The Westerner

From: Keeler Ranch
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 2:44 PM

Jaguar Conservation Team meeting - 6/29/06

Just a brief update on the Jaguar Conservation Team meeting in Douglas yesterday. The good news is we were able to rap up the meeting in just one day. The bad news is we accomplished very little.

As an attendee at every Team meeting, with the exception to one, since the Team’s inception in 1997, nothing surprises me any more. I knew allowing the Soil and Water Conservation Districts voting rights would be a hot issue.

Terry Johnson,AZ Game and Fish Department got out of making any decisions on this matter by telling the Team the decision would be made by the two state wildlife agency directors. In New Mexico that would be Bruce Thompson, in Arizona - Duane Shroufe. In all the time I’ve been attending the meetings, I’ve never seen Terry fail to have the authority to make a decision. Obviously, he’s trying to pass any political fallout regarding this decision on to his superiors.

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Terry J. presided over the meeting. The morning was spent going through the agenda. I’ll touch on some of the important issues:

Hidalgo County and the White Water Draw NRCD applied for and were granted signatory status under the old Memorandum of Agreement (MOA).

Draft Summary Notes: We were given copies of the draft summary notes from the April 27-28 JAGCT meeting in Lordsburg. However, they are so disjointed and vague, it makes commenting on them very difficult.

There were several motions passed, including one that allowed the Soil and Water Conservation Districts to become voting members, and another that would have minimized the priority area for jaguar conservation activities to 3 counties in Arizona and Hidalgo County in New Mexico. However, these motions are vaguely worded in the draft summary notes. It was brought to Terry Johnson’s attention that the signators of the old MOA had voted to allow Soil and Water Conservation Districts signatory status by acclimation in the April Team meeting. Hopefully this will be duly noted in the upcoming summary notes.

I would suggest we contact the AZ Game and Fish and ask the draft notes from the Lordsburg meeting be rewritten before anyone tries to comment or suggest changes. I would also encourage everyone to ask the motions be fully written…. Since the meetings are not taped and we have nothing to refer to except the summary notes, we need to be able to know what AZ G&F actually recorded.

Comments on the Draft Summary Notes are due by July 14th and should be e-mailed to Bill Van Pelt, BVanpelt@azgfd.com or Terry Johnson TJohnson@azgfd.com AZ Game and Fish Department.

Update on sightings: There have been no new sightings of jaguar in New Mexico since the last meeting. There were three “black” cat sightings that have been classified as Class III sightings in Arizona. Class III sightings are the lowest level of classification - indicating the sightings were not jaguars.

Kill activities: Jack Childs reported there had been no kills by jaguars (I might add, in 9 years there have never been any kills reported). However, they were able to document, through the trip cameras, a jaguar (Macho B) feeding on a dead cow in Arizona. The cow was from Mexico and “trespassing” on the American side of the border.

Coordination with Mexico: Bill VanPelt discussed the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s participation in the Trilateral Committee and the resolution that was passed to continue the United States’ collaborative work with Mexico. He also told everyone that Mexico had declared 2005 the year of the jaguar and will be developing a conservation plan for jaguars in Mexico to be completed by the end of 2006.

Memorandum of Agreement: There was a great deal of discussion on the new Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). Here are some of the concerns brought forth:

· The text and intent has been significantly changed from the old MOA

· The primary emphasis area for conservation action has been redefined to include Pima, Santa Cruz, Graham, Greenlee, and Cochise counties in Arizona and Hidalgo, Grant and Catron counties, in New Mexico.

· Arizona Game and Fish Department and New Mexico Department of Game and Fish are now the “Lead Agencies”.

· All other signatories on the MOA are called “Cooperators”.

· Soil and Water Conservation Districts can “participate” through an umbrella agreement with the each state with one vote per state, but individual districts can not have voting powers.

· Additional “Cooperators” may be added, only with the concurrence of the Lead Agencies.

· The chairmanship is now limited to the two state wildlife agencies.

· Only “employees” of the Cooperators can now vote. This would effectively eliminate county commissioners and supervisors from voting

· No proxies will be accepted. This would prohibit the counties from extending a proxy to their designated representatives.

It is obvious Arizona Game and Fish desires complete control over the Jaguar Conservation Team as well as control over the direction the strategy will take in the future.

Equal footing with the participating agencies will no longer be granted and there will be minimal representation of local concerns. In other words, the federal and state agencies will now be the driving force behind jaguar conservation and the real “stakeholders” will have very little to say where this agenda is driven by the unelected federal and state agencies.

I’m off to spend some time with family! Will catch you up on the new Framework discussion next week!!

