagak was on probation for felony assault when he participated in what prosecutors declared a wasteful killing of walruses in 2003. That, plus his criminal history, led to the harsh sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Goeke said Tuesday. Under federal law, Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt walruses for subsistence but they must use a substantial portion of the animal. In this case, the walruses were being killed for the ivory and bodies were abandoned, Goeke said....
Silvery minnow numbers soar with high runoff The tiny endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow, the focus of years of battles over water to sustain it, has had a good year, thanks to high runoff in the river. Biologists rescuing the fish from isolated pools along the middle Rio Grande have found 290,000 minnow since June 20 _ a huge jump from the 16,000 rescued and moved to the river's main channel last year, Larry Bell, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service here, said Tuesday. The high runoff from mountain snows allowed the Rio Grande to leave its banks in some areas of the bosque along the river, a condition known as overbanking. Officials credit that overbanking, and its subsequent creation of good habitat for minnow spawning, for this summer's large numbers....
The North Coast is ground zero in the barred owl's invasion of spotted owl country There is nothing that says old-growth louder than the northern spotted owl. There are no forests more closely identified with old growth than those in Redwood National and State Parks. It stands to reason that you should be able to see or hear a spotted owl, then, in those parks. It's more likely that this year, you would be sorely disappointed. The hoot that you may hear now is from an invader, a barred owl. It's like a spotted owl on steroids. The eastern bird's rapid colonization of the West Coast's best old-growth territory has been recognized -- but not so openly discussed -- for years. The barred owl's southward surge and expansion does not bode well for the spotted owl. Experts think the larger owl may eventually push the threatened spotted owl to the brink of extinction, or make Northern California its last refuge....
Allard's land negotiations surprise park resident Betty Dick was surprised to find U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard making real estate deals on her behalf Tuesday. Allard, R-Colo., announced in a news release that he had negotiated an agreement with the director of the National Park Service that would allow Dick to remain on her property in Rocky Mountain National Park. Allard proposes allowing Dick to lease the home and 23 acres near Grand Lake at fair market value. Neither Dick nor her lawyer, John Head, had heard anything about the deal. "Senator Allard has never written to me, never spoken to me and never asked my opinion on any of this," Dick said when reached by phone Tuesday evening. She was facing eviction from her summer home within the park earlier this month because a deal negotiated by her husband 25 years ago expires Saturday. The park service has said Dick can stay in her home until Congress resolves her situation....
Pilgrim family's case heard before Court of Appeals Arguments were made today before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case that could define the authority of the National Park Service to regulate access to private inholdings in parks. And the family at the center of the dispute is no stranger to controversy. The Pilgrims, also known as the Hale family, continue their legal battle, seeking the permission to drive a bulldozer across Wrangell-St. Elias National Park to their property, located 14 miles from McCarthy. Today the battle came to the federal courthouse, where a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments. “The Park Service must provide adequate and feasible access. Now any regulation that violates or that prevents the Hales adequate and feasible access is, per se, unreasonable regulation,” said Russ Brooks of the Pacific Legal Foundation....
At the foot of the falls, the roar of the crowd Without a doubt, the hordes are here. On summer afternoons, Yosemite Valley can be a riot of bumpers and brake lights - Los Angeles gridlock set against a landscape beyond imagination. Yet the place where the Oris stand is a symbol of how Yosemite - as well as the National Park System - is struggling to maintain a sense of solitude amid throngs of automobile-bound visitors. To some, the new path and viewing area at the base of Lower Yosemite Falls is an attempt to make one of the park's most famous landmarks more accessible to a new generation of park visitors, who come not to camp or explore, but to snap a photo and move on. To others, though, it risks turning the great outdoors into a drive-through that rates convenience above conservation....
Editorial: BLM's coziness with oil, gas companies a bad deal for public Giving consultants who are paid by the oil and gas industry some say-so over when it's environmentally safe to drill in the Uinta Basin casts doubt over the Bureau of Land Management's dedication to protecting the area's land and wildlife. How can the BLM objectively assess the potential effects of granting a drilling permit on the basis of information provided by consultants who are paid by the companies that desperately want the permits to be approved? Clearly, it cannot. With oil prices at near-record highs and demand for gas on the rise, companies are clamoring for permits to drill in the energy-rich basin. The BLM received 1,100 applications last year and expects to see 1,200 this year, many more than the office's budget-challenged staff can handle. So, to expedite the processing of permits, which includes assessing their possible effects on the environment, a group of oil and gas companies, through their trade group, Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, generously - like a fox with an ulterior motive - hired consultants to work on the applications, at no charge to the BLM's Vernal office....
Bush administration asking court to block dam spills The Bush administration wants a federal appeals court to stop water from being purposely spilled over five Northwest hydroelectric dams despite a lower court's unprecedented order that it was necessary to help young salmon migrating to the Pacific. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was forced to allow substantial flows to bypass energy generating turbines following a June 20 order by U.S. District Judge James Redden of Portland. Redden ruled that the salmon were imperiled when swimming through those dams' turbines as they headed to the sea hundreds of miles away. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was set to hear the administration's demands to overturn Redden on Wednesday in Seattle. At the request of salmon advocates, fishermen and Indian tribes, Redden ruled that "As currently operated, I find that the dams strongly contributed to the endangerment of the listed species and irreparable injury will result if changes are not made." His order began being carried out June 20, and is to last through Aug. 31....
Environmental lobbyist accused of using ‘undue' pressure Several legislators have filed a complaint against the environmental movement's top lobbyist in Oregon, saying he has attempted to "intimidate'' and "coerce'' them into supporting a pesticide reporting program that's been stalled for years. The complaint accuses Matt Blevins of the Oregon Environmental Council of trying to use undue influence by waging a "media campaign'' of radio and newspaper advertisements against certain lawmakers who fail to support the pesticide use reporting law. State Rep. Mike Schaufler, D-Portland, sent a letter to the Capitol Club, the organization that represents lobbyists in Salem, asking that Blevins be "removed and banned'' from the organization for his actions. Schaufler said Blevins visited him and several other lawmakers in their offices threatening to run ads against them....
Federal government revamping plan for Mississippi River Federal officials are coming up with a new plan for protecting the upper Mississippi River after the original proposal prompted a backlash over restrictions on hunting, camping and other uses. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which held 17 hearings and eight workshops up and down the river since announcing the original conservation plan in May, will now issue an "alternative" plan in October. The plan would then be finalized after 45 days of public comments. Federal officials say it's too soon to say how the new plan will differ from the original one, but they say it will take into account public comments which included objections to restrictions on hunting, boating and public access....
Sierra Club helps Ford go green with second hybrid When the Sierra Club approached Ford Motor Co. last year and offered to help promote the company's first hybrid electric vehicle, the company spurned the olive branch. The Sierra Club has long been a nemesis of Detroit automakers and a critic of Ford's chairman and chief executive, William Clay Ford Jr. But when Ford later heard of the decision, he was said to be angry that an opportunity had been missed to buff the company's image in the way that Toyota had done so deftly with its hybrids. Ford is not letting the chance slip a second time....
Rider of the horse Marvin Brookman likes to point out there are three stock contractors still around from the first National Finals Rodeo in 1959. "Bob Barnes, Harry Vold and me,'' said Brookman. He paused to draw his lunch-time companions closer. "And Harry is older than rodeo,'' Brookman finished with a grin. Brookman is 91 years old and a stroke suffered three years ago doesn't let him get around like he used to. But age and medical frailties have not dimmed his knowledge of bucking stock. Or his quiet sense of humor. The Brookman Rodeo Company of Wolf Point has had bucking stock selected for every NFR, with the one exception, since the event began in 1959 in Dallas, Texas. A truck driving accident in 1962 interrupted the 46-year-old streak....
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Nevada Live Stock Association
9732 State Route 445
Sparks, NV 89435
775.424.0570
Press Release
For Immediate Release July 11, 2005
ESMERALD CO. GRAND JURY SIDES WITH RANCHERS
(Sparks, NV) An Esmeralda County, Nevada, Special Grand Jury, empanelled to investigate actions by Nevada’s head brand inspector, Jim Connelley, during the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) 2002 seizure of Goldfield rancher, Ben Colvin’s cattle, issued its final report June 16, 2005. The Grand Jury Report was highly critical of the Nevada Department of Agriculture (DOA) and Attorney General’s policies in their handling of the matter and recommended immediate changes needed to bring the DOA and the AG into compliance with the 5th and 14th Amendments’ (U.S. Constitution) procedural due process requirements and with Nevada Brand Law.
“This is exactly the result we were looking for,” commented Ben Colvin. “All I ever wanted was justice and protection for my property, which I was never given. Even murderers and rapists are entitled to due process. When a man's livelihood is stolen from him, he should at least be afforded notice and a hearing before an impartial judge to decide if the confiscation of his sole means of support is lawful. The AG’s office gave Connelley advice that was akin to permitting the BLM to rob a bank, and unfortunately Mr. Connelley followed that advice. They stole my cattle and destroyed my livelihood. I appreciate the support of the citizens of Esmeralda County in this effort, and the excellent work of the Grand Jury for making these recommendations to the State,” said Colvin.
The Nevada Live Stock Association (NLSA) originated the idea of using the Special Grand Jury to investigate the brand inspector’s actions and participated in gathering the necessary signatures.
NLSA Chairman, Helen Chenoweth-Hage commented on the Grand Jury Report, “We are very, very pleased with the recommendations of the Grand Jury. This is the third time the Nevada Department of Agriculture and Attorney General’s Office have been directed to enforce procedural due process and the brand laws of Nevada. Many of Nevada’s ranchers have suffered the devastating impact of having their cattle rustled by the federal government. Now, after this decision, there is no doubt that the sheriffs’ must do their job and protect property from unlawful government actions and not place the individual rancher’s livelihood at risk. Procedural due process must be afforded.”
The Grand Jury Report stated, “The grand jury believes that the primary mission of the Nevada Department of Agriculture is and should be the protection of Nevada’s livestock industry from unauthorized possession or movement of cattle, whether by theft or other means. This should be accomplished by vigorous enforcement of the brand inspection laws. In addition, the Division needs to strongly protect the ‘lock and key’ theory behind livestock brands.”
The DOA had allowed the BLM to sign as the owner of record on Mr. Colvin’s cattle brand inspection certificates. The Grand Jury Report did not agree, ruling that, “The grand jury believes that allowing an employee of a federal agency to sign a brand inspection clearance certificate on the line reserved for the ‘Signature of the Owner or Authorized Agent’ is improper and that, to better serve the livestock industry and the general public, such a practice should be discontinued.”
“The point was to protect our livestock from being unlawfully forced from our Nevada ranges. Our association is pro-cattle and pro-ranchers. We are in the livestock business and we mean business. It turned out great,” commented Mineral County rancher and NLSA Vice Chairman, David Holmgren.
The DOA and AG’s office were previously admonished in 2004 in Judge Janet Berry’s ruling from the Second Judicial District Court of Washoe County when she took judicial notice of the fact that the procedures for issuing brand inspection clearance certificates in the instances of livestock seizures did not afford procedural due process of law. The NLSA was the only group who appeared in court to oppose the DOA’s Petition for Judicial Confirmation of its brand inspection practices. Judge Berry dismissed the DOA’s Petition as unconstitutional under Nevada law.
During the recent Legislative session, Assemblyman John Carpenter, (R-Elko) introduced A.B. 407 to legislatively address livestock impoundments. The NLSA testified before the Assembly Natural Resources Committee and was instrumental in helping to amend the original bill draft to spell out Constitutional procedural due process to the DOA and AG in the instances of livestock seizures. It passed both houses earlier this year and was signed into law by the Governor.
A grand jury may indict, make a report with recommendations, or do nothing. The original petition against Connelley was for issuing brand inspection clearance certificates to the BLM for their livestock raids wherein they removed, sold, and kept the proceeds of cattle owned by Mr. Colvin. The Special Grand Jury declined to directly indict Connelley because his actions “…were based on advice to (him) from the Nevada Attorney General’s Office…and were performed without any criminal intent.” This leaves open the question of the Attorney General’s liability for endorsing BLM’s cattle seizures without enforcing due process of law.
As allowed by law, the Grand Jury has made six recommendations to the state for immediate action:
1. That the Nevada Department of Agriculture require an appropriate judicial order be entered prior to the issuance of a brand inspection clearance certificate to a party who is not the legal owner of the livestock in question.
2. That the Nevada Department of Agriculture terminate the April 6, 1999 Cooperative Agreement with the Bureau of Land Management.
3. That, in the event the Nevada Department of Agriculture enters into another similar Cooperative Agreement with any federal agency, such agreement should contain a requirement that an appropriate judicial order be entered prior to the issuance of a brand inspection clearance certificate to that agency.
4. That due process, as applied to the involuntary impound and/or sale of livestock in Nevada, should mean both notice and an opportunity to be heard in a judicial proceeding. In the case of federal impounds and/or sales of livestock, such a judicial proceeding should be outside of the federal agency and held before an independent state administrative law judge or state or federal district court.
5. That, at least 2 weeks prior to an impound and/or sale of livestock, written notice of the exact date(s) and location(s) of the proposed impound and/or sale should be personally served on the Nevada Department of Agriculture, on the legal owner of the affected livestock and on anyone holding a UCC Financing Statement and/or claiming a lien on the affected livestock.
6. That the Nevada Attorney General issue a formal published Attorney General’s Opinion describing the exact steps that the Nevada Department of Agriculture requires to be followed prior to the issuance of a brand inspection clearance certificate to a federal agency and circulate said Opinion generally throughout the livestock industry.”
# # #
Contacts: Ben Colvin 775.485.6366
Helen Chenoweth Hage 208.861.7875
David Holmgren 406.321.1215
Ramona Morrison 775.722.2517
Mike Van Zandt, Ben Colvin’s Attorney, 415.905.0200
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9732 State Route 445
Sparks, NV 89435
775.424.0570
Press Release
For Immediate Release July 11, 2005
ESMERALD CO. GRAND JURY SIDES WITH RANCHERS
(Sparks, NV) An Esmeralda County, Nevada, Special Grand Jury, empanelled to investigate actions by Nevada’s head brand inspector, Jim Connelley, during the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) 2002 seizure of Goldfield rancher, Ben Colvin’s cattle, issued its final report June 16, 2005. The Grand Jury Report was highly critical of the Nevada Department of Agriculture (DOA) and Attorney General’s policies in their handling of the matter and recommended immediate changes needed to bring the DOA and the AG into compliance with the 5th and 14th Amendments’ (U.S. Constitution) procedural due process requirements and with Nevada Brand Law.
“This is exactly the result we were looking for,” commented Ben Colvin. “All I ever wanted was justice and protection for my property, which I was never given. Even murderers and rapists are entitled to due process. When a man's livelihood is stolen from him, he should at least be afforded notice and a hearing before an impartial judge to decide if the confiscation of his sole means of support is lawful. The AG’s office gave Connelley advice that was akin to permitting the BLM to rob a bank, and unfortunately Mr. Connelley followed that advice. They stole my cattle and destroyed my livelihood. I appreciate the support of the citizens of Esmeralda County in this effort, and the excellent work of the Grand Jury for making these recommendations to the State,” said Colvin.
The Nevada Live Stock Association (NLSA) originated the idea of using the Special Grand Jury to investigate the brand inspector’s actions and participated in gathering the necessary signatures.