Hope you all have a Fantastic 4th of July!!
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NEWS ROUNDUP

Buyout will end Siskiyou grazing After three years of negotiations, ranchers and conservationists have agreed to terms of a buyout to get cattle off the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which was created to protect the rare mix of plants found where the Siskiyou Mountains connect with the Cascade Range. "This is a compromise that none of the ranchers really want, but we figure is the best thing for ranchers, our economic interests and for the taxpayers," said Bob Miller of Hornbrook, Calif., whose family has run cattle in the area for a century. "It's basically the best compromise we can come up with to solve a major problem that's been created by modern times." Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., announced from Washington, D.C., that he plans to introduce a bill in July that would pay ranchers $814,200 if they agree to give up leases that allow about 500 cattle to graze on the monument. Conservation groups offered to sweeten the deal with an as-yet-undetermined amount of cash if all 17 ranching families with grazing rights agree to retire their leases. The bill also would create a 23,000-acre Soda Mountain Wilderness within the monument, something conservation groups have been trying to achieve for 30 years....
House approves coastline oil and natural gas exploration The House of Representatives voted 232-187 Thursday to permit new oil and natural gas exploration off the nation's coastlines in swaths that have been off-limits since 1981 because of environmental concerns. The vote, in which 40 Democrats voted with the Republicans, reflected the political pressures of soaring fuel prices and a desire to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, especially from the volatile Mideast. Supporters argued that expanded offshore drilling would lower natural gas prices, help farmers and manufacturers, bolster national security and bring back jobs. "We depend on foreign countries for 66 percent of our energy," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who managed the drilling bill. "I'm telling you, it's time to stop saying no." The Senate hasn't passed an offshore drilling bill, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said it's unlikely to allow new drilling off the East and West coasts. However, he said he sensed an "improving likelihood" that Congress this year will authorize deepwater exploration in portions of the Gulf of Mexico that now are off-limits to new drilling....
Life for rangers on the front lines and in the backcountry of national parks Although he spends most of his patrol alone, National Park Service ranger Kean Mihata rarely gets lonely. At any point during his shift, the law enforcement officer could be called on to assist an injured climber dangling from a cliff wall, wrap a Band-Aid on a youngster's finger, quiet rowdy campers or chase poachers. Some nights, he might be required to do all of those. "It keeps things interesting," says Mihata, who spent four years as an interpretative ranger with the National Park Service before spending the last four with law enforcement. His career has included stints in California and Alaska. "The diversity here is amazing. I get to see folks from everywhere in the world. I can't think of a job I would love as much as this one." More often than not, Mihata is answering questions, like "When is the next shuttle?" He often hands out speeding tickets and escorts oversized vehicles through the tight confines of the Mount Carmel Highway tunnel....
'Preservation' should not mean abandoning our property rights Just one year after the Supreme Court's dreadful Kelo decision sparked an outcry against government eminent-domain abuse, some in Congress are preparing a new threat to property owners in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) wants to transform the entire U.S. 15 corridor, from Charlottesville to Gettysburg, into a National Heritage Area. National Heritage Areas are preservation zones, where the National Park Service and designated preservationist groups team up to influence how an area is developed (or not developed). Wolf's bill, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act, is a pork-barrel earmark awarded to preservationist interest groups. Only instead of merely providing pork, this would actually purchase lobbyists. The legislation essentially deputizes the National Trust for Historic Preservation, other like-minded preservationist groups and the Park Service to oversee land-use policy in the corridor. This consortium would form a "management entity" and be given a federal mandate to create an "inventory" of all property in the area that it wants "preserved," "managed," or "acquired" because of its "national historic significance." In an effort to downplay concerns from property-rights advocates, a spokesperson for the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership (the umbrella group that is spearheading the Heritage Area effort), claims, "A National Heritage Area does not interfere with the local authority at all." Such a statement signifies either extreme ignorance of the legislation, or outright dishonesty. Wolf's legislation is specifically designed to interfere with local authorities....
Hippies beat back US forest officers United States Forest Service officers were hit, elbowed and pelted with a rock when they tried to arrest unruly campers at a gathering of the Rainbow Family, a free-spirited, loosely affiliated band of hippies, officials said. The confrontation on Monday night was one of at least three clashes between officers and campers as thousands of the Rainbow Family gather for a weeklong outing, which officially begins on Saturday. None of the injuries was serious, Forest Service spokesperson Kimberly Vogel said on Thursday. About 5 000 members of the group, which promotes non-violence and harmony with nature, have arrived at the campsite in the Routt National Forest about 50km north of Steamboat Springs in defiance of the Forest Service, which has refused to grant the group a permit, citing the fire danger. About 200 campers surrounded 15 officers and became verbally abusive on Monday night, Vogel said. As the officers tried to arrest some campers, the crowd surged forward, striking at least three officers and pulling the suspects free, Vogel said....it will be interesting to see how many do Federal time like Kit Laney.
Rainbow Family trials to stay in firehouse The trials for the Rainbow Family members camping in the Routt National Forest will continue in the small firehouse near Steamboat Springs, a federal judge said Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Krieger denied a motion for a temporary restraining order filed by David Lane, an attorney for several Rainbow Family members. But Krieger later set a hearing for today in Denver on a second attempt by attorneys for the Rainbow Family to stop the trials. Lane's original suit, filed Tuesday, said the firehouse's small size effectively turned the trials into "secret proceedings." The firehouse is about 35 miles northwest of Steamboat. About 250 Rainbow Family members have been charged with camping illegally because the group, estimated to reach 20,000 by next week, was unable to obtain a permit because of fire danger....
Thieves targeting federal land to steal bark off trees People who believe in herbal medicines say slippery elm bark is good for what ails you -- especially problems associated with the skin, stomach and bowels. But stripping all the bark from slippery elm trees isn't good for the trees. It kills them. Thefts of slippery elm bark -- like ginseng and other plants valued as herbal cures -- are on the rise on public lands in Kentucky and elsewhere. In the last couple of weeks, several people have been charged in connection with stripped elm trees in Leslie and Jackson counties in the Daniel Boone National Forest. In Leslie County, three people were charged twice in one week. The second time, they told officers they were trying to make money to pay fines for the first offense, Forest Service spokeswoman Kim Feltner said today....
Continental Divide biathlon course evaluated The Forest Service says a military biathlon course, proposed for the Continental Divide just west of Helena, would have mostly minimal effects on the area. The Montana Army National Guard wants to build, maintain and use the course for biathlon -- rigorous Nordic skiing, followed by target shooting with .22-caliber rifles. The site is on Forest Service land near MacDonald Pass -- an already popular among Nordic skiers in Helena. Some skiers like the Guard's one-and-a-half (m) million dollar plan, because the groomed course would be open to the public when not in military use. Others say the course would disrupt a peaceful area, inhabited by wildlife and popular for family recreation....
Little-known law keeps Wyo. Range leases open Judi Adler and her neighbors around Hoback Ranches thought they were in the clear. The natural gas leases for minerals under the public and private lands surrounding their homes were due to expire in a matter of months, and they had received no notice of any impending drilling plans. A few months later, they read an article in the newspaper that the land, including the mineral rights directly underneath their homes, had been authorized by the federal government for oil and gas production. An operator had plans to drill three deep natural gas wells there. The move left the homeowners wondering what happened. The law governing mineral lease suspensions is Section 39 of the 1920 Minerals Leasing Act. Under that law, operators can apply for a suspension for two reasons: when it is in the interest of resource conservation, or because of “force majeure,” which basically means when the operator can’t produce the lease due to reasons beyond its control. The second clause has elicited most of the controversy. Force majeure could mean that the BLM was unable to do the proper surveys to approve a well before the lease expired, or, in a recent controversial case in Cora near the Green River, the company could not get any private landowners to grant it access to its landlocked lease parcel. In the case of the Wyoming Range, however, the suspensions can be linked to a 1992 BLM memo that effectively expanded the workable definition of force majeure to include instances when “leasing delays by the federal government prohibit a lessee’s ability to form lease blocks sufficient for the orderly exploration and development of oil and gas resources....
House measure would sweeten oil shale deal Energy companies could potentially reap millions of dollars in royalty breaks under a House bill approved Thursday that calls for the United States to model its western oil shale program after Canada's booming tar sands industry. Companies in Canada are making fortunes turning sticky, tar-covered sand into oil. The United States hopes to do the same with tar sand in Utah and its cousin, oil shale, a rock that yields petroleum when heated. Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contain an estimated 500 billion to 1.1 trillion recoverable barrels of oil from oil shale, though companies are still exploring whether it can be tapped economically. The provision in a House energy bill, which also lifts a ban on oil and gas drilling off much of the U.S. coast, directs the interior secretary to use Canada as an example of how to shape the royalties the oil shale companies would pay for energy from public lands. Canadian tar sands producers pay little in royalties until several years into development....
BLM struggles with drilling demand The federal government is struggling to keep up with demand as high energy prices and a push to tap U.S. oil and gas reserves fuel a rush to drill in the Rocky Mountain states, land managers told a Senate committee this week. The number of drilling permit applications to the Bureau of Land Management jumped 27 percent between 2004 and 2006, agency and industry officials said. The BLM has scrambled to keep pace, but has been able to boost the number of permits approved by only 20 percent over the same time frame. "We find ourselves in an uphill battle to get on top of the workload," said Kathleen Clarke, director of the BLM, which oversees much of the nation's onshore public oil and gas reserves. The situation is expected to grow more intense. Natural gas production from reserves in the Rockies is projected to double in the next 20 years, surpassing production in the Gulf of Mexico. Duane Zavadil of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States said the BLM needs to update its permitting process to prevent delays....
Report: Grouse protections not working When state and federal regulators opened the door to drilling of 51,000 coal-bed methane wells in the Powder River Basin several years ago, they did so not knowing the implications to wildlife. Now ongoing monitoring indicates that seasonal restrictions intended to protect sage grouse and their wintering habitat in the region isn't working. The University of Montana report suggests that year-round restrictions on coal-bed methane development are needed in some areas -- particularly in the northern portion of the basin on the Wyoming/Montana border. The report concludes that "conservation strategies to date to protect the species have been largely ineffective. An effective conservation strategy is one that limits the cumulative impact of disturbances across the landscape at all times of the year." David Naugle, a wildlife professor at the University of Montana, has headed up the sage grouse research, paid for by the Bureau of Land Management in both Wyoming and Montana. Naugle released a related report earlier this month noting a 84 percent decline in sage grouse in the Powder River Basin, where much of the coal-bed methane production takes place....
Judge: BLM should consider alternatives to herbicides An administrative judge with the US Interior Department has ruled that the Bureau of Land Management should have considered alternatives to herbicides when it studied a project to control brush near Roswell. Judge Robert Holt says the agency must revise its environmental assessment for the project, which involves treating 2,700 acres near the Rio Hondo. The agency must evaluate options that include mechanical or manual control, burning and biological control. Holt says the BLM’s failure to analyze more alternatives violated regulations for preparing environmental assessments as well as provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act....