NLSA Chairman, Helen Chenoweth-Hage commented on the Grand Jury Report, “We are very, very pleased with the recommendations of the Grand Jury. This is the third time the Nevada Department of Agriculture and Attorney General’s Office have been directed to enforce procedural due process and the brand laws of Nevada. Many of Nevada’s ranchers have suffered the devastating impact of having their cattle rustled by the federal government. Now, after this decision, there is no doubt that the sheriffs’ must do their job and protect property from unlawful government actions and not place the individual rancher’s livelihood at risk. Procedural due process must be afforded.”
The Grand Jury Report stated, “The grand jury believes that the primary mission of the Nevada Department of Agriculture is and should be the protection of Nevada’s livestock industry from unauthorized possession or movement of cattle, whether by theft or other means. This should be accomplished by vigorous enforcement of the brand inspection laws. In addition, the Division needs to strongly protect the ‘lock and key’ theory behind livestock brands.”
The DOA had allowed the BLM to sign as the owner of record on Mr. Colvin’s cattle brand inspection certificates. The Grand Jury Report did not agree, ruling that, “The grand jury believes that allowing an employee of a federal agency to sign a brand inspection clearance certificate on the line reserved for the ‘Signature of the Owner or Authorized Agent’ is improper and that, to better serve the livestock industry and the general public, such a practice should be discontinued.”
“The point was to protect our livestock from being unlawfully forced from our Nevada ranges. Our association is pro-cattle and pro-ranchers. We are in the livestock business and we mean business. It turned out great,” commented Mineral County rancher and NLSA Vice Chairman, David Holmgren.
The DOA and AG’s office were previously admonished in 2004 in Judge Janet Berry’s ruling from the Second Judicial District Court of Washoe County when she took judicial notice of the fact that the procedures for issuing brand inspection clearance certificates in the instances of livestock seizures did not afford procedural due process of law. The NLSA was the only group who appeared in court to oppose the DOA’s Petition for Judicial Confirmation of its brand inspection practices. Judge Berry dismissed the DOA’s Petition as unconstitutional under Nevada law.
During the recent Legislative session, Assemblyman John Carpenter, (R-Elko) introduced A.B. 407 to legislatively address livestock impoundments. The NLSA testified before the Assembly Natural Resources Committee and was instrumental in helping to amend the original bill draft to spell out Constitutional procedural due process to the DOA and AG in the instances of livestock seizures. It passed both houses earlier this year and was signed into law by the Governor.
A grand jury may indict, make a report with recommendations, or do nothing. The original petition against Connelley was for issuing brand inspection clearance certificates to the BLM for their livestock raids wherein they removed, sold, and kept the proceeds of cattle owned by Mr. Colvin. The Special Grand Jury declined to directly indict Connelley because his actions “…were based on advice to (him) from the Nevada Attorney General’s Office…and were performed without any criminal intent.” This leaves open the question of the Attorney General’s liability for endorsing BLM’s cattle seizures without enforcing due process of law.
As allowed by law, the Grand Jury has made six recommendations to the state for immediate action:
1. That the Nevada Department of Agriculture require an appropriate judicial order be entered prior to the issuance of a brand inspection clearance certificate to a party who is not the legal owner of the livestock in question.
2. That the Nevada Department of Agriculture terminate the April 6, 1999 Cooperative Agreement with the Bureau of Land Management.
3. That, in the event the Nevada Department of Agriculture enters into another similar Cooperative Agreement with any federal agency, such agreement should contain a requirement that an appropriate judicial order be entered prior to the issuance of a brand inspection clearance certificate to that agency.
4. That due process, as applied to the involuntary impound and/or sale of livestock in Nevada, should mean both notice and an opportunity to be heard in a judicial proceeding. In the case of federal impounds and/or sales of livestock, such a judicial proceeding should be outside of the federal agency and held before an independent state administrative law judge or state or federal district court.
5. That, at least 2 weeks prior to an impound and/or sale of livestock, written notice of the exact date(s) and location(s) of the proposed impound and/or sale should be personally served on the Nevada Department of Agriculture, on the legal owner of the affected livestock and on anyone holding a UCC Financing Statement and/or claiming a lien on the affected livestock.
6. That the Nevada Attorney General issue a formal published Attorney General’s Opinion describing the exact steps that the Nevada Department of Agriculture requires to be followed prior to the issuance of a brand inspection clearance certificate to a federal agency and circulate said Opinion generally throughout the livestock industry.”
# # #
Contacts: Ben Colvin 775.485.6366
Helen Chenoweth Hage 208.861.7875
David Holmgren 406.321.1215
Ramona Morrison 775.722.2517
Mike Van Zandt, Ben Colvin’s Attorney, 415.905.0200
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Northern Plains offers compromise in methane case A conservation group is asking a federal magistrate to allow Fidelity Exploration & Production Co. to continue producing coal-bed methane from 85 disputed wells in southern Montana as long as certain protections for land and water are in place. The proposal by Northern Plains Resource Council comes a month after U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Anderson decided production on the federal wells in the Tongue River-Badger Hills project near Decker must stop because the analysis by the Bureau of Land Management relied on an environmental study he invalidated. Anderson has since put the order on hold, pending further arguments by those involved. Northern Plains, in a court filing, said its position has been not to halt production from existing wells to avoid disrupting royalty and tax revenues. It also says that a major part of the environmental effects it sought to prevent can't be undone because operations are underway. The group seeks, among other things, a prohibition on new ponds to hold methane waste water as well as the construction of land application or disposal sites for the water. "I think this is a compromise we can all live with," Mark Fix, a rancher and Northern Plains member, said in a statement....
Forest Service sues landowner for encroaching on scenic river corridor An Idaho man is fighting the U.S. Forest Service in court, contending that additions he made to his private property within the Clearwater River Wild and Scenic corridor do not violate 25-year-old development restrictions. The U.S. Forest Service has sued Therral "Terry" Jackson in U.S. District Court in Boise, asking Judge Edward J. Lodge to order him to stop cutting timber, cancel further construction plans and remove a new concrete retaining wall, footbridge and other improvements on portions of his 3-acre lot. The land is on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River near Syringa, 90 miles east of Lewiston in northcentral Idaho. If Jackson doesn't remove the additions and return the landscape to its previous condition, the Forest Service says it will tear out the developments and bill Jackson for the cost....
Grizzly bear boundaries under debate Darlene Vaughan says she's glad grizzly bear populations in Yellowstone National Park area have recovered to healthy levels - but the idea of allowing them to wander through her backyard is something else entirely. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a proposed bear management plan that would set boundaries on where the grizzly bear will be allowed to roam in the state. For Vaughan, the proposed boundary comes too close to her home on a ranch outside Lander in west-central Wyoming. "The grizzly bear definitely attacks people, and we just have too many people who live in this part of the state," she said Monday. Setting habitat boundaries for the large carnivore is another part of a more than 20-year effort to help grizzly bear populations recover in the West. Grizzly bears in the region are protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. But the Yellowstone-area population has reached a level where federal wildlife officials plan to propose delisting the bear soon. Residents like Vaughan, who already live among wolves, elk and other wildlife, say the grizzly brings a man-eating dimension that doesn't exist in the debate over other wildlife....
Judge rules sequoia monument fire plan violated federal law A judge ruled Monday that a fire-control plan for Giant Sequoia National Monument violated federal law because the blueprint, which includes logging the preserve that is home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees, did not undergo an environmental review. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service failed to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act and that its plans to manage the 327,769-acre central California preserve could have significant environmental consequences. Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued in March to halt the plan that would have allowed commercial logging in the monument designed to preserve the ancient monster conifers....
Forest Service rethinks park design to attract minorities The U.S. Forest Service is studying ways minorities use public lands in hopes of making improvements to better serve the growing Hispanic population of Arizona and the rest of the Southwest. The research will be used to find out why so few minorities use public lands and to make changes in the way national forests are maintained. For example, Hispanics account for one in four Arizonans but at each of the state's six national forests, Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Coronado, Kaibab, Prescott and Tonto, 88 percent or more of the visitors are white, according to a Forest Service visitor survey....
Carter S. Roberts Becomes President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund World Wildlife Fund announced today that Carter S. Roberts has become president and chief executive officer of the Washington-based World Wildlife Fund (WWF). He succeeds Kathryn S. Fuller, who stepped down after 16 years as WWF's president and CEO on June 31. Roberts has been WWF's chief conservation officer since February 2004. Prior to joining WWF, Roberts spent 15 years at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) much of the time focused on the overall strategy and advancing the organization's conservation programs in Latin America and in the United States. In addition to his deep experience in conservation, Roberts brings a strong background in business to his position. Earlier in his career, he led marketing and management teams at Gillette, Procter and Gamble and at Dun and Bradstreet where he advised companies including RJR/Nabisco and Coca Cola. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard University and graduated with honors from Princeton University....
Wildfires spark new threat: Rain The "Cave Creek Complex" fire did more than scorch hundreds of thousands of acres of desert land. The lightning-sparked inferno also clogged creek beds with debris, blackened vegetation and damaged soil that used to soak up rainwater. That means the impending monsoon rains inevitably will bring flooding to areas like the Seven Springs Campground, parts of Cave Creek, New River, Black Canyon City and Camp Creek, where 11 homes burned. Emergency stabilization efforts are under way to clear and upgrade culverts, mulch the land and reseed as many as 150 acres with a mixture of grass and shrubs before the monsoon storms hit....
Bad news rangers Karen Frauson was one of the first park rangers to respond to word of a plane crash on a lonely sagebrush flat in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park last month. A short time later, she also had the grim task of informing the pilot's family that he had died. But breaking the news of accidents, like this one that killed Wal-Mart heir John Walton, and helping families cope with the sudden reality of the loss is part of what Frauson does as one of the National Park Service's specially trained family liaison officers. Their skills have been in high demand in recent weeks as a series of fatal accidents and extended searches in national parks have attracted distraught families, some from hundreds of miles away, seeking information -- or the chance for a final goodbye....
Experts seek traces of Santa Fe Trail From a distance, Steven DeVore seemed to be mowing the grass Monday in Minor Park. Back and forth, back and forth on a grassy hilltop he pushed a three-wheeled gizmo topped with a … computer screen? Actually, DeVore was trying to solve a mystery with origins going back nearly two centuries: Exactly where in south Kansas City did the Santa Fe Trail run? Although much of the route is well documented, there are a couple stretches where neither the landscape nor the historical record has clarified just where the westbound pioneers beat their path to a hoped-for better life....
The West's defender of wild places On a late spring day, with streambeds roaring and the sun breaking through the thin mountain air, Stewart Udall has just crossed a calf-deep creek, rushing with late-season snowmelt from the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. His corduroy pants are drenched at the cuffs, his sneakers muddied and soaked. Udall is on the Rio en Medio Trail, a popular and well-watered seven-mile hike a good half hour out of Santa Fe. Udall, who turned 85 in January, has slowed down in recent years. Age, the death of his wife and a degenerative eye condition have contributed, but once on the trail, he gamely sloshes ahead, grasping drooping branches and, if needed, an outstretched hand. As secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — and one of the architects of the Wilderness Act — he is perhaps the politician most responsible for the public lands you hike, the rivers you kayak, the mountains you climb and the wilderness you contemplate. And it is this legacy that he is most fearful will be lost. Along with Robert McNamara, Udall is the last surviving member of the original New Frontier cabinet. In his ninth decade, he continues to put forth an environmental agenda, laments the dismantling of national lands and bemoans the malicious attitudes that he sees corrupting Washington....
National parks saw 12% drop in visitation between 1999-2004 Tourism experts say boomers’ preference for cushier vacations is contributing to a decline in campers and visitors at parks nationwide. At Acadia, annual visitation fell 15 percent between 1999 and 2004. Only 72,000 people camped out there last year, a drop of 22 percent in the past decade. Nationwide, camping at national parks fell 12 percent between 1999 and 2004. The aging population is just part of the reason, said Jim Gramann, a professor at Texas A&M University and the visiting chief social scientist for the National Park Service. Other factors include hectic lifestyles, competing recreational options, an uncertain economy, a fall in international travel to the United States, shorter vacations, and even an increase in ethnic populations unfamiliar with the park system....
Confederate descendants fear new skirmish brewing The statue has not budged. Gen. Robert E. Lee still sits astride Traveller, field glasses in one hand, the horse's reins in the other, no hint of the broken wrist that bedeviled him as he rode up and down the Confederate lines during the Battle of Antietam. No one has suggested plans to move his 24-foot likeness. But to the great-grandsons of Confederate soldiers, mere word that the federal government has purchased the grounds where Lee stands has tripped hair-trigger fears of Uncle Sam's treachery. Believing the National Park Service has become "politically correct" and decidedly pro-Union in its stewardship of Civil War battlefields, the Sons of Confederate Veterans has sounded the alarm, warning that the government might move the colossus from its spot west of Antietam Creek, where it was commissioned by a local millionaire a few years ago....
Historic status loss possible at 'Town Too Tough to Die' Some of the Old West's toughest lawmen walked the streets of Tombstone, but now the town may lose its status as a National Historic Landmark because of its failure to enforce the law. State and federal officials for years have warned Tombstone's leaders of the possible loss if they didn't enforce town ordinances that require all buildings in the historic district to resemble the styles typical of the 1880s, when Tombstone won eternal fame as the site of the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Then the National Park Service last year placed Tombstone on a "watch list" of 89 landmarks nationwide that face the possibility of losing the historic designation. Now, community leaders and others are trying to find a solution to the problem, Mayor Andre DeJournett said....
Spotted Horse still bucks To one traveling phone repairman, this is the remote bar/café where he almost had to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a putrid old man who'd set his bar stool on his own oxygen hose and ended up passed out on the floor. To Roy Holdeman and Robbie Montgomery, this is where they took their wedding vows and hung a rose on the antique bicycle on the ceiling. In the 1920s, Jim Spellman was among the first students at the school house across the lot. The Spellmans, Werners and several other families gathered at the dance hall across the road each summer, and in 1944 a tornado ripped it apart. Eleven gallons of gas totaled $2.84 here in 1947, and a hamburger lunch for two was $2.50 in 1952. This is Spotted Horse, located about 37 miles northwest of Gillette on Highway 14-16. You can still get a burger here, but the school is closed and the post office is no longer operated at the bar and café....
It's All Trew: Rollaway bed was favorite for sleeping, hiding My early day heroes slept in thin blankets, on the hard ground with their heads resting on their saddles. Later, my J. Frank Dobie heroes slept in canvas-covered bedrolls which had to be rolled each morning, tied with a rope and tossed on the chuck wagon. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the cowboys slept in bunks with rope bottoms and covered with ticks filled with hay, grass, corn shucks or cotton. Such stuffing seemed to invite insects so bed legs were stood in small cans of coal oil to keep the ants and other critters away. When settlers were finally able to build conventional homes many contained Murphy beds that folded up into the wall to provide more usable daytime floor space. Some beds stood high off the floors above drafts and at times contained drawers beneath in which small children slept. Until after World War II, everyone I knew used iron bedsteads....
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Northern Plains offers compromise in methane case A conservation group is asking a federal magistrate to allow Fidelity Exploration & Production Co. to continue producing coal-bed methane from 85 disputed wells in southern Montana as long as certain protections for land and water are in place. The proposal by Northern Plains Resource Council comes a month after U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Anderson decided production on the federal wells in the Tongue River-Badger Hills project near Decker must stop because the analysis by the Bureau of Land Management relied on an environmental study he invalidated. Anderson has since put the order on hold, pending further arguments by those involved. Northern Plains, in a court filing, said its position has been not to halt production from existing wells to avoid disrupting royalty and tax revenues. It also says that a major part of the environmental effects it sought to prevent can't be undone because operations are underway. The group seeks, among other things, a prohibition on new ponds to hold methane waste water as well as the construction of land application or disposal sites for the water. "I think this is a compromise we can all live with," Mark Fix, a rancher and Northern Plains member, said in a statement....