Poaching probe nets a big haul In the biggest single-day bust of suspected poachers in state history, California wildlife officers on Thursday arrested 17 people in three cases threatening native sturgeon and abalone populations. With 85 state game wardens involved, the California Department of Fish and Game called the roundup unprecedented. Arrests were made in at least eight California cities. One arrest occurred in Oregon, and three more in California are pending. The sturgeon poaching ring, unconnected to the abalone cases, was centered on an illegal caviar-producing operation in Sacramento. It involved six Bay Area men who allegedly caught the fish illegally in the Sacramento River, authorities said. Four others in the Sacramento area processed the fish roe, or eggs, into caviar....
Horned lizard still not 'endangered' An easygoing desert lizard with the ability to disappear into its surroundings doesn’t deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government ruled Wednesday. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday announced it won’t list the Flat-tailed horned lizard as a threatened species because it has plenty of habitat left in its range. Lizard defenders said the ruling is misguided and could push the reptile, described as a mini-dinosaur, closer to extinction. People have driven the the reptile from unprotected areas in the Coachella Valley, and development threatens lizards living in a desert wildlife preserve, they say. The ruling Wednesday follows a November 2005 court ruling that ordered the service to reconsider a decision to withdraw a proposal to list the lizard....
Judgment Day Set for Polar Bears Conservation groups today announced they have reached a settlement in a lawsuit to protect polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. Under the settlement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must complete its “12-month” finding on whether polar bears should be listed under the Endangered Species Act by December 27, 2006. “The scientific community is issuing sharp warnings to address global warming now, or suffer consequences that include the loss of Arctic sea ice and species such as the polar bear,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “We need to immediately protect polar bears under the Endangered Species Act and immediately cut greenhouse gas pollution.” Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent on sea ice for all of their essential needs, including hunting their prey of ice seals. The rapid warming of the Arctic and melting of the sea ice poses an overwhelming threat to polar bears, which could become the first mammal to lose 100 percent of its habitat due to global warming....
Prairie dogs wreaking havoc in area grasslands Uninvited guests are wreaking havoc on Wesley Grau’s land. True, prairie dogs inhabited the grasslands of North America long before Grau began farming and ranching in Grady. Nonetheless, Grau said, the rodents are irksome, and he wishes them gone. “I fight them constantly,” said Grau, who prefers to keep his population control methods secret. “They are similar to big rats.” In the past seven years, Grau has spent roughly $25,000 trying to curb the prairie dog population on his land. The wily animals have decimated entire acres of grazing land for his cattle. His horses have broken legs in prairie dog holes on numerous occasions, and rattlesnakes are prone to nesting in the underground webs of the dogs....
Agreement conserves entire Roberts Ranch in Livermore A recent agreement between Catherine Roberts and The Nature Conservancy legally protects the entire historic Roberts Ranch from development. Located in the Laramie Foothills between Fort Collins and Laramie, Wyo., the ranch is "one of the most beautiful places in the world," said Catherine Roberts, who, like her late husband and his ancestors, loves the land and cares for it. "The pioneer Roberts family and their descendents have all had a burning desire to keep this land in its natural state," Roberts said in a prepared statement. "The economics of our day makes that difficult, and so I am grateful for the chance to work on this conservation easement with so many other individuals dedicated to keeping a portion of this great land open, just as it was when the first ranchers saw it." The beginnings of the Livermore ranch, which now encompasses 16,500 acres, date back 130 years. On July 3, 1874, the first members of the Roberts family arrived in what was then called Livermore Park to manage land and cattle for Greeley resident Russell Fisk. Robert Owen Roberts had lived in other states back East before arriving in Greeley and serendipitously meeting Fisk. The six-member Roberts family first occupied Fisk's rat-infested and leaky log house....
Sheep get free lunch on city In mid-June, runners and bicyclists were surprised when they crested the hill behind Hughes Stadium in the Maxwell Open Space. There, sharing the view and the trails, were a couple hundred bleating ewes with lambs, a Peruvian sheepherder, a sheep dog and a bright blue herder's wagon. One hiker on the trails described the unusual scene as "charming." A bicyclist stopped just to take in the view, and neighborhood folks brought kids in strollers to see the little lambs. It was the meeting of two worlds, urban and rural. Sheep were a big part of the settling of the West, but sheepherder's wagons are about as rare anymore as open space itself. The most-asked question: What are the sheep doing here? The answer: They're a cost-effective supplement to Round-Up. The Fort Collins Natural Resources staff has been increasingly concerned about the expansion of invasive weeds into open spaces, caused partly by the prolonged drought. Sheep are viewed as one more weapon in the arsenal against those pesky plants. "On a large scale, sheep are cost effective and gentler on the land than traditional mechanical and chemical weed treatments," said Rick Bachand with the city's natural areas program. Sheep are particularly well suited for rocky, steep hillsides that are difficult to reach with machinery....
Drought Putting Thousands Of Cattle Up For Sale Some say parts of central South Dakota may be drier now than during the dust bowl years in the 1930's. The severe drought is forcing many ranchers to make tough decisions, like selling off their entire herds just to keep the animals from starving to death. And sales at a livestock auction in Campbell County have almost doubled this year. As livestock are unloaded the pens at the Herreid Livestock Market fill up. It's a sight that reminds ranchers and farmers of just how bleak the situation is becoming in drought stricken central South Dakota. Co-owner and Manager of Herreid Livestock Market Herman Schumacher says, "It's as tough a time as I've ever seen in the cattle industry as far as weather is concerned." President of the Campbell County Bank Bruce Brandner says, "It's come down to buy hay, move the cattle out of the country, or just have to sell the whole herd." Over the past month, livestock sales at the market have increased by almost 90 percent....
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Land Rights Network
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400, Battle Ground, WA 98604
(360) 687-3087 – Fax: (360) 687-2973
alra@governance.net
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003 landrightsnet@yahoo.com -- (202) 329-3574


Leftwing Nominee to Oversee ESA, wetlands?


— EMERGENCY —
—

*** IMMEDIATE RESPONSE NEEDED ***


POSSIBLE NOMINATION OF LEFTWING ENVIRO JOHN TOMKE

*****See Action Items Below

President Bush may make a tragic mistake and nominate a prominent Land Grabber to a key position in the Interior Department!!! This would be an attack on private property rights and a HUGE setback for efforts to change the Endangered Species Act and reform wetlands laws!!!

Mr. John Tomke is one of the final candidates for the position of Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks in the Department of the Interior. This is a critically important spot in the Interior Department that oversees, among other areas, the Endangered Species Act and wetlands policy.

John Tomke has a lengthy record as a Very Liberal Republican who has made it his hobby to attack private property rights.

Tomke is the one responsible for the Bush Administration backing down on efforts to protect private property rights on wetlands policy in 2003. Here is the story:

FIRST: In January of 2001 the Supreme Court issued a decision in support of private property rights called the “SWANCC” case. (SWANCC stands for Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County, one of the parties in the case).

The Court ruled that the federal Corps of Engineers did not have jurisdiction over waters that were outside of “navigable waters of the United States.” This was a welcome change, since the Corps had been claiming permits were necessary for any activity on any kind of permanent or even temporary wet spot, puddle or depression in the ground, even if it did not drain into a stream or creek that eventually reached a river.

The Supreme Court left it up to the Bush Administration to issue regulations specifically defining what was “outside of navigable waters.”