Forest Service sues landowner for encroaching on scenic river corridor An Idaho man is fighting the U.S. Forest Service in court, contending that additions he made to his private property within the Clearwater River Wild and Scenic corridor do not violate 25-year-old development restrictions. The U.S. Forest Service has sued Therral "Terry" Jackson in U.S. District Court in Boise, asking Judge Edward J. Lodge to order him to stop cutting timber, cancel further construction plans and remove a new concrete retaining wall, footbridge and other improvements on portions of his 3-acre lot. The land is on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River near Syringa, 90 miles east of Lewiston in northcentral Idaho. If Jackson doesn't remove the additions and return the landscape to its previous condition, the Forest Service says it will tear out the developments and bill Jackson for the cost....
Grizzly bear boundaries under debate Darlene Vaughan says she's glad grizzly bear populations in Yellowstone National Park area have recovered to healthy levels - but the idea of allowing them to wander through her backyard is something else entirely. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a proposed bear management plan that would set boundaries on where the grizzly bear will be allowed to roam in the state. For Vaughan, the proposed boundary comes too close to her home on a ranch outside Lander in west-central Wyoming. "The grizzly bear definitely attacks people, and we just have too many people who live in this part of the state," she said Monday. Setting habitat boundaries for the large carnivore is another part of a more than 20-year effort to help grizzly bear populations recover in the West. Grizzly bears in the region are protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. But the Yellowstone-area population has reached a level where federal wildlife officials plan to propose delisting the bear soon. Residents like Vaughan, who already live among wolves, elk and other wildlife, say the grizzly brings a man-eating dimension that doesn't exist in the debate over other wildlife....
Judge rules sequoia monument fire plan violated federal law A judge ruled Monday that a fire-control plan for Giant Sequoia National Monument violated federal law because the blueprint, which includes logging the preserve that is home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees, did not undergo an environmental review. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service failed to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act and that its plans to manage the 327,769-acre central California preserve could have significant environmental consequences. Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued in March to halt the plan that would have allowed commercial logging in the monument designed to preserve the ancient monster conifers....
Forest Service rethinks park design to attract minorities The U.S. Forest Service is studying ways minorities use public lands in hopes of making improvements to better serve the growing Hispanic population of Arizona and the rest of the Southwest. The research will be used to find out why so few minorities use public lands and to make changes in the way national forests are maintained. For example, Hispanics account for one in four Arizonans but at each of the state's six national forests, Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Coronado, Kaibab, Prescott and Tonto, 88 percent or more of the visitors are white, according to a Forest Service visitor survey....
Carter S. Roberts Becomes President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund World Wildlife Fund announced today that Carter S. Roberts has become president and chief executive officer of the Washington-based World Wildlife Fund (WWF). He succeeds Kathryn S. Fuller, who stepped down after 16 years as WWF's president and CEO on June 31. Roberts has been WWF's chief conservation officer since February 2004. Prior to joining WWF, Roberts spent 15 years at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) much of the time focused on the overall strategy and advancing the organization's conservation programs in Latin America and in the United States. In addition to his deep experience in conservation, Roberts brings a strong background in business to his position. Earlier in his career, he led marketing and management teams at Gillette, Procter and Gamble and at Dun and Bradstreet where he advised companies including RJR/Nabisco and Coca Cola. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard University and graduated with honors from Princeton University....
Wildfires spark new threat: Rain The "Cave Creek Complex" fire did more than scorch hundreds of thousands of acres of desert land. The lightning-sparked inferno also clogged creek beds with debris, blackened vegetation and damaged soil that used to soak up rainwater. That means the impending monsoon rains inevitably will bring flooding to areas like the Seven Springs Campground, parts of Cave Creek, New River, Black Canyon City and Camp Creek, where 11 homes burned. Emergency stabilization efforts are under way to clear and upgrade culverts, mulch the land and reseed as many as 150 acres with a mixture of grass and shrubs before the monsoon storms hit....
Bad news rangers Karen Frauson was one of the first park rangers to respond to word of a plane crash on a lonely sagebrush flat in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park last month. A short time later, she also had the grim task of informing the pilot's family that he had died. But breaking the news of accidents, like this one that killed Wal-Mart heir John Walton, and helping families cope with the sudden reality of the loss is part of what Frauson does as one of the National Park Service's specially trained family liaison officers. Their skills have been in high demand in recent weeks as a series of fatal accidents and extended searches in national parks have attracted distraught families, some from hundreds of miles away, seeking information -- or the chance for a final goodbye....
Experts seek traces of Santa Fe Trail From a distance, Steven DeVore seemed to be mowing the grass Monday in Minor Park. Back and forth, back and forth on a grassy hilltop he pushed a three-wheeled gizmo topped with a … computer screen? Actually, DeVore was trying to solve a mystery with origins going back nearly two centuries: Exactly where in south Kansas City did the Santa Fe Trail run? Although much of the route is well documented, there are a couple stretches where neither the landscape nor the historical record has clarified just where the westbound pioneers beat their path to a hoped-for better life....
The West's defender of wild places On a late spring day, with streambeds roaring and the sun breaking through the thin mountain air, Stewart Udall has just crossed a calf-deep creek, rushing with late-season snowmelt from the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. His corduroy pants are drenched at the cuffs, his sneakers muddied and soaked. Udall is on the Rio en Medio Trail, a popular and well-watered seven-mile hike a good half hour out of Santa Fe. Udall, who turned 85 in January, has slowed down in recent years. Age, the death of his wife and a degenerative eye condition have contributed, but once on the trail, he gamely sloshes ahead, grasping drooping branches and, if needed, an outstretched hand. As secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — and one of the architects of the Wilderness Act — he is perhaps the politician most responsible for the public lands you hike, the rivers you kayak, the mountains you climb and the wilderness you contemplate. And it is this legacy that he is most fearful will be lost. Along with Robert McNamara, Udall is the last surviving member of the original New Frontier cabinet. In his ninth decade, he continues to put forth an environmental agenda, laments the dismantling of national lands and bemoans the malicious attitudes that he sees corrupting Washington....
National parks saw 12% drop in visitation between 1999-2004 Tourism experts say boomers’ preference for cushier vacations is contributing to a decline in campers and visitors at parks nationwide. At Acadia, annual visitation fell 15 percent between 1999 and 2004. Only 72,000 people camped out there last year, a drop of 22 percent in the past decade. Nationwide, camping at national parks fell 12 percent between 1999 and 2004. The aging population is just part of the reason, said Jim Gramann, a professor at Texas A&M University and the visiting chief social scientist for the National Park Service. Other factors include hectic lifestyles, competing recreational options, an uncertain economy, a fall in international travel to the United States, shorter vacations, and even an increase in ethnic populations unfamiliar with the park system....
Confederate descendants fear new skirmish brewing The statue has not budged. Gen. Robert E. Lee still sits astride Traveller, field glasses in one hand, the horse's reins in the other, no hint of the broken wrist that bedeviled him as he rode up and down the Confederate lines during the Battle of Antietam. No one has suggested plans to move his 24-foot likeness. But to the great-grandsons of Confederate soldiers, mere word that the federal government has purchased the grounds where Lee stands has tripped hair-trigger fears of Uncle Sam's treachery. Believing the National Park Service has become "politically correct" and decidedly pro-Union in its stewardship of Civil War battlefields, the Sons of Confederate Veterans has sounded the alarm, warning that the government might move the colossus from its spot west of Antietam Creek, where it was commissioned by a local millionaire a few years ago....
Historic status loss possible at 'Town Too Tough to Die' Some of the Old West's toughest lawmen walked the streets of Tombstone, but now the town may lose its status as a National Historic Landmark because of its failure to enforce the law. State and federal officials for years have warned Tombstone's leaders of the possible loss if they didn't enforce town ordinances that require all buildings in the historic district to resemble the styles typical of the 1880s, when Tombstone won eternal fame as the site of the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Then the National Park Service last year placed Tombstone on a "watch list" of 89 landmarks nationwide that face the possibility of losing the historic designation. Now, community leaders and others are trying to find a solution to the problem, Mayor Andre DeJournett said....
Spotted Horse still bucks To one traveling phone repairman, this is the remote bar/café where he almost had to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a putrid old man who'd set his bar stool on his own oxygen hose and ended up passed out on the floor. To Roy Holdeman and Robbie Montgomery, this is where they took their wedding vows and hung a rose on the antique bicycle on the ceiling. In the 1920s, Jim Spellman was among the first students at the school house across the lot. The Spellmans, Werners and several other families gathered at the dance hall across the road each summer, and in 1944 a tornado ripped it apart. Eleven gallons of gas totaled $2.84 here in 1947, and a hamburger lunch for two was $2.50 in 1952. This is Spotted Horse, located about 37 miles northwest of Gillette on Highway 14-16. You can still get a burger here, but the school is closed and the post office is no longer operated at the bar and café....
It's All Trew: Rollaway bed was favorite for sleeping, hiding My early day heroes slept in thin blankets, on the hard ground with their heads resting on their saddles. Later, my J. Frank Dobie heroes slept in canvas-covered bedrolls which had to be rolled each morning, tied with a rope and tossed on the chuck wagon. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the cowboys slept in bunks with rope bottoms and covered with ticks filled with hay, grass, corn shucks or cotton. Such stuffing seemed to invite insects so bed legs were stood in small cans of coal oil to keep the ants and other critters away. When settlers were finally able to build conventional homes many contained Murphy beds that folded up into the wall to provide more usable daytime floor space. Some beds stood high off the floors above drafts and at times contained drawers beneath in which small children slept. Until after World War II, everyone I knew used iron bedsteads....
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MAD COW DISEASE
Quarantine lifted on mad cow herd
A hold was removed Monday from the Texas ranch that housed a cow infected with mad cow disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. The hold – which blocked the movement of cows from the ranch – was lifted after the Agriculture Department killed and tested 67 animals from the herd of origin, looking for signs of the brain-wasting disease. "The hold is lifted today," said Larry Cooper, a spokesman for the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "That means he can go about his normal business," he said, declining to name the rancher. "There are no restrictions on the movement of livestock from the herd." Steve Kay, editor of the trade publication Cattle Buyers Weekly, said he did not think the rancher would be ostracized when he returns his animals to market. "I imagine that he'll be treated with great respect and generosity," Mr. Kay said. "He did nothing wrong, and everybody knows that."....
Feds want to test former herd mates of infected cow
The federal government is looking for some former herd mates of a Texas cow infected with "mad cow" disease, planning to test them for the fatal brain-wasting disease. "We want to see how far we can get with a paper trail on the animals that are no longer on that farm," said Larry Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA is trying to trace cows that are roughly the same age as the infected 12-year-old Brahma cross beef cow as well as any of the cow's offspring. Many scientists believe that "mad cow" disease is spread through feed containing infected cow or sheep remains. The sick Texas cow and the older cows formerly in the same herd might have eaten contaminated feed before a 1997 U.S. ban on feeding most cattle and sheep remains to cows. The government said Sunday that 67 older cows that were currently in the same Texas herd had tested negative for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in a government "rapid test" performed in Ames, Iowa. Animals tested included those a year older and younger than the 12-year-old infected cow, along with its offspring, Cooper said. Other cows in the herd were not tested, and the USDA has no plans to test them....
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Quarantine lifted on mad cow herd
A hold was removed Monday from the Texas ranch that housed a cow infected with mad cow disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. The hold – which blocked the movement of cows from the ranch – was lifted after the Agriculture Department killed and tested 67 animals from the herd of origin, looking for signs of the brain-wasting disease. "The hold is lifted today," said Larry Cooper, a spokesman for the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "That means he can go about his normal business," he said, declining to name the rancher. "There are no restrictions on the movement of livestock from the herd." Steve Kay, editor of the trade publication Cattle Buyers Weekly, said he did not think the rancher would be ostracized when he returns his animals to market. "I imagine that he'll be treated with great respect and generosity," Mr. Kay said. "He did nothing wrong, and everybody knows that."....
Feds want to test former herd mates of infected cow
The federal government is looking for some former herd mates of a Texas cow infected with "mad cow" disease, planning to test them for the fatal brain-wasting disease. "We want to see how far we can get with a paper trail on the animals that are no longer on that farm," said Larry Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA is trying to trace cows that are roughly the same age as the infected 12-year-old Brahma cross beef cow as well as any of the cow's offspring. Many scientists believe that "mad cow" disease is spread through feed containing infected cow or sheep remains. The sick Texas cow and the older cows formerly in the same herd might have eaten contaminated feed before a 1997 U.S. ban on feeding most cattle and sheep remains to cows. The government said Sunday that 67 older cows that were currently in the same Texas herd had tested negative for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in a government "rapid test" performed in Ames, Iowa. Animals tested included those a year older and younger than the 12-year-old infected cow, along with its offspring, Cooper said. Other cows in the herd were not tested, and the USDA has no plans to test them....
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FLE
Permanent Patriot Act Proposed The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee introduced a bill yesterday that would make the controversial USA Patriot Act permanent, but he balked at including some new powers sought by the Bush administration. The bill proposed by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) largely gives the Justice Department what it has requested in the review of the Patriot Act antiterrorism law, which was enacted weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The proposal includes 16 provisions set to expire at the end of this year unless they are renewed or made permanent by Congress. But the proposed legislation does not go as far as legislation approved in June by the Senate intelligence committee, which voted to make it easier for the FBI to open mail and issue subpoenas without a judge's approval in terrorism probes. Sensenbrenner's bill also calls for stronger oversight of some of the government's powers. The fate of both the House and Senate measures is uncertain: Sensenbrenner's bill is likely to come under heavy fire from Democrats during a mark-up session tomorrow, while the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering its own bill as a counterpoint to the Senate intelligence committee's version. The House as a whole voted by a wide margin last month to curtail the FBI's ability under the Patriot Act to seize library and bookstore records for terrorism investigations....
House, Senate chiefs spar on Patriot Act The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees may end up in a showdown on how best to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act. The House chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, is pushing to make the entire law permanent, while the Senate chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, prefers to retain some congressional control by extending only some of the law's expiration dates. President Bush called on Congress again Monday to make permanent the expiring provisions of the nation's premier anti-terrorism law, days after London was struck by terrorist bombs. Sensenbrenner plans to go along with Bush's call on the House side, with his committee on Wednesday working on legislation that would strike all the "sunset" provisions - the predetermined dates when a law or provision expires - from the Patriot Act. Specter, meanwhile, plans to keep several of the sunsets in the Senate bill when its reauthorization is debated in the Senate Judiciary Committee, setting up a conflict between the two versions that would have to reconciled before the provision's expiration on Dec. 31 if they are unchanged in the House and Senate....
Police still using controversial database When the federal government in April stopped funding a database that lets police quickly see public records and commercially collected information on Americans, privacy advocates celebrated what they saw as a victory against overzealousness in the fight against terrorism. But a few states are pressing forward with a similar system, continuing to look for ways to quickly search through a trove of data — from driver's license photos to phone numbers to information about people's cars. Their argument in seeking to keep the Matrix database alive in some form: it's too important for solving crimes to give up on. Florida, Ohio, Connecticut and Pennsylvania still use software that lets investigators quickly cull through much of the data about people that reside in cyberspace. However, without the federal grant for the Matrix data-sharing system, they won't be routinely searching through digital files from other states — at least for now....