SECOND: Two years later, in January 2003, the Bush Administration issued proposed regulations that protected private property rights. The Administration proposed to exempt from federal wetlands jurisdiction places that were plainly not “navigable,” like wet depressions in the ground and temporary potholes that filled after a rain and then dried up.

THIRD: John Tomke, a Liberal Republican and major financial supporter of Bush for President, then got activated. He assembled and led a coalition of leftwing environmental groups in support of more federal power over private property. John Tomke demanded - and received - an hour long personal meeting with President Bush. Tomke convinced President Bush to back down on his support for private property rights!!!

By April of 2003, the Bush Administration completely changed course and reversed itself, and agreed to the demands of John Tomke and the politically correct leftwing environmentalists. The Administration agreed to keep Federal Corps of Engineers jurisdiction over virtually every inch of wet ground in the United States!!!!!

Now Tomke demands power over the Endangered Species Act!!! He wants to reverse six years of progress made in support of private property rights.

*****Action Items:

-----1. Call or e-mail Brian Waidmann, who is Secretary Kempthorne’s Chief of Staff: Direct phone line: 202-208-5043. E-mail: brian_waidmann@ios.doi.gov

-----2. Call or e-mail Douglas Domenech,. He is Secretary Kempthorne’s White House Liaison (202) 208-5647. E-mail: doug_domenech@ios.doi.gov

-----3. Call Kit Kimball. She is Secretary Kempthorne’s External and Intergovernmental Affairs Director at (202) 208-1923. E-mail: kit_Kimball@ios.doi.gov

-----4. Call, fax and e-mail the White House at (202) 456-1111, Fax: (202) 456-2461 or e-mail: comments@whitehouse.gov

-----5. Call, fax and e-mail Vice President Richard Cheney’ office at (202) 456-1111, Fax: (202) 456-2461 or e-mail: vice_president@whitehouse.gov

-----6. Call both your Senators to urge them to oppose John Tomke’s nomination.
Any Senator may be called at (202) 224-3121.
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NEWS ROUNDUP