New Jersey Couple Need Not Turn Over Computer to Opposing Party in Lawsuit, Appellate Court Rules A couple ordered to turn over their computer hard drive to public officials they sued does not have to give up their computer after all, a court has ruled. The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey has reversed a trial judge’s May 19 order saying that Scott and Charlene “Charlie” Uhrmann had to relinquish their hard drive so the officials they sued could determine whether the Uhrmanns anonymously posted derogatory statements about the officials on the Internet. After that ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and Public Citizen agreed to represent the Uhrmanns in their request for appellate review of the trial court order. The groups noted that the hard drive contains financial and other personal information and said that the order violated free speech and privacy rights as well as established law on rules of discovery and on anonymous Internet postings. In a one-paragraph ruling, the Appellate Division said that the requested information was beyond the scope of discovery, not relevant to the case and could lead to the disclosure of personal information....
Senate Votes to Stop Sweeping Secrecy Laws The Senate voted on Friday, June 24, to better explain when Congress keeps information from the public. The move is intended to push Congress to be clear when keeping secrets from the public and stop secrecy that Congress does not intend. The bill (S. 1181), introduced by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), would require legislation enacted after July 1, 2005, that exempts government-held information from public access to specifically say so. The bill sets the intent of Congress that documents should be available to the public under FOIA unless Congress explicitly creates an exception. Congress can either specifically state that the information is intended to be held secret "in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue" or refer to particulars that should be exempt under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. The bill, if passed by the House and signed by the president, could change the current secrecy climate in at least two small but significant ways. First, the bill asks agencies and courts to err on the side of disclosure when a statute is vague about whether certain government-held information should be kept secret or made available to the public. This should help reduce costly court deliberations. Second, it would allow better tracking of the number of laws currently on the books that call for exemptions from public disclosure....
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Permanent Patriot Act Proposed The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee introduced a bill yesterday that would make the controversial USA Patriot Act permanent, but he balked at including some new powers sought by the Bush administration. The bill proposed by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) largely gives the Justice Department what it has requested in the review of the Patriot Act antiterrorism law, which was enacted weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The proposal includes 16 provisions set to expire at the end of this year unless they are renewed or made permanent by Congress. But the proposed legislation does not go as far as legislation approved in June by the Senate intelligence committee, which voted to make it easier for the FBI to open mail and issue subpoenas without a judge's approval in terrorism probes. Sensenbrenner's bill also calls for stronger oversight of some of the government's powers. The fate of both the House and Senate measures is uncertain: Sensenbrenner's bill is likely to come under heavy fire from Democrats during a mark-up session tomorrow, while the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering its own bill as a counterpoint to the Senate intelligence committee's version. The House as a whole voted by a wide margin last month to curtail the FBI's ability under the Patriot Act to seize library and bookstore records for terrorism investigations....
House, Senate chiefs spar on Patriot Act The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees may end up in a showdown on how best to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act. The House chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, is pushing to make the entire law permanent, while the Senate chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, prefers to retain some congressional control by extending only some of the law's expiration dates. President Bush called on Congress again Monday to make permanent the expiring provisions of the nation's premier anti-terrorism law, days after London was struck by terrorist bombs. Sensenbrenner plans to go along with Bush's call on the House side, with his committee on Wednesday working on legislation that would strike all the "sunset" provisions - the predetermined dates when a law or provision expires - from the Patriot Act. Specter, meanwhile, plans to keep several of the sunsets in the Senate bill when its reauthorization is debated in the Senate Judiciary Committee, setting up a conflict between the two versions that would have to reconciled before the provision's expiration on Dec. 31 if they are unchanged in the House and Senate....
Police still using controversial database When the federal government in April stopped funding a database that lets police quickly see public records and commercially collected information on Americans, privacy advocates celebrated what they saw as a victory against overzealousness in the fight against terrorism. But a few states are pressing forward with a similar system, continuing to look for ways to quickly search through a trove of data — from driver's license photos to phone numbers to information about people's cars. Their argument in seeking to keep the Matrix database alive in some form: it's too important for solving crimes to give up on. Florida, Ohio, Connecticut and Pennsylvania still use software that lets investigators quickly cull through much of the data about people that reside in cyberspace. However, without the federal grant for the Matrix data-sharing system, they won't be routinely searching through digital files from other states — at least for now....
New Jersey Couple Need Not Turn Over Computer to Opposing Party in Lawsuit, Appellate Court Rules A couple ordered to turn over their computer hard drive to public officials they sued does not have to give up their computer after all, a court has ruled. The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey has reversed a trial judge’s May 19 order saying that Scott and Charlene “Charlie” Uhrmann had to relinquish their hard drive so the officials they sued could determine whether the Uhrmanns anonymously posted derogatory statements about the officials on the Internet. After that ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and Public Citizen agreed to represent the Uhrmanns in their request for appellate review of the trial court order. The groups noted that the hard drive contains financial and other personal information and said that the order violated free speech and privacy rights as well as established law on rules of discovery and on anonymous Internet postings. In a one-paragraph ruling, the Appellate Division said that the requested information was beyond the scope of discovery, not relevant to the case and could lead to the disclosure of personal information....
Senate Votes to Stop Sweeping Secrecy Laws The Senate voted on Friday, June 24, to better explain when Congress keeps information from the public. The move is intended to push Congress to be clear when keeping secrets from the public and stop secrecy that Congress does not intend. The bill (S. 1181), introduced by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), would require legislation enacted after July 1, 2005, that exempts government-held information from public access to specifically say so. The bill sets the intent of Congress that documents should be available to the public under FOIA unless Congress explicitly creates an exception. Congress can either specifically state that the information is intended to be held secret "in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue" or refer to particulars that should be exempt under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. The bill, if passed by the House and signed by the president, could change the current secrecy climate in at least two small but significant ways. First, the bill asks agencies and courts to err on the side of disclosure when a statute is vague about whether certain government-held information should be kept secret or made available to the public. This should help reduce costly court deliberations. Second, it would allow better tracking of the number of laws currently on the books that call for exemptions from public disclosure....
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Monday, July 11, 2005
Ruling on Property Seizure Rallies Christian Groups
Conservative Christian groups seeking to galvanize support for a battle over a Supreme Court nomination are rallying around the unlikely symbol of a mega-church in Los Alamitos, Calif., one of a handful of houses of worship that have tangled with towns over the use of eminent domain to take their properties. In the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago in favor of using eminent domain for development that increases a city's tax base, many Christian groups are warning supporters that the tax-exempt status of churches may make them targets, often citing the attempt to take a plot of land from the Cottonwood Christian Center in Los Alamitos. Many legal experts say the fears are unfounded, and a federal appeals court ultimately blocked the condemnation of Cottonwood's property. But calling the decision evidence that the court is out of touch, several Christian groups have seized on the ruling as a potent new motivation to fight for a conservative to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring. "Supreme Court decision threatens property rights putting homes, businesses and churches at risk!" the American Center for Law and Justice said in an e-mail bulletin to supporters. The American Family Association warned its members, "If the government decides a mall would produce more tax income than your home or a church, they can now take your home or a church." A column distributed via e-mail by the evangelical self-help group Focus on the Family said, "Churches located in prime areas should be especially concerned." In an interview, Jay Sekulow, a Christian radio host and the chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, said the case had touched a nerve. "We have had more response to this case than we have had to the decision on the Ten Commandments - how about that?" Mr. Sekulow said. "I think it ranks up there with any case we have ever had in showing that the court does, in fact, impact your life."....
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Conservative Christian groups seeking to galvanize support for a battle over a Supreme Court nomination are rallying around the unlikely symbol of a mega-church in Los Alamitos, Calif., one of a handful of houses of worship that have tangled with towns over the use of eminent domain to take their properties. In the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago in favor of using eminent domain for development that increases a city's tax base, many Christian groups are warning supporters that the tax-exempt status of churches may make them targets, often citing the attempt to take a plot of land from the Cottonwood Christian Center in Los Alamitos. Many legal experts say the fears are unfounded, and a federal appeals court ultimately blocked the condemnation of Cottonwood's property. But calling the decision evidence that the court is out of touch, several Christian groups have seized on the ruling as a potent new motivation to fight for a conservative to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring. "Supreme Court decision threatens property rights putting homes, businesses and churches at risk!" the American Center for Law and Justice said in an e-mail bulletin to supporters. The American Family Association warned its members, "If the government decides a mall would produce more tax income than your home or a church, they can now take your home or a church." A column distributed via e-mail by the evangelical self-help group Focus on the Family said, "Churches located in prime areas should be especially concerned." In an interview, Jay Sekulow, a Christian radio host and the chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, said the case had touched a nerve. "We have had more response to this case than we have had to the decision on the Ten Commandments - how about that?" Mr. Sekulow said. "I think it ranks up there with any case we have ever had in showing that the court does, in fact, impact your life."....
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NEWS ROUNDUP
The new sodbusters Technology and government subsidies have spawned a new era of sodbusting in central South Dakota, pitting struggling farmers against the state's signature ecosystem and the nation's most productive duck habitat. Crop breeding and better machinery have helped make plowing virgin prairie more feasible in a region known as the Missouri Coteau. South Dakota, at the coteau's southern tip, is "ground zero for this grassland loss," according to a researcher from Ducks Unlimited, a conservation and hunting group that fears the destruction could drain much of the life from this indispensible place. Using satellite photographs of thousands of tracts blanketing the coteau, researcher Scott Stephens of Bismarck, N.D., and others have documented the loss of 88 square miles of native grassland in central South Dakota since 1984 - 10 percent of the area's remaining acreage. The trend appears to be accelerating, and farmers and officials say government subsidies and new technology are responsible....
Rancher Loses His Water Rights Case: Nebraska's High Court Rules That the State Has No Duty to Protect Surface Streams Against Depletion For the second week in a row, the Nebraska Supreme Court said Friday it is not the state's duty to protect the rights of people who own rights to water in streams and rivers from those who may deplete the flows by pumping water from the ground. "It's a dark day for rivers and streams in Nebraska,'' said attorney Thomas Oliver of Bridgeport, who represented the Spear T Ranch in its lawsuit against the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources. Rancher Rex Nielsen of Gering filed the case against the state after water in Pumpkin Creek -- which he used for crops and livestock -- disappeared. He blamed groundwater users for sucking the stream dry and asked the state to protect his property right. David Cookson, special counsel to Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, said he is pleased the legal fight is over. "The court in this decision sent a strong message that we need to work together under LB 962 (the state's year-old water law) for the integrated management of groundwater and surface-water use,'' he said. The case was the latest skirmish in a legal battle pitting surface-water users against groundwater users....
Mobilizing the middle and plowing ahead The Quivira Coalition, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, began as an alliance between two environmentalists and a rancher; in the last eight years, it has snowballed into an environmental force to be reckoned with, and is as difficult to squeeze into easy definitions and categories as its name. The basic philosophy of the group is that the best thing for environmentalists, ranchers, and the environment itself is to stop fighting long enough to see the ranching issue in a new way. Hard-core environmentalists want to stop ranching altogether; hard-core ranchers want to keep on ranching the way their forefathers have done it for a century. This we know destroys the ecosystem, and eventually their own profits; but putting ranchers out of business often results in the land being resold to developers and turned into condominiums, parking lots or shopping malls, which is the last thing either side wants. Quivira’s task is to try to get both parties to see what they have in common, and work together. Observation and an ever-deepening understanding of grazeland ecosystems can and has led to new ranching methods that are less and less harmful, and that even help heal the environment from the ranching wounds of the past....
Montana water standards may limit Wyo CBM Montana regulators are setting water quality degradation limits that may seriously stunt the lucrative yet largely untapped coal-bed methane gas resource in northeast Wyoming. Gov. Dave Freudenthal said recently the two states are at loggerheads about how far Wyoming can degrade water quality in the Tongue, Powder and other rivers that flow from Wyoming's coal-bed methane gas fields into southeast Montana. Wyoming regulators believe they can meet Montana's "numeric standards" at the border, but Montana officials say that would leave no wriggle room for coal-bed methane water discharges on their side of the border. Montana proposes a 50/50 split of the capacity for additional electrical conductivity and sodium adsorption ratio. Wyoming regulators believe they should be allowed to go beyond 50 percent at least until Montana begins developing its own coal-bed methane gas resources in earnest....
Split-estate law raises legal issues Oil and gas developers worry that a new state law covering development on split estates will require them to post two separate bonds on some tracts. Previously, developers needed to post one bond when drilling for minerals owned by the federal government. The new state law will require a bond when developers and landowners can't agree on terms before drilling begins, said Don Likwartz, director of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, possibly duplicating bonds already posted with the Bureau of Land Management. Split estates - where one party owns the surface land and another party owns the mineral rights below that land - are common in parts of Wyoming and the West. Rick Robitaille, public affairs manager of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., said having to post two bonds for the same piece of land would increase production costs....
Wolf plan will likely wait at least two years Wolves will come to Oregon, like it or not. But a state law spelling out what ranchers can do to protect their livestock from wolves — an endangered species — will probably have to wait at least two years. Legislators have been unable to agree on a bill that was intended to make it easier for ranchers to kill wolves that were attacking livestock. Because wolves are protected under the state and federal Endangered Species acts, under current law ranchers would have to contact federal authorities if their livestock is attacked, then wait for an agent to determine if wolves were responsible and whether to harass or kill those involved. A bill and amendments that were considered by a House committee would have connected Oregon's classification of wolves to the federal government's. So if the federal government relaxed classification of wolves to protected status instead of endangered, farmers would be able to kill wolves caught killing their livestock....
Forest Service sets sights on unmanned aircraft Federal scientists have tested them over Mount St. Helens. The Department of Homeland Security has used them to inspect the Alaskan oil pipeline. The Coast Guard wants to use them for maritime enforcement and the Border Patrol to guard the U.S. border with Mexico. Now the U.S. Forest Service is considering using unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, to help them better fight the forest fires that burn every summer across millions of acres in the West. This week the Forest Service will test three small UAVs at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility in San Jose. Next summer the Forest Service and NASA will test-fly an Altair UAV, the civilian version of the military Predator UAV used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current plan is to fly the Altair continuously for 24 hours over the western United States to map forest fires....
Lake Tahoe bears are fussy about fish Lake Tahoe's black bears love trout and hate salmon. Bear watchers aren't sure why. As the Nevada Department of Wildlife harvested eggs from rainbow trout spawning from Marlette Lake near northeastern Lake Tahoe this spring, it again had to put up about 30 yards of solar-powered electrical fence to keep black bears from the fish. Without the fence, originally designed to shock cattle, the bears descend on a 15-yard section of a stream flowing into Marlette Lake and gorge themselves on hundreds of trout kept there until wildlife department workers get the trout's eggs or sperm for state hatcheries, said Dave Sanger, a fisheries staff biologist....
Emotions are fresh as 1953 forest tragedy memorialized On a dusty, winding, narrow road that hugs a ridge deep behind the golden hills above the Sacramento Valley, a bus chugs its way to a waiting memorial. The sky is gray and cloudy. Inside the bus are a dozen people, some there to pay respect to the memories of their fathers who perished across the canyon 52 years ago. One of those aboard is Ruth Rowe, the daughter of Hobard Stanley Whitehouse. Rowe was 4 years old when her father lost the race on the ridge against a determined wall of flame....
Environmental groups sue over proposed phosphate mining Two environmental groups have filed suit in federal court to block J.R. Simplot Co. from exploring phosphate deposits in a southeastern Idaho roadless area that includes streams used by the rare Yellowstone cutthroat trout for spawning. The complaint was filed by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Idaho Conservation League June 30 in U.S. District Court in Boise. It seeks to prevent the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management from issuing a permit to the company to drill 25 exploratory holes in the Sage Creek Roadless Area 13 miles northeast of Georgetown near the Idaho-Wyoming border. Last month, the Forest Service found that the fertilizer company's plan was in compliance with all federal laws. The agency rejected an appeal from environmentalists to withhold the exploration permit for the Manning Creek project, which would include building nearly 15,000 feet of temporary road....
Forest official: Southwest managers skirt pesticide policies A regional U.S. Forest Service official contends that he has documents to back up accusations that some managers skirted the agency's policies and environmental laws for spraying pesticides and weed-killing chemicals in the Southwest. The Forest Service has released documents about pesticide projects in New Mexico and Arizona after being sued by Doug Parker, pesticide coordinator and assistant director of forestry and forest health for the Southwestern Region. Parker sought the documents since his supervisor rejected a request he made in December under the Freedom of Information Act. He followed with a lawsuit in April. According to Parker's lawyer, the documents shed light on accusations that the region has a "systemic problem" regarding proper pesticide use....
Editorial: Battle of the Bighorn Over the last six years, a battle to save the endangered bighorn sheep has succeeded beyond the expectations of the state and federal agencies and advocacy groups that launched the project along the eastern Sierra Nevada in California and Nevada. The numbers of this unique species, separate from the desert bighorn in Southern California, have rebounded from about 100 to as many as 350. Now the state Fish and Game Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are considering a regulation that would allow them to trap or kill bighorns, ostensibly in order to save them. It's a classic case of bureaucratic wrongheadedness. The aim is to protect the bighorns from catching fatal diseases, such as pneumonia, from domestic sheep that are allowed to graze in portions of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, home to about 20 of the wild sheep. Incredibly, the U.S. Forest Service still allows about 6,500 domestic sheep to graze on leases covering about 175,000 acres. That's a fraction of what it used to be, but enough to present a danger if the two species mingle. Then the Fish and Game Department would be summoned to trap or kill the bighorns to prevent them from infecting other wild sheep. In summer, the nimble and elusive bighorns rock-hop as high as 14,000 feet in the Sierra. At times, however, they drop lower to graze. That's the danger zone. Summer grazing of domestic sheep in the mountains was mostly phased out over the years as sheep-raising dwindled and recreation use of the forests mushroomed. "Locusts," John Muir called the herds, even though his first trip into the High Sierra was as a sheepherder....
Ag official disagrees with Schweitzer on wildfires Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said Friday he does not share Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer's concerns that there won't be enough National Guard troops or aircraft to help fight summer wildfires in the state this year. Rey, in Missoula to visit with officials from a private air tanker contractor, said he believes the Forest Service will have enough military personnel and aircraft available to help fight summer fires, should they break out. In March, Schweitzer asked the military to return some of the 1,500 National Guard soldiers, along with 10 Guard helicopters, from service overseas, including in Iraq. Schweitzer cited fears of a major summer wildfire season and a lack of personnel to fight the flames. The troops often are called upon to supplement firefighters, and Schweitzer said he feared the Guard members' absence during the fire season could prove to be catastrophic. Rey, who directs U.S. Forest Service policy for the USDA, said the Defense Department has committed two battalions of 1,000 soldiers apiece to firefighting this year and they've undergone fire training and will be available to help....
Column: The Terror of Our Ways Everybody in Kalispell cares about trees. Trees feed the timber industry, help drain the land, attract tourists, and provide habitat for wildlife; and they also catch fire and endanger homes and lives during the annual forest-fire season. Talking about trees in Kalispell means talking about livelihoods and lifestyles, and the Valley's different interest groups are like sticks dangerously rubbing together in its drought-plagued forests. Enter Stokes, radio host and human blowtorch. On environmentalists, Stokes has this to say: "Eradicate 'em. Their message stinks. They're destroying America. And it all came out of the Third Reich. You know, the Third Reich was born out of the environmental community. I don't make it up. It's there." Stokes attends town meetings, holds rallies, and burns green swastikas to protest what he sees as the tyranny of liberals, the U.S. Forest Service, immigrants, the government, and, of course, the people he refers to as "eco-Nazis" and "green Nazis." "John Stokes came to this valley and all of the sudden the people had a way of telling the truth," says one timber worker featured in the film. Clearly, Stokes and his listeners are angry. They're angry at the Forest Service and the more uncompromising environmentalists for not letting loggers thin the forests in a way that will (they think) boost the flagging Montana economy and prevent fires. They're angry about losing their timber-industry jobs. They're angry about watching property values soar as millionaires buy weekend ranches in the Valley....
Earth Day v. Earth Day Gaylord Nelson, a beloved former governor and senator of Wisconsin, died of cardiovascular failure on July 3 at his home in Kensington, Md. Gov. Nelson was best known as the creator of Earth Day, the international environmental festival first held in 1970 ... Not so fast. Most of Nelson's obituaries began this way, but Nelson's claims to have invented Earth Day are actually controversial. A little history is in order. In 1969, a newspaper article about anti-war "teach-ins" on campuses gave him the idea of staging a huge collective teach-in in defence of nature. Hence the first Earth Day -- April 22, 1970. Unless, of course, you count the other Earth Day. Every year, the United Nations observes its own Earth Day on the first day of spring. This Earth Day was devised by a West Coast oddball and pacifist named John McConnell, who proposed the idea at a UN conference in San Francisco in 1969. That city proclaimed its own Earth Day on March 21, 1970, one month before Nelson's....
'Darth Gator' killer in limbo A week after a reptile slaying in Chesterfield County, it remains unclear whether the fisherman who reportedly clubbed it to death will feel the bite of the Endangered Species Act. Max Belle, the angler in question, hasn't even been told by federal game officials if the deceased reptile was indeed on the protected-species list, said his lawyer, David Baugh. "If the government takes this long to determine whether or not it is a protected species, I wonder why they would expect a common, ordinary citizen to make this differentiation," Baugh said Friday. "How is someone supposed to know the difference between a protected, endangered reptile and a threatening, nuisance reptile?" Baugh added....
Column: Outrage over property rights 30 years too late Finally, the outrage. For 30 years across America, local, state and federal governments have been begging, borrowing and stealing trillions of dollars of private property with little or no compensation. Little or no outrage. Any voices raised in protest were drowned out by the cheering of environmentalists, happy their favorite plants and animals would get a free place to live on millions of acres of free land. But in Connecticut, the Supreme Court allows a city to take a few homes ---- even when it pays for them ---- and the anger falls like acid rain. Better now than never. The Connecticut city had its reasons why it took those homes. Cities always do. But for the first 180 years of our republic, the courts really did take property rights seriously. Judges insisted that private property really was private, and that government could only take it under extreme circumstances. And then, of course, it had to pay for it. But for the last 30 years, we've been on a slippery slope of government land grabbing. At the federal level, the Endangered Species Act has outlawed the private use of private land on tens of millions of acres throughout America....
Salmon's future at heart of federal dam war Behold the slab of concrete called Little Goose, ground zero in the salmon wars that are escalating across the Pacific Northwest. Little Goose has turbines for power, locks for river transport, and a Rube Goldberg device for distilling young salmon out of the river, sorting them by size, and hosing them into trucks and barges for passage downriver. This hulking gizmo has become part of the ''environmental baseline" here on the Snake River. At least that is how the Bush administration characterizes Little Goose and 13 other federal dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers. This characterization, though, has stuck in the craw of a federal judge. In his courtroom in Portland, Ore., US District Judge James Redden described the administration's 2004 biological opinion -- it says dams are an ineluctable part of the river's environmental baseline -- as a document written ''more in cynicism than in sincerity."....
Huntsman plugs Uinta Basin role in fuel production A visit to an eastern Utah fuel production company has Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. thinking Utah could play a role in fueling the nation - and Utah's economy. Oil Tech Inc., is producing 24 barrels of premium crude oil daily from oil shale - rocks that contain no oil, despite their name. Company representatives say they're converting the rock to oil at a cost of less than $20 per day. Huntsman toured the facility, in Bonanza just miles from the Utah-Colorado border, Friday and Saturday with senior staff, some lawmakers, federal and local officials as well as company representatives. Oil Tech technical adviser Byron Merrell is optimistic about the prospects. The man-made crude oil extracted from shale, which was once considered a waste product of drilling, can be refined into gasoline, he explains. And the shale can be used for other purposes....
Ranchers dig new grazing rules Strip away the jargon and clutter, and the Bureau of Land Management's new grazing regulations released last month come down to one basic thing - making ranchers feel a little more at home on the public range. By streamlining regulations and requiring more evidence to prove grazing violations, the Bush administration has recast Clinton-era rules. But it hasn't done anything to foster good will with environmentalists. Conservationists have assailed the new regulations for reducing the public's input into grazing decisions and eroding rangeland standards established under Clinton. Still, BLM officials say relations with ranchers had deteriorated to the point that something had to be done....
Oil industry providing workers for BLM office Consultants paid by the oil and gas industry have been volunteering to work for the Bureau of Land Management's Vernal office for the past five months, expediting environmental studies to keep pace with a glut of drilling requests in the region. The arrangement alarms environmental groups, which say it creates a clear conflict of interest and could compromise the work they do. "This is very troubling," said Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "It's akin to the foxes guarding the henhouse. These are public lands and there clearly is a quid pro quo expected here, that there is going to be faster permitting, faster approval rates, and instead they really should be taking their time to make sure they're doing it right." But the industry and BLM say the five consultants are there to help ease the load for the overburdened BLM office, and a series of safeguards are in place to guarantee the work remains objective and corners aren't cut....Gee, I don't remember ranchers being invited in when BLM couldn't complete their NEPA work on grazing permits. Nope, the permits wouldn't have been issued and grazing would have been discontinued if Congress hadn't intervened....
Farmers struggle to survive Equipment breaks down; short growing seasons and hard, cold winters rule in meadows rising toward 7,000 feet elevation and higher; regulations for use of critical public grazing lands continually tighten, and then there are the predators that further reduce already tight profits, if there are any at all. These days, Willis and others working the land and livestock of the state will tell you it takes more than being a farmer to run and keep a farm. Second, even third jobs are typical, and critical to making it today in rural Utah. The 2002 U.S. Department of Agriculture census, the most recent available, found two-thirds of the Beehive State's 17,699 farms lost money. Nationally, 53 percent of the country's 2.12 million farms end the year in the red....
Rancher brings yaks to Cheyenne A thick, shaggy coat protects it from chilly winds and wintry weather. Historically, the native peoples relied on the beast, consuming the meat and using the wool for clothing. They even used its manure for fuel. The females give birth without human assistance, and the herds have their own form of holistic grazing. They don't stay in one place for long. They are strongly herd oriented, and when feeling threatened, adopt a united defensive posture. It may sound like a Wyoming buffalo, but figuratively speaking, it's a world away. The beast in question is the yak, product of Tibet and the soaring Himalayas....
New attitudes, Old West in Arizona standoff Jeff Harris rolled into this mining town in southeastern Arizona in 1981 in a van loaded with chickens. He settled into a house that faces a dusty hill dotted with ocotillo and century plants where cows and horses graze. "My closest neighbor is a cow," said Harris. And he likes it that way. But he and other longtime residents of rural Arizona are finding that throngs of people moving in from across the country often arrive with urban attitudes: They don't want chickens next door. They don't want tractors on the highway. And they certainly don't want their Jacuzzis used as watering troughs....
Dude ranch offers unbroken circle of Western tradition The learning starts over every summer when the cabins that were shuttered for winter re-open, welcoming new and returning guests. At Nine Quarter Circle Ranch in the Taylor Fork Valley, that learning process has spanned three generations without breaking. It began with Howard and Martha Kelsey in 1946 and continues today. Each mid-June, when the ranch re-opens, new wranglers learn the routine and terrain, baby horses are weaned from their mothers and first-time visitors shed their urban ways, giving themselves over to the culture of the Western dude ranch. Like a toy top spinning so fast it appears to be standing still, the seamless cycling lends a sense of timelessness to the ranch, which hosts visitors for one-week stays at a cost of about $200 a day....
Exhumation case date set A date has been set for the Texas Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in an appeal of a decision allowing the exhumation of ranching magnate John G. Kenedy Jr.'s remains to settle a woman's claim that he was her father. Attorneys for Ray Fernandez, Nueces County medical examiner, confirmed Friday that the state's highest court would hear arguments beginning at 9 a.m. on Sept. 28. The court will decide whether a Travis County probate judge had the legal jurisdiction in June 2004 to approve the exhumation of Kenedy's body to find out whether Kenedy fathered 79-year-old Ann Fernandez, who is Ray Fernandez's mother. Ann Fernandez is the daughter of Kenedy's former housekeeper, Maria Rowland Goates. Kenedy and his wife, Elena, had no children. For years, it has been thought that Kenedy was sterile after battling a severe case of mumps as a young man....
Cantankerous cowman gave montanans courage Boyd Charter had a straightforward value system. It went like this: You keep your word. You don't hurt other living things for sport or play or through meanness. You do what you can to help keep the earth and its inhabitants alive and happy. In these times of people pushing "new and better" things to acquire and do, Boyd's values too often are equated with gullibility and stupidity, rather than the simplicity of truth. When coal companies began sending representatives to eastern Montana in the early '70's to negotiate the buying-up of ranchers' land for strip mining of coal, they read Boyd wrong. He used to tell of one encounter he and his wife Anne had with an acquisitive coal company representative who assumed that because Montana ranchers are hospitable to strangers, they are also ignorant and malleable. "This fella didn't know that we had already sent some Montana ranchers down to Appalachia to find out from the people down there how the coal boys operated to weasel a person's land out from under him," Boyd said. "So we knew all their tricks....
Celebrating National Day of the American Cowboy July 23 is the National Day of the American Cowboy, as proclaimed by the United States Senate. Communities and organizations are being encouraged to conduct ceremonies and activities as part of a national celebration. Being a cowboy has multiple connotations, but in general, cowboys are perceived in a positive light. Many Farm Bureau members prefer to be called cowboys although city slickers would call them cattlemen or ranchers. The positives of being a cowboy are included in the resolution passed by the Senate and introduced by Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyoming), with several western state co-sponsors....
Chasing wild horses and roping bears, cowboy legend dies at 88 Living a piece of the American dream came naturally to Joseph Parrott. The hard work of a professional cowboy was something he loved and shared with his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He made them work hard to have fun. Said to be one of the last true cowboys, Joseph F. Parrott died July 4. He was 88. "He and two friends were out riding and moving cows one day when a bear came up on them, so they team roped him," said daughter Elora Harmon with a chuckle. "They said it was a male bear when he came and when he left it was a steer bear." Parrott's traditional beliefs of if you shake a man's hand on a deal, it was as good as done and doing a job the right way instead of the easy way left deep impressions on his children and grandchildren. "If you ever got in trouble you just had to look over your shoulder and he'd be there," said Harmon, falling silent. "You never had to worry." Harmon said a lot of what his grandfather shared with him shaped who he is today and as soon as his own son was able he was sent to the cow camp to get a taste of the traditional Old West....
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The new sodbusters Technology and government subsidies have spawned a new era of sodbusting in central South Dakota, pitting struggling farmers against the state's signature ecosystem and the nation's most productive duck habitat. Crop breeding and better machinery have helped make plowing virgin prairie more feasible in a region known as the Missouri Coteau. South Dakota, at the coteau's southern tip, is "ground zero for this grassland loss," according to a researcher from Ducks Unlimited, a conservation and hunting group that fears the destruction could drain much of the life from this indispensible place. Using satellite photographs of thousands of tracts blanketing the coteau, researcher Scott Stephens of Bismarck, N.D., and others have documented the loss of 88 square miles of native grassland in central South Dakota since 1984 - 10 percent of the area's remaining acreage. The trend appears to be accelerating, and farmers and officials say government subsidies and new technology are responsible....