Burns pitches ban on oil, gas leases on federal land in Rocky Mountain Front A law that provides permanent protection of the Rocky Mountain Front by banning new oil and gas leases on federal land was delivered Tuesday from an unlikely source. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., who in 2002 said tapping into oil and gas reserves is in the national interest, took steps to prevent new leases from being approved on Forest Service land in the Lewis and Clark National Forest and adjacent Bureau of Land Management property on the Front. Conservation organizations applauded the efforts, while some questioned Burns' motivation. "I think this is tremendous," said Karl Rappold, a rancher on the Front and a member of the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front. "This is what we've been working on for years. I want to thank Sen. Burns." The Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front is an organization of ranchers, hunters, anglers, outfitters, guides, local business owners, public officials, conservationists and other Montanans working to protect the Front....
Energy Company Donates Gas Leases, Is It a Harbinger for a Western Shift? A day after Sen. Conrad Burns made the first step in banning all new oil and gas leases on Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, Questar E&P, a natural gas company, announced it is handing 1,691 acres of oil and gas leases in the Front's Blackleaf Canyon area over to Trout Unlimited. Trout Unlimited's Vice President for Conservation, Chris Wood, said TU had been in negotiations for some time on the Front leases, but the Burns language introduced yesterday in the Interior Appropriations Bill was a final piece of the puzzle. "It's fair to say (the donation) is a direct result of the concept of permanently retiring the area," Wood said. "They saw the big picture just as much as we did." This deal is a first of its kind, Wood said, but hopefully not the last -- on the Front or West-wide. "This could be precedential," he said. "With Questar stepping to the place, this could be a larger trend." He said TU is actively pursuing similar deals in the West. The Burns move is one of a few such surprises in the last two weeks on the issue of oil, gas and public lands. Last week, Republican congresswoman Heather Wilson signed on with Democrat Stuart Udall to support legislation to keep oil and gas development out of New Mexico's Valle Vidal. A few days earlier, Wyoming Republican Sen. Craig Thomas had a bombshell of his own, saying generally, national forests should be off limits to energy exploration....
Supreme Court Takes Up States' Carbon-Emissions Challenge to Feds The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming, setting up what could be one of the court's most important decisions on the environment. The decision means the court will address whether the administration's decision to rely on voluntary measures to combat climate change are legal under federal clean air laws. "This is the whole ball of wax. This will determine whether the Environmental Protection Agency is to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and whether EPA can regulate carbon dioxide from power plants," said David Bookbinder, an attorney for the Sierra Club. The EPA said in a statement that the agency "is confident in its decision (not to regulate carbon dioxide) and will address the issue before the court." It said voluntary programs "are helping achieve reductions" in carbon emissions "while saving millions of dollars." Bookbinder said if the court upholds the administration's argument it also could jeopardize plans by California and 10 other states, including most of the Northeast, to require reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles....
U.S. Coral Eden Found; Others Saved From Destructive Fishing Large and diverse coral communities have been discovered in the deep, cold waters of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary off Washington State (map of Washington), scientists announced this week. And in a separate but related development, coral and other seafloor communities in the North Pacific were today given sweeping new protections from destructive fishing practices. Bottom trawling—fishing by dragging heavily weighted nets across the seafloor—has been a major concern for conservationists worried about protecting deep-sea ecosystems (read "Trawlers Destroying Deep-Sea Reefs, Scientists Say"). A new ruling by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) bans tom trawling in a 370,000-square-mile (958,000-square-kilometer) area off Alaska's Aleutian Islands (map of Alaska). The closure creates the largest no-trawl zone in U.S. waters....
Ranchers pushed from Aspen area Cowpokes are officially an endangered species in the Roaring Fork Valley. More than 11,000 acres of ranch land was sold in the area in the last year, and most of that land was sold to development firms, said Martha Cochran, director of the Aspen Valley Land Trust, a conservation organization. "The core of the ranching community is getting pushed out," said Cochran, whose group is battling to preserve some of the last remaining large tracts on the valley floor. The ongoing real estate frenzy that shattered sales volume records for the last two years and is on a record pace this year is also giving the area a facelift by bringing urbanization to the remaining rural corners. Cochran said only a handful of ranches larger than 1,000 acres remain between Aspen and Glenwood Springs. "It's gone," she said. "Other than Capitol Creek, it's gone."....
Rainbow trials need more room, lawyer says The trials for the Rainbow Family members in a small, rural firehouse on charges of camping without a permit should stop and resume in a public courtroom, attorney David Lane said Wednesday. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, Lane said that access to the first round of trials was denied to the public and some of the attorneys for the Rainbow Family members. He said the firehouse's limited space effectively turned the trials into "secret proceedings" and asked for a temporary restraining order to halt the trials. An estimated 20,000 members of the Rainbow Family will gather next week in the Routt National Forest but were unable to get a camping permit because of the fire danger. About 4,000 Rainbow Family members have already arrived. U.S. Marshals and Forest Service enforcement officers have arrested about 249 people for camping without a permit. Some also face alcohol and drug charges....
Grassland ownership fight grows A 79-year-old American Indian woman who lives on the Cimarron National Grassland is embroiled in a battle with the federal government over the land's boundaries. Bea Riley, who has lived the past 26 years encircled by the grassland in Morton County, said she wants to swap land with the federal government, which says the boundaries of her land are 70 feet off from where they should be. Joe Hartman, who manages the grassland for the U.S. Forest Service, said tepees Riley put on a campground she built would simply have to be moved so they are no longer on the disputed property. "We told her that we'd work with her in getting that corrected," Hartman said, adding that another problem is that Riley's daughter's home juts into the grassland. Hartman said that structure was an "intentional trespass" because it was built after the correct boundaries of Riley's plot had been determined. But Riley said work on her daughter's house started before the correct land lines were determined....
Inn Owner Furious About Handling of Grand Canyon Fire A fire on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is among the hottest fires in the nation right now. It has already burned nearly 60,000 acres and is forcing evacuations. Among the evacuees are the famous mules that take tourists up and down the canyon. The calendar, says summer has barely started. But, the year's fire season has already made it's mark. Steve Rich of Salt Lake says the blackened landscape here has been heartbreaking for his family. His ancestors pioneered the area almost 150 years ago. He and many other locals tried to stop what happened. The Rich Family owns the Jacob Lake Inn, gateway to the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Their restaurant, lodge and gift shop is five miles from where the fire started almost three weeks ago. Steve Rich, Jacob Lake Inn: "The fire was this big. They decided to let that thing burn. And we begged them to put it out." But National Forest officials let it burn because it was in an area earmarked as overgrown with fire fuel....
Judge: Leave old dams alone A federal court judge has ruled that 18 small dams in the Emigrant Wilderness are not to be rebuilt, repaired or maintained by the Stanislaus National Forest. Instead, U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Ishii said the dams must remain until they decay naturally, which forest officials say could take a century or more. "We are still undecided on whether we are going to appeal or not," Stanislaus National Forest spokesman Jerry Snyder said yesterday. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys representing the Forest Service will make the final decision on whether to appeal the decision. Ishii's ruling, released earlier this month, is the latest chapter in a nearly two-decade-old debate over how the forest should manage the check dams....
Peru ratifies US trade deal Peru's Congress ratified a free-trade deal with the United States on Wednesday that the country's president promptly signed despite noisy street protests, clearing the way for its approval by U.S. lawmakers. Congress voted 79-14 for the accord, which was backed by businesses who say it will be a huge boost to Peru's export-driven economy and opposed by farmers who fear that U.S. imports will ruin their livelihoods. Six lawmakers abstained. Thousands of demonstrators in Lima protested against the deal, shouting "Down with the United States!" Stephen Norton of the U.S. Trade Representative's office welcomed the ratification and said it would create more jobs in Peru, "opening a market of 28 million consumers to U.S. manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, and service providers." Peru's President Alejandro Toledo signed the pact in a ceremony in Lima, allowing it to become law if the United States approves the accord. Peru's approval is a blow for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies -- the leftist leaders of Cuba and Bolivia -- who want Latin America to turn away from the United States and join an alternative regional pact....
Gene Autry's Legacy and an Indian Museum Merge (and Collide) When one of the country's premier collections of American Indian artifacts joined forces three years ago with the collectibles of the Singing Cowboy, Gene Autry, the move was officially billed as a merger of equals. This being Hollywood, however, the storyline was reduced to something simpler: the cowboys were once again battling the Indians. Guess which side won. Instead of celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding next year, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian will lock its doors here on June 30. Over the next three years, the 240,000 objects in its collection, many of which have not been out of storage for decades, will be cleaned, cataloged and prepared for a move to a proposed new building next to Autry's Museum of the American West, in Griffith Park. That is where the Autry National Center, as the merged museum complexes are now known, will celebrate another 100th anniversary next year: the Gene Autry Centennial, a birthday exhibition that, according to the museum, will explore "the Singing Cowboy's influence on myth and history in the American West."....
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Land Rights Network
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400, Battle Ground, WA 98604
(360) 687-3087 – Fax: (360) 687-2973
alra@governance.net
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003 landrightsnet@yahoo.com -- 202 329 3574