Rancher Loses His Water Rights Case: Nebraska's High Court Rules That the State Has No Duty to Protect Surface Streams Against Depletion For the second week in a row, the Nebraska Supreme Court said Friday it is not the state's duty to protect the rights of people who own rights to water in streams and rivers from those who may deplete the flows by pumping water from the ground. "It's a dark day for rivers and streams in Nebraska,'' said attorney Thomas Oliver of Bridgeport, who represented the Spear T Ranch in its lawsuit against the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources. Rancher Rex Nielsen of Gering filed the case against the state after water in Pumpkin Creek -- which he used for crops and livestock -- disappeared. He blamed groundwater users for sucking the stream dry and asked the state to protect his property right. David Cookson, special counsel to Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, said he is pleased the legal fight is over. "The court in this decision sent a strong message that we need to work together under LB 962 (the state's year-old water law) for the integrated management of groundwater and surface-water use,'' he said. The case was the latest skirmish in a legal battle pitting surface-water users against groundwater users....
Mobilizing the middle and plowing ahead The Quivira Coalition, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, began as an alliance between two environmentalists and a rancher; in the last eight years, it has snowballed into an environmental force to be reckoned with, and is as difficult to squeeze into easy definitions and categories as its name. The basic philosophy of the group is that the best thing for environmentalists, ranchers, and the environment itself is to stop fighting long enough to see the ranching issue in a new way. Hard-core environmentalists want to stop ranching altogether; hard-core ranchers want to keep on ranching the way their forefathers have done it for a century. This we know destroys the ecosystem, and eventually their own profits; but putting ranchers out of business often results in the land being resold to developers and turned into condominiums, parking lots or shopping malls, which is the last thing either side wants. Quivira’s task is to try to get both parties to see what they have in common, and work together. Observation and an ever-deepening understanding of grazeland ecosystems can and has led to new ranching methods that are less and less harmful, and that even help heal the environment from the ranching wounds of the past....
Montana water standards may limit Wyo CBM Montana regulators are setting water quality degradation limits that may seriously stunt the lucrative yet largely untapped coal-bed methane gas resource in northeast Wyoming. Gov. Dave Freudenthal said recently the two states are at loggerheads about how far Wyoming can degrade water quality in the Tongue, Powder and other rivers that flow from Wyoming's coal-bed methane gas fields into southeast Montana. Wyoming regulators believe they can meet Montana's "numeric standards" at the border, but Montana officials say that would leave no wriggle room for coal-bed methane water discharges on their side of the border. Montana proposes a 50/50 split of the capacity for additional electrical conductivity and sodium adsorption ratio. Wyoming regulators believe they should be allowed to go beyond 50 percent at least until Montana begins developing its own coal-bed methane gas resources in earnest....
Split-estate law raises legal issues Oil and gas developers worry that a new state law covering development on split estates will require them to post two separate bonds on some tracts. Previously, developers needed to post one bond when drilling for minerals owned by the federal government. The new state law will require a bond when developers and landowners can't agree on terms before drilling begins, said Don Likwartz, director of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, possibly duplicating bonds already posted with the Bureau of Land Management. Split estates - where one party owns the surface land and another party owns the mineral rights below that land - are common in parts of Wyoming and the West. Rick Robitaille, public affairs manager of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., said having to post two bonds for the same piece of land would increase production costs....
Wolf plan will likely wait at least two years Wolves will come to Oregon, like it or not. But a state law spelling out what ranchers can do to protect their livestock from wolves — an endangered species — will probably have to wait at least two years. Legislators have been unable to agree on a bill that was intended to make it easier for ranchers to kill wolves that were attacking livestock. Because wolves are protected under the state and federal Endangered Species acts, under current law ranchers would have to contact federal authorities if their livestock is attacked, then wait for an agent to determine if wolves were responsible and whether to harass or kill those involved. A bill and amendments that were considered by a House committee would have connected Oregon's classification of wolves to the federal government's. So if the federal government relaxed classification of wolves to protected status instead of endangered, farmers would be able to kill wolves caught killing their livestock....
Forest Service sets sights on unmanned aircraft Federal scientists have tested them over Mount St. Helens. The Department of Homeland Security has used them to inspect the Alaskan oil pipeline. The Coast Guard wants to use them for maritime enforcement and the Border Patrol to guard the U.S. border with Mexico. Now the U.S. Forest Service is considering using unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, to help them better fight the forest fires that burn every summer across millions of acres in the West. This week the Forest Service will test three small UAVs at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility in San Jose. Next summer the Forest Service and NASA will test-fly an Altair UAV, the civilian version of the military Predator UAV used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current plan is to fly the Altair continuously for 24 hours over the western United States to map forest fires....
Lake Tahoe bears are fussy about fish Lake Tahoe's black bears love trout and hate salmon. Bear watchers aren't sure why. As the Nevada Department of Wildlife harvested eggs from rainbow trout spawning from Marlette Lake near northeastern Lake Tahoe this spring, it again had to put up about 30 yards of solar-powered electrical fence to keep black bears from the fish. Without the fence, originally designed to shock cattle, the bears descend on a 15-yard section of a stream flowing into Marlette Lake and gorge themselves on hundreds of trout kept there until wildlife department workers get the trout's eggs or sperm for state hatcheries, said Dave Sanger, a fisheries staff biologist....
Emotions are fresh as 1953 forest tragedy memorialized On a dusty, winding, narrow road that hugs a ridge deep behind the golden hills above the Sacramento Valley, a bus chugs its way to a waiting memorial. The sky is gray and cloudy. Inside the bus are a dozen people, some there to pay respect to the memories of their fathers who perished across the canyon 52 years ago. One of those aboard is Ruth Rowe, the daughter of Hobard Stanley Whitehouse. Rowe was 4 years old when her father lost the race on the ridge against a determined wall of flame....
Environmental groups sue over proposed phosphate mining Two environmental groups have filed suit in federal court to block J.R. Simplot Co. from exploring phosphate deposits in a southeastern Idaho roadless area that includes streams used by the rare Yellowstone cutthroat trout for spawning. The complaint was filed by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Idaho Conservation League June 30 in U.S. District Court in Boise. It seeks to prevent the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management from issuing a permit to the company to drill 25 exploratory holes in the Sage Creek Roadless Area 13 miles northeast of Georgetown near the Idaho-Wyoming border. Last month, the Forest Service found that the fertilizer company's plan was in compliance with all federal laws. The agency rejected an appeal from environmentalists to withhold the exploration permit for the Manning Creek project, which would include building nearly 15,000 feet of temporary road....
Forest official: Southwest managers skirt pesticide policies A regional U.S. Forest Service official contends that he has documents to back up accusations that some managers skirted the agency's policies and environmental laws for spraying pesticides and weed-killing chemicals in the Southwest. The Forest Service has released documents about pesticide projects in New Mexico and Arizona after being sued by Doug Parker, pesticide coordinator and assistant director of forestry and forest health for the Southwestern Region. Parker sought the documents since his supervisor rejected a request he made in December under the Freedom of Information Act. He followed with a lawsuit in April. According to Parker's lawyer, the documents shed light on accusations that the region has a "systemic problem" regarding proper pesticide use....
Editorial: Battle of the Bighorn Over the last six years, a battle to save the endangered bighorn sheep has succeeded beyond the expectations of the state and federal agencies and advocacy groups that launched the project along the eastern Sierra Nevada in California and Nevada. The numbers of this unique species, separate from the desert bighorn in Southern California, have rebounded from about 100 to as many as 350. Now the state Fish and Game Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are considering a regulation that would allow them to trap or kill bighorns, ostensibly in order to save them. It's a classic case of bureaucratic wrongheadedness. The aim is to protect the bighorns from catching fatal diseases, such as pneumonia, from domestic sheep that are allowed to graze in portions of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, home to about 20 of the wild sheep. Incredibly, the U.S. Forest Service still allows about 6,500 domestic sheep to graze on leases covering about 175,000 acres. That's a fraction of what it used to be, but enough to present a danger if the two species mingle. Then the Fish and Game Department would be summoned to trap or kill the bighorns to prevent them from infecting other wild sheep. In summer, the nimble and elusive bighorns rock-hop as high as 14,000 feet in the Sierra. At times, however, they drop lower to graze. That's the danger zone. Summer grazing of domestic sheep in the mountains was mostly phased out over the years as sheep-raising dwindled and recreation use of the forests mushroomed. "Locusts," John Muir called the herds, even though his first trip into the High Sierra was as a sheepherder....
Ag official disagrees with Schweitzer on wildfires Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said Friday he does not share Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer's concerns that there won't be enough National Guard troops or aircraft to help fight summer wildfires in the state this year. Rey, in Missoula to visit with officials from a private air tanker contractor, said he believes the Forest Service will have enough military personnel and aircraft available to help fight summer fires, should they break out. In March, Schweitzer asked the military to return some of the 1,500 National Guard soldiers, along with 10 Guard helicopters, from service overseas, including in Iraq. Schweitzer cited fears of a major summer wildfire season and a lack of personnel to fight the flames. The troops often are called upon to supplement firefighters, and Schweitzer said he feared the Guard members' absence during the fire season could prove to be catastrophic. Rey, who directs U.S. Forest Service policy for the USDA, said the Defense Department has committed two battalions of 1,000 soldiers apiece to firefighting this year and they've undergone fire training and will be available to help....
Column: The Terror of Our Ways Everybody in Kalispell cares about trees. Trees feed the timber industry, help drain the land, attract tourists, and provide habitat for wildlife; and they also catch fire and endanger homes and lives during the annual forest-fire season. Talking about trees in Kalispell means talking about livelihoods and lifestyles, and the Valley's different interest groups are like sticks dangerously rubbing together in its drought-plagued forests. Enter Stokes, radio host and human blowtorch. On environmentalists, Stokes has this to say: "Eradicate 'em. Their message stinks. They're destroying America. And it all came out of the Third Reich. You know, the Third Reich was born out of the environmental community. I don't make it up. It's there." Stokes attends town meetings, holds rallies, and burns green swastikas to protest what he sees as the tyranny of liberals, the U.S. Forest Service, immigrants, the government, and, of course, the people he refers to as "eco-Nazis" and "green Nazis." "John Stokes came to this valley and all of the sudden the people had a way of telling the truth," says one timber worker featured in the film. Clearly, Stokes and his listeners are angry. They're angry at the Forest Service and the more uncompromising environmentalists for not letting loggers thin the forests in a way that will (they think) boost the flagging Montana economy and prevent fires. They're angry about losing their timber-industry jobs. They're angry about watching property values soar as millionaires buy weekend ranches in the Valley....
Earth Day v. Earth Day Gaylord Nelson, a beloved former governor and senator of Wisconsin, died of cardiovascular failure on July 3 at his home in Kensington, Md. Gov. Nelson was best known as the creator of Earth Day, the international environmental festival first held in 1970 ... Not so fast. Most of Nelson's obituaries began this way, but Nelson's claims to have invented Earth Day are actually controversial. A little history is in order. In 1969, a newspaper article about anti-war "teach-ins" on campuses gave him the idea of staging a huge collective teach-in in defence of nature. Hence the first Earth Day -- April 22, 1970. Unless, of course, you count the other Earth Day. Every year, the United Nations observes its own Earth Day on the first day of spring. This Earth Day was devised by a West Coast oddball and pacifist named John McConnell, who proposed the idea at a UN conference in San Francisco in 1969. That city proclaimed its own Earth Day on March 21, 1970, one month before Nelson's....
'Darth Gator' killer in limbo A week after a reptile slaying in Chesterfield County, it remains unclear whether the fisherman who reportedly clubbed it to death will feel the bite of the Endangered Species Act. Max Belle, the angler in question, hasn't even been told by federal game officials if the deceased reptile was indeed on the protected-species list, said his lawyer, David Baugh. "If the government takes this long to determine whether or not it is a protected species, I wonder why they would expect a common, ordinary citizen to make this differentiation," Baugh said Friday. "How is someone supposed to know the difference between a protected, endangered reptile and a threatening, nuisance reptile?" Baugh added....
Column: Outrage over property rights 30 years too late Finally, the outrage. For 30 years across America, local, state and federal governments have been begging, borrowing and stealing trillions of dollars of private property with little or no compensation. Little or no outrage. Any voices raised in protest were drowned out by the cheering of environmentalists, happy their favorite plants and animals would get a free place to live on millions of acres of free land. But in Connecticut, the Supreme Court allows a city to take a few homes ---- even when it pays for them ---- and the anger falls like acid rain. Better now than never. The Connecticut city had its reasons why it took those homes. Cities always do. But for the first 180 years of our republic, the courts really did take property rights seriously. Judges insisted that private property really was private, and that government could only take it under extreme circumstances. And then, of course, it had to pay for it. But for the last 30 years, we've been on a slippery slope of government land grabbing. At the federal level, the Endangered Species Act has outlawed the private use of private land on tens of millions of acres throughout America....
Salmon's future at heart of federal dam war Behold the slab of concrete called Little Goose, ground zero in the salmon wars that are escalating across the Pacific Northwest. Little Goose has turbines for power, locks for river transport, and a Rube Goldberg device for distilling young salmon out of the river, sorting them by size, and hosing them into trucks and barges for passage downriver. This hulking gizmo has become part of the ''environmental baseline" here on the Snake River. At least that is how the Bush administration characterizes Little Goose and 13 other federal dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers. This characterization, though, has stuck in the craw of a federal judge. In his courtroom in Portland, Ore., US District Judge James Redden described the administration's 2004 biological opinion -- it says dams are an ineluctable part of the river's environmental baseline -- as a document written ''more in cynicism than in sincerity."....
Huntsman plugs Uinta Basin role in fuel production A visit to an eastern Utah fuel production company has Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. thinking Utah could play a role in fueling the nation - and Utah's economy. Oil Tech Inc., is producing 24 barrels of premium crude oil daily from oil shale - rocks that contain no oil, despite their name. Company representatives say they're converting the rock to oil at a cost of less than $20 per day. Huntsman toured the facility, in Bonanza just miles from the Utah-Colorado border, Friday and Saturday with senior staff, some lawmakers, federal and local officials as well as company representatives. Oil Tech technical adviser Byron Merrell is optimistic about the prospects. The man-made crude oil extracted from shale, which was once considered a waste product of drilling, can be refined into gasoline, he explains. And the shale can be used for other purposes....
Ranchers dig new grazing rules Strip away the jargon and clutter, and the Bureau of Land Management's new grazing regulations released last month come down to one basic thing - making ranchers feel a little more at home on the public range. By streamlining regulations and requiring more evidence to prove grazing violations, the Bush administration has recast Clinton-era rules. But it hasn't done anything to foster good will with environmentalists. Conservationists have assailed the new regulations for reducing the public's input into grazing decisions and eroding rangeland standards established under Clinton. Still, BLM officials say relations with ranchers had deteriorated to the point that something had to be done....
Oil industry providing workers for BLM office Consultants paid by the oil and gas industry have been volunteering to work for the Bureau of Land Management's Vernal office for the past five months, expediting environmental studies to keep pace with a glut of drilling requests in the region. The arrangement alarms environmental groups, which say it creates a clear conflict of interest and could compromise the work they do. "This is very troubling," said Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "It's akin to the foxes guarding the henhouse. These are public lands and there clearly is a quid pro quo expected here, that there is going to be faster permitting, faster approval rates, and instead they really should be taking their time to make sure they're doing it right." But the industry and BLM say the five consultants are there to help ease the load for the overburdened BLM office, and a series of safeguards are in place to guarantee the work remains objective and corners aren't cut....Gee, I don't remember ranchers being invited in when BLM couldn't complete their NEPA work on grazing permits. Nope, the permits wouldn't have been issued and grazing would have been discontinued if Congress hadn't intervened....
Farmers struggle to survive Equipment breaks down; short growing seasons and hard, cold winters rule in meadows rising toward 7,000 feet elevation and higher; regulations for use of critical public grazing lands continually tighten, and then there are the predators that further reduce already tight profits, if there are any at all. These days, Willis and others working the land and livestock of the state will tell you it takes more than being a farmer to run and keep a farm. Second, even third jobs are typical, and critical to making it today in rural Utah. The 2002 U.S. Department of Agriculture census, the most recent available, found two-thirds of the Beehive State's 17,699 farms lost money. Nationally, 53 percent of the country's 2.12 million farms end the year in the red....
Rancher brings yaks to Cheyenne A thick, shaggy coat protects it from chilly winds and wintry weather. Historically, the native peoples relied on the beast, consuming the meat and using the wool for clothing. They even used its manure for fuel. The females give birth without human assistance, and the herds have their own form of holistic grazing. They don't stay in one place for long. They are strongly herd oriented, and when feeling threatened, adopt a united defensive posture. It may sound like a Wyoming buffalo, but figuratively speaking, it's a world away. The beast in question is the yak, product of Tibet and the soaring Himalayas....
New attitudes, Old West in Arizona standoff Jeff Harris rolled into this mining town in southeastern Arizona in 1981 in a van loaded with chickens. He settled into a house that faces a dusty hill dotted with ocotillo and century plants where cows and horses graze. "My closest neighbor is a cow," said Harris. And he likes it that way. But he and other longtime residents of rural Arizona are finding that throngs of people moving in from across the country often arrive with urban attitudes: They don't want chickens next door. They don't want tractors on the highway. And they certainly don't want their Jacuzzis used as watering troughs....
Dude ranch offers unbroken circle of Western tradition The learning starts over every summer when the cabins that were shuttered for winter re-open, welcoming new and returning guests. At Nine Quarter Circle Ranch in the Taylor Fork Valley, that learning process has spanned three generations without breaking. It began with Howard and Martha Kelsey in 1946 and continues today. Each mid-June, when the ranch re-opens, new wranglers learn the routine and terrain, baby horses are weaned from their mothers and first-time visitors shed their urban ways, giving themselves over to the culture of the Western dude ranch. Like a toy top spinning so fast it appears to be standing still, the seamless cycling lends a sense of timelessness to the ranch, which hosts visitors for one-week stays at a cost of about $200 a day....
Exhumation case date set A date has been set for the Texas Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in an appeal of a decision allowing the exhumation of ranching magnate John G. Kenedy Jr.'s remains to settle a woman's claim that he was her father. Attorneys for Ray Fernandez, Nueces County medical examiner, confirmed Friday that the state's highest court would hear arguments beginning at 9 a.m. on Sept. 28. The court will decide whether a Travis County probate judge had the legal jurisdiction in June 2004 to approve the exhumation of Kenedy's body to find out whether Kenedy fathered 79-year-old Ann Fernandez, who is Ray Fernandez's mother. Ann Fernandez is the daughter of Kenedy's former housekeeper, Maria Rowland Goates. Kenedy and his wife, Elena, had no children. For years, it has been thought that Kenedy was sterile after battling a severe case of mumps as a young man....
Cantankerous cowman gave montanans courage Boyd Charter had a straightforward value system. It went like this: You keep your word. You don't hurt other living things for sport or play or through meanness. You do what you can to help keep the earth and its inhabitants alive and happy. In these times of people pushing "new and better" things to acquire and do, Boyd's values too often are equated with gullibility and stupidity, rather than the simplicity of truth. When coal companies began sending representatives to eastern Montana in the early '70's to negotiate the buying-up of ranchers' land for strip mining of coal, they read Boyd wrong. He used to tell of one encounter he and his wife Anne had with an acquisitive coal company representative who assumed that because Montana ranchers are hospitable to strangers, they are also ignorant and malleable. "This fella didn't know that we had already sent some Montana ranchers down to Appalachia to find out from the people down there how the coal boys operated to weasel a person's land out from under him," Boyd said. "So we knew all their tricks....
Celebrating National Day of the American Cowboy July 23 is the National Day of the American Cowboy, as proclaimed by the United States Senate. Communities and organizations are being encouraged to conduct ceremonies and activities as part of a national celebration. Being a cowboy has multiple connotations, but in general, cowboys are perceived in a positive light. Many Farm Bureau members prefer to be called cowboys although city slickers would call them cattlemen or ranchers. The positives of being a cowboy are included in the resolution passed by the Senate and introduced by Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyoming), with several western state co-sponsors....
Chasing wild horses and roping bears, cowboy legend dies at 88 Living a piece of the American dream came naturally to Joseph Parrott. The hard work of a professional cowboy was something he loved and shared with his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He made them work hard to have fun. Said to be one of the last true cowboys, Joseph F. Parrott died July 4. He was 88. "He and two friends were out riding and moving cows one day when a bear came up on them, so they team roped him," said daughter Elora Harmon with a chuckle. "They said it was a male bear when he came and when he left it was a steer bear." Parrott's traditional beliefs of if you shake a man's hand on a deal, it was as good as done and doing a job the right way instead of the easy way left deep impressions on his children and grandchildren. "If you ever got in trouble you just had to look over your shoulder and he'd be there," said Harmon, falling silent. "You never had to worry." Harmon said a lot of what his grandfather shared with him shaped who he is today and as soon as his own son was able he was sent to the cow camp to get a taste of the traditional Old West....
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Sunday, July 10, 2005
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
A new concept in team roping—the handiCUP division
By Julie Carter
There seems to be an unspoken, in polite company anyway, request for a new division in the world of team roping.
This suggestion came by way of an email dissertation from a female team roper relating the story of her recent return to the roping arena. For those that know me personally, you will understand that I didn’t think up this idea on my own because of a complete lack of need for the plan. It would have just never occurred to me.
For you non-ropers, a handicap roping ranks cowboys according to skill level similar to golfers. In an effort to make it fair for everyone, which is in reality impossible, seconds are taken off the roping times before the last go round to even up the field of roping qualifiers. This concept I need and understand.
It is really a business tactic on the part of the roping producer. The more entries there are the more moolah he earns. This handicap system entices lowered numbered (less skilled-- that would be me) ropers to shell out more entry fee money because it appears the handicap system gives them a pretty good chance of winning. Fat chance.
The author of this newly proposed concept suggests that in addition to the handicap offered for lack of ability, roping producers would do well to offer advantages to female ropers due to an assortment of extra burdens born by the fairer gender.
She called it the HandiCUP Roping.
Guidelines suggested were that there be a second off your time for being female, another second off for each child given birth to and another second off if you are currently nursing one or more child. And last but not least another second off for each cup size the roper is endowed with. Proof is not required but the decision of the judge is final.
She swears she never leaves home without her self-designed roping sports bra that keeps everything where it belongs and nothing swinging but the rope.
Now this is the part I’ll have to take her word for.
She says, “You have no idea how uncomfortable it is leaving the roping box like a banshee, running nine-oh down the arena, screeching around the corner and then whipping around to face causing a tetherball-like feeling midsection. The momentum will often take you right out of the saddle and those ropers really hate having to take the time to scrape you up off the ground.”
She goes on to say that this handiCUP program takes care of quite a few issues including a get-even to all the men that try to compare the pain of child birth with cutting themselves shaving. “Not to mention along with the pain the world expects you to ‘glow’ and then when it’s over they hand you a couple Tylenols.”
Her belief is that with this system she alone is worth a 16 second handiCUP putting her in the last round of the roping with a negative time and making her unbeatable. “Women from all walks of life will start roping and men will actually want to rope with us. Big bust, many kids—No problem. You’ll be the queen of the roping.”
I pass on this idea on to the world of roping with the thought perhaps it could be a good idea. What do I know?
It would have never occurred to me to suggest we as females should get any preferential treatment beyond respect and dignity when competing in a sport that was first invented for men by men.
But then I’ve never had much in the way of handicups to get in the way of my work.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© Julie Carter 2005
What if we abolished all farm subsidies?
by Larry Gabriel
What would happen to the farm economy of South Dakota if all farm subsidies were abolished?
I have heard people say that as many as one-third of our farmers would go broke. No official is predicting that, but some farmers believe it.
Some think it will never happen. Others think it is inevitable. President Bush recently promised that it will happen, if the European Union abolishes farm subsidies.
Only one industrialized nation has tried it. What happened there may be the best indicator of what we could expect.
New Zealand abolished all farm subsidies (except indirect funding for scientific research, which is really more of a subsidy for agricultural schools than farmers) in 1984.
They were more dependent on both agriculture and its subsidies than we are. Agriculture was a larger share of their national economy, and prior to "reform" (as they called it) government subsidies were about 30 percent of the value of production. In the United States, that number is about 22 percent.
The government itself predicted that up to ten percent of the farmers would be put out of business. Massive farm bankruptcies were predicted. The big crisis did not happen.
This is what happened in New Zealand.
• One percent of the farms (mostly those deep in debt) went out of business.
• Farm land values dropped then later came back up.
• Input costs declined.
• Specialty crops and dairy increased.
• Production increased at about six percent annually.
• Agriculture's share of the national economy increased.
• The country's farmers still compete well in international trade.
Some farmers may object to my saying this, but the loss of farm subsidies might not be all bad. The question is: do subsidies cause more harm than good? There are many pros and cons to consider. I don't know all of them. But, I do know one I especially dislike.
I know of a man who farmed a large area in South Dakota and killed all the trees and grassy waterways on his land, while he "farmed the government" for every nickel he could get.
I don't believe he cared about the land, nature or his neighbors. I do believe government subsidies contribute to this type of behavior. Quite often they reward negative behavior while offering no rewards to people who are already doing it right.
Most of us do what's right and are good stewards of the land. We care much more about the land than quick deals or government money.
With or without government subsidies, we will be here caring for it the best we can.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner
===
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A new concept in team roping—the handiCUP division
By Julie Carter
There seems to be an unspoken, in polite company anyway, request for a new division in the world of team roping.
This suggestion came by way of an email dissertation from a female team roper relating the story of her recent return to the roping arena. For those that know me personally, you will understand that I didn’t think up this idea on my own because of a complete lack of need for the plan. It would have just never occurred to me.
For you non-ropers, a handicap roping ranks cowboys according to skill level similar to golfers. In an effort to make it fair for everyone, which is in reality impossible, seconds are taken off the roping times before the last go round to even up the field of roping qualifiers. This concept I need and understand.
It is really a business tactic on the part of the roping producer. The more entries there are the more moolah he earns. This handicap system entices lowered numbered (less skilled-- that would be me) ropers to shell out more entry fee money because it appears the handicap system gives them a pretty good chance of winning. Fat chance.
The author of this newly proposed concept suggests that in addition to the handicap offered for lack of ability, roping producers would do well to offer advantages to female ropers due to an assortment of extra burdens born by the fairer gender.
She called it the HandiCUP Roping.
Guidelines suggested were that there be a second off your time for being female, another second off for each child given birth to and another second off if you are currently nursing one or more child. And last but not least another second off for each cup size the roper is endowed with. Proof is not required but the decision of the judge is final.
She swears she never leaves home without her self-designed roping sports bra that keeps everything where it belongs and nothing swinging but the rope.
Now this is the part I’ll have to take her word for.
She says, “You have no idea how uncomfortable it is leaving the roping box like a banshee, running nine-oh down the arena, screeching around the corner and then whipping around to face causing a tetherball-like feeling midsection. The momentum will often take you right out of the saddle and those ropers really hate having to take the time to scrape you up off the ground.”
She goes on to say that this handiCUP program takes care of quite a few issues including a get-even to all the men that try to compare the pain of child birth with cutting themselves shaving. “Not to mention along with the pain the world expects you to ‘glow’ and then when it’s over they hand you a couple Tylenols.”
Her belief is that with this system she alone is worth a 16 second handiCUP putting her in the last round of the roping with a negative time and making her unbeatable. “Women from all walks of life will start roping and men will actually want to rope with us. Big bust, many kids—No problem. You’ll be the queen of the roping.”
I pass on this idea on to the world of roping with the thought perhaps it could be a good idea. What do I know?
It would have never occurred to me to suggest we as females should get any preferential treatment beyond respect and dignity when competing in a sport that was first invented for men by men.
But then I’ve never had much in the way of handicups to get in the way of my work.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© Julie Carter 2005
What if we abolished all farm subsidies?
by Larry Gabriel
What would happen to the farm economy of South Dakota if all farm subsidies were abolished?
I have heard people say that as many as one-third of our farmers would go broke. No official is predicting that, but some farmers believe it.
Some think it will never happen. Others think it is inevitable. President Bush recently promised that it will happen, if the European Union abolishes farm subsidies.
Only one industrialized nation has tried it. What happened there may be the best indicator of what we could expect.
New Zealand abolished all farm subsidies (except indirect funding for scientific research, which is really more of a subsidy for agricultural schools than farmers) in 1984.
They were more dependent on both agriculture and its subsidies than we are. Agriculture was a larger share of their national economy, and prior to "reform" (as they called it) government subsidies were about 30 percent of the value of production. In the United States, that number is about 22 percent.
The government itself predicted that up to ten percent of the farmers would be put out of business. Massive farm bankruptcies were predicted. The big crisis did not happen.
This is what happened in New Zealand.
• One percent of the farms (mostly those deep in debt) went out of business.
• Farm land values dropped then later came back up.
• Input costs declined.
• Specialty crops and dairy increased.
• Production increased at about six percent annually.
• Agriculture's share of the national economy increased.
• The country's farmers still compete well in international trade.
Some farmers may object to my saying this, but the loss of farm subsidies might not be all bad. The question is: do subsidies cause more harm than good? There are many pros and cons to consider. I don't know all of them. But, I do know one I especially dislike.
I know of a man who farmed a large area in South Dakota and killed all the trees and grassy waterways on his land, while he "farmed the government" for every nickel he could get.
I don't believe he cared about the land, nature or his neighbors. I do believe government subsidies contribute to this type of behavior. Quite often they reward negative behavior while offering no rewards to people who are already doing it right.
Most of us do what's right and are good stewards of the land. We care much more about the land than quick deals or government money.
With or without government subsidies, we will be here caring for it the best we can.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner
===
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
The Royal Scam
No wonder that economists, like me, become very suspicious if scientific bodies publicly espouse one line of thinking while denouncing alternative views. That was the case when London's Royal Society issued a statement last month announcing that the national science academies of the G8 nations and Brazil, China and India, three of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the developing world, had signed a statement on the global response to climate change. The statement stressed that the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action and called on world leaders, including those meeting at the G8 summit this week at Gleneagles, to take a number of specific measures. However, it turns out this statement was not supported by the American and Russian Academies of Science. Fred Singer, president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), reported that Bruce Albert, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences -- whose signature was printed at the bottom of the statement -- confirmed that the Academy "definitely did not approve the Royal Society press release". Albert added that he had sent a letter to Lord Robert May (the drafter of the press release) expressing his dismay at the misleading and political statements made in it. The press release came also as a surprise to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). As Benny Peiser, a well-known British climate skeptic noted: "The Royal Society appears to have pressured its president, Yuri Osipov, into signing a politically motivated document against the expressed stance of its own organization. The RAS had never seen or discussed the text of the Academies' statement. After having done so, the RAS climate scientists have come to the conclusion that the statement of the Academies is 'lacking scientific proof and having contradictions in logic in its many assertions.' Russian scientists still believe that the Kyoto protocol is scientifically flawed....
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The Royal Scam
No wonder that economists, like me, become very suspicious if scientific bodies publicly espouse one line of thinking while denouncing alternative views. That was the case when London's Royal Society issued a statement last month announcing that the national science academies of the G8 nations and Brazil, China and India, three of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the developing world, had signed a statement on the global response to climate change. The statement stressed that the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action and called on world leaders, including those meeting at the G8 summit this week at Gleneagles, to take a number of specific measures. However, it turns out this statement was not supported by the American and Russian Academies of Science. Fred Singer, president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), reported that Bruce Albert, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences -- whose signature was printed at the bottom of the statement -- confirmed that the Academy "definitely did not approve the Royal Society press release". Albert added that he had sent a letter to Lord Robert May (the drafter of the press release) expressing his dismay at the misleading and political statements made in it. The press release came also as a surprise to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). As Benny Peiser, a well-known British climate skeptic noted: "The Royal Society appears to have pressured its president, Yuri Osipov, into signing a politically motivated document against the expressed stance of its own organization. The RAS had never seen or discussed the text of the Academies' statement. After having done so, the RAS climate scientists have come to the conclusion that the statement of the Academies is 'lacking scientific proof and having contradictions in logic in its many assertions.' Russian scientists still believe that the Kyoto protocol is scientifically flawed....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Book Review: The Agony of an American Wilderness
The spotted owl and the virgin forests of the Pacific Northwest are the emblematic symbols of logging conflicts in the United States. These images convey a seemingly simple account of what is at stake: environmentalists protecting untouched landscapes and endangered species on one side, loggers and timber companies fighting to protect their livelihoods and profits on the other. The real center of the controversy has shifted, however, from Washington and Oregon to Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest. In recent years, this area has become a hotbed of environmental activism, lawsuits, and bitter disagreement. The story of how this came to be and what it means for the future of logging in America is the subject of Samuel A. MacDonald’s new book, The Agony of an American Wilderness. A native of Ridgway, PA, a small town bordering the Allegheny National Forest, MacDonald returned to the area on a grant from the Phillips Foundation to report on the developing controversy. Interviewing the people affected by every angle of the argument, he uncovers a story far more complicated than simply “loggers versus environmentalists.” The dispute takes place in the midst of a complex milieu of cultural, political, and economic forces that involves just about everyone in the region. Through his extensive interviews and colorful descriptions of the characters involved, MacDonald sheds light on the motivations and history behind the fight to control the Allegheny and, perhaps, forests throughout the nation. Part of what makes the dispute over the Allegheny so heated is its long tradition of logging. Unlike the Pacific Northwest’s old growth forests, the woods there are young and, to some extent, unnatural. Exploitative clear-cutting exterminated the trees and wildlife that inhabited the area in the nineteenth century, leaving behind a scarred and barren landscape when the Forest Service began buying parcels of land in the 1920s. There was no longer any forest to speak of, which led some at the time to refer to the place as the “Allegheny Brush Heap.” MacDonald recalls that by the time he was growing up, the “brush heap” could be seen only in photos that were unrecognizable as the local landscape to kids of his generation. By then, a carefully managed forest had grown in to replace the desolate ground of decades before. He remembers vibrant forests and streams that were perfect for a young boy’s hunting and fishing outings. This forest is a dream come true for people in the timber industry, too. For them it is not just new, it is new and improved. Unlike the northern hardwoods of beech, hemlock, and white pine that used to populate the region, it is composed primarily of lucrative hardwoods like black cherry that fetch higher values on the market. Black cherry probably only made up about one percent of the trees in the forest one hundred years ago; today it accounts for twenty-five percent. The new forest is so different that a new term, “Allegheny hardwood,” was coined to describe it. By the time the environmental controversy was heating up, wood from the Allegheny was selling at unheard of prices and bringing in significant revenue for the surrounding communities....
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Book Review: The Agony of an American Wilderness
The spotted owl and the virgin forests of the Pacific Northwest are the emblematic symbols of logging conflicts in the United States. These images convey a seemingly simple account of what is at stake: environmentalists protecting untouched landscapes and endangered species on one side, loggers and timber companies fighting to protect their livelihoods and profits on the other. The real center of the controversy has shifted, however, from Washington and Oregon to Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest. In recent years, this area has become a hotbed of environmental activism, lawsuits, and bitter disagreement. The story of how this came to be and what it means for the future of logging in America is the subject of Samuel A. MacDonald’s new book, The Agony of an American Wilderness. A native of Ridgway, PA, a small town bordering the Allegheny National Forest, MacDonald returned to the area on a grant from the Phillips Foundation to report on the developing controversy. Interviewing the people affected by every angle of the argument, he uncovers a story far more complicated than simply “loggers versus environmentalists.” The dispute takes place in the midst of a complex milieu of cultural, political, and economic forces that involves just about everyone in the region. Through his extensive interviews and colorful descriptions of the characters involved, MacDonald sheds light on the motivations and history behind the fight to control the Allegheny and, perhaps, forests throughout the nation. Part of what makes the dispute over the Allegheny so heated is its long tradition of logging. Unlike the Pacific Northwest’s old growth forests, the woods there are young and, to some extent, unnatural. Exploitative clear-cutting exterminated the trees and wildlife that inhabited the area in the nineteenth century, leaving behind a scarred and barren landscape when the Forest Service began buying parcels of land in the 1920s. There was no longer any forest to speak of, which led some at the time to refer to the place as the “Allegheny Brush Heap.” MacDonald recalls that by the time he was growing up, the “brush heap” could be seen only in photos that were unrecognizable as the local landscape to kids of his generation. By then, a carefully managed forest had grown in to replace the desolate ground of decades before. He remembers vibrant forests and streams that were perfect for a young boy’s hunting and fishing outings. This forest is a dream come true for people in the timber industry, too. For them it is not just new, it is new and improved. Unlike the northern hardwoods of beech, hemlock, and white pine that used to populate the region, it is composed primarily of lucrative hardwoods like black cherry that fetch higher values on the market. Black cherry probably only made up about one percent of the trees in the forest one hundred years ago; today it accounts for twenty-five percent. The new forest is so different that a new term, “Allegheny hardwood,” was coined to describe it. By the time the environmental controversy was heating up, wood from the Allegheny was selling at unheard of prices and bringing in significant revenue for the surrounding communities....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Can Selfishness Save the Environment?
At the center of all environmentalism lies a problem: whether to appeal to the heart or to the head--whether to urge people to make sacrifices in behalf of the planet or to accept that they will not, and instead rig the economic choices so that they find it rational to be environmentalist. It is a problem that most activists in the environmental movement barely pause to recognize. Good environmental practice is compatible with growth, they insist, so it is rational as well as moral. Yet if this were so, good environmental practice would pay for itself, and there would be no need to pass laws to deter polluters or regulate emissions. A country or a firm that cut corners on pollution control would have no cost advantage over its rivals. Those who do recognize this problem often conclude that their appeals should not be made to self-interest but rather should be couched in terms of sacrifice, selflessness, or, increasingly, moral shame. We believe they are wrong. Our evidence comes from a surprising convergence of ideas in two disciplines that are normally on very different tracks: economics and biology. It is a convergence of which most economists and biologists are still ignorant, but a few have begun to notice. "I can talk to evolutionary biologists," says Paul Romer, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, in Toronto, "because, like me, they think individuals are important. Sociologists still talk more of the action of classes rather than individuals." Gary Becker, who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year, has been reading biological treatises for years; Paul Samuelson, who won it more than twenty years ago, has published several papers recently applying economic principles to biological problems. And biologists such as John Maynard Smith and William Hamilton have been raiding economics for an equally long time. Not that all economists and biologists agree--that would be impossible. But there are emerging orthodoxies in both disciplines that are strikingly parallel....
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Can Selfishness Save the Environment?
At the center of all environmentalism lies a problem: whether to appeal to the heart or to the head--whether to urge people to make sacrifices in behalf of the planet or to accept that they will not, and instead rig the economic choices so that they find it rational to be environmentalist. It is a problem that most activists in the environmental movement barely pause to recognize. Good environmental practice is compatible with growth, they insist, so it is rational as well as moral. Yet if this were so, good environmental practice would pay for itself, and there would be no need to pass laws to deter polluters or regulate emissions. A country or a firm that cut corners on pollution control would have no cost advantage over its rivals. Those who do recognize this problem often conclude that their appeals should not be made to self-interest but rather should be couched in terms of sacrifice, selflessness, or, increasingly, moral shame. We believe they are wrong. Our evidence comes from a surprising convergence of ideas in two disciplines that are normally on very different tracks: economics and biology. It is a convergence of which most economists and biologists are still ignorant, but a few have begun to notice. "I can talk to evolutionary biologists," says Paul Romer, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, in Toronto, "because, like me, they think individuals are important. Sociologists still talk more of the action of classes rather than individuals." Gary Becker, who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year, has been reading biological treatises for years; Paul Samuelson, who won it more than twenty years ago, has published several papers recently applying economic principles to biological problems. And biologists such as John Maynard Smith and William Hamilton have been raiding economics for an equally long time. Not that all economists and biologists agree--that would be impossible. But there are emerging orthodoxies in both disciplines that are strikingly parallel....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Corn Better as Food Than as Fuel
Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study. "There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. "These strategies are not sustainable." Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76)....
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Corn Better as Food Than as Fuel
Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study. "There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. "These strategies are not sustainable." Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76)....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
PETA's Puppy Killers May Face Additional Charges
A Hampton Roads, Virginia television station is reporting that "North Carolina officials may consider more charges" against two People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) employees who currently face 31 counts each of felony animal cruelty. Just weeks after we exposed the skeletons in PETA's closet -- that it has killed more than 12,400 animals at its headquarters -- police arrested the PETA workers for tossing animal corpses in a dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Ahoskie, North Carolina. Now, WAVY-10 reports, police are "trying to figure out if the animals in the case were euthanized. If so, it could mean more problems for PETA." The station noted that if the cause of death is euthanasia, "then two PETA employees have a problem because according to [Ahoskie police detective Jeremy] Roberts, 'they were basically practicing veterinary medicine without a license,' which is against North Carolina state law." The evidence suggests euthanasia was indeed the cause of the animals' deaths. WAVY-10 reports, "PETA has been very open about its work in North Carolina. Its programs include euthanizing animals it considers to be unadoptable." However, Ahoskie veterinarian Patrick Proctor called at least two of the animals "very adoptable" kittens....
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PETA's Puppy Killers May Face Additional Charges
A Hampton Roads, Virginia television station is reporting that "North Carolina officials may consider more charges" against two People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) employees who currently face 31 counts each of felony animal cruelty. Just weeks after we exposed the skeletons in PETA's closet -- that it has killed more than 12,400 animals at its headquarters -- police arrested the PETA workers for tossing animal corpses in a dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Ahoskie, North Carolina. Now, WAVY-10 reports, police are "trying to figure out if the animals in the case were euthanized. If so, it could mean more problems for PETA." The station noted that if the cause of death is euthanasia, "then two PETA employees have a problem because according to [Ahoskie police detective Jeremy] Roberts, 'they were basically practicing veterinary medicine without a license,' which is against North Carolina state law." The evidence suggests euthanasia was indeed the cause of the animals' deaths. WAVY-10 reports, "PETA has been very open about its work in North Carolina. Its programs include euthanizing animals it considers to be unadoptable." However, Ahoskie veterinarian Patrick Proctor called at least two of the animals "very adoptable" kittens....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
We Are Not We Running Out of Oil
Every time oil prices rise for an extended period, the news media issue dire warnings that a crisis is upon us – it’s not! Many factors are contributing to the currently high gas prices: limited refining capacity, political restrictions on development of new domestic sources of oil, reduced supply from several oil exporting countries due to political conflicts, limited supplies due to the actions of the oil cartel, OPEC, and finally, increased demand for oil in China. Dwindling supplies of oil is not a factor in the current price at the pump. New technologies continually increase the amount of recoverable oil, and market prices — which signal scarcity — regularly encourage new exploration and development. The history of the petroleum industry is one of predictions of near term depletion, followed by the discovery of new oil fields and the development of technologies for recovering additional supplies. Before the first U.S. oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, petroleum supplies were limited to crude oil that oozed to the surface. In 1855, an advertisement for Kier’s Rock Oil advised consumers to “hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature’s laboratory.” Indeed, seven oil shortage scares occurred before 1950....
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Permalink 0 comments
We Are Not We Running Out of Oil
Every time oil prices rise for an extended period, the news media issue dire warnings that a crisis is upon us – it’s not! Many factors are contributing to the currently high gas prices: limited refining capacity, political restrictions on development of new domestic sources of oil, reduced supply from several oil exporting countries due to political conflicts, limited supplies due to the actions of the oil cartel, OPEC, and finally, increased demand for oil in China. Dwindling supplies of oil is not a factor in the current price at the pump. New technologies continually increase the amount of recoverable oil, and market prices — which signal scarcity — regularly encourage new exploration and development. The history of the petroleum industry is one of predictions of near term depletion, followed by the discovery of new oil fields and the development of technologies for recovering additional supplies. Before the first U.S. oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, petroleum supplies were limited to crude oil that oozed to the surface. In 1855, an advertisement for Kier’s Rock Oil advised consumers to “hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature’s laboratory.” Indeed, seven oil shortage scares occurred before 1950....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
USDA Rule Threatens Small Dairies
A rule change proposed by the USDA threatens to destroy the precious few “producer-handler” dairy farms left in the United States and leave a sour taste in the mouth of milk consumers everywhere. Under the new rule, dairies that produce more than 3 million pounds of milk per month would no longer be exempted from pricing and pooling provisions that require milk producers to sell raw milk into regional pools. The federal government sets the sale price based on demand in the Pacific Northwest, Arizona, and Nevada. The farms are then forced to buy their milk back from the pool at a higher price. The new rule would thus force smaller independent processors that control every aspect of milk production—from the grass to the glass, as they put it—to pay millions of dollars a year into the pools to subsidize other producers. Although the rule change is directed at farmers in the Pacific Northwest and Arizona-Las Vegas areas, it would set a national precedent. The ultimate outcome would be further consolidation in the industry, higher prices, and less consumer choice. The fight over the proposed regulation pits three small independent farms against the biggest players in the dairy industry....
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USDA Rule Threatens Small Dairies
A rule change proposed by the USDA threatens to destroy the precious few “producer-handler” dairy farms left in the United States and leave a sour taste in the mouth of milk consumers everywhere. Under the new rule, dairies that produce more than 3 million pounds of milk per month would no longer be exempted from pricing and pooling provisions that require milk producers to sell raw milk into regional pools. The federal government sets the sale price based on demand in the Pacific Northwest, Arizona, and Nevada. The farms are then forced to buy their milk back from the pool at a higher price. The new rule would thus force smaller independent processors that control every aspect of milk production—from the grass to the glass, as they put it—to pay millions of dollars a year into the pools to subsidize other producers. Although the rule change is directed at farmers in the Pacific Northwest and Arizona-Las Vegas areas, it would set a national precedent. The ultimate outcome would be further consolidation in the industry, higher prices, and less consumer choice. The fight over the proposed regulation pits three small independent farms against the biggest players in the dairy industry....
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