Greens Threaten To Takeover ESA


GRASSROOTS ALERT!

YOU URGENT ACTION IS REQUIRED

KEY VACANCY INSIDE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT NEEDS YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION

Last year, Assistant Secretary of Interior for Fish, Wildlife & Parks Craig Manson retired leaving a huge hole in senior leadership inside the Bush Administration on issues impacting private property owners as well as supporters of multiple-use of public lands.

In recent weeks, it has come to light that the Bush Administration is considering nominating John Tomke, most recently of Ducks Unlimited…to fill this important slot.


THIS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!

This critically important position has responsibility for the Endangered Species Act and its impact on so many things we do. It’s a tough assignment that no doubt requires someone with thick skin and a dedicated vision to get things done. Unfortunately, Mr. Tomke is not that person.

Although Ducks Unlimited is a major player in conservation / environmental issues through its massive national membership, they have shown little if any support for major Bush Administration initiatives such as:

-----ESA reform

-----ANWR

-----Active forest management

Leading sportsmen groups; forest products companies as well as energy companies all share grave concern over this possible nomination.

At a time when there is very little time left in this Administration to make meaningful change to land management and use, we simply can’t afford to have an Assistant Secretary who lacks the experience and the will to get the tough things done.

*****Action Items:

-----1. Call or e-mail Brian Waidmann, who is Secretary Kempthorne’s Chief of Staff: Direct phone line: 202-208-5043

-----2. Send him an E-mail: brian_waidmann@ios.doi.gov

-----3. Call both your Senators to urge them to oppose John Tomke’s nomination.
Any Senator may be called at (202) 224-3121.

-----4. Forward this message as widely as you can.


Tell him the following:

----- John Tomke is not qualified for the job of Assistant Secretary. The issues are way too controversial and too complex for someone who has not shown the ability to deliver on these issues in the past.

----- This nomination is a slap in the face to those who have worked hard on key Administration initiatives such as Endangered Species Act reform, ANWR and specific species issues.

----- An Administration which has still failed to deliver ESA reform regulations – is now putting people in positions of power who have worked actively against such reforms.

----- There are other, more qualified candidates who better represent the views of the people across this country who worked hard to elect President Bush in 2000 and 2004. We didn’t work hard for this President’s election and re-election only to be told NO on the issues most important to our coalitions across the country.

PLEASE MAKE THIS CALL OR SEND YOUR E-MAIL TODAY!

This nomination might be eminent and your help is needed today. We must stop this from happening or we’ll likely see the last 2 years of this Administration as a total waste of time and effort for all of our hard work over the past 6 years.


Please forward this message as widely as possible.
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FLE

Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials. The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database. Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said. The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday. The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records. The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift. That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues....
Bush Condemns Terror Finance Report in Times President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a program to secretly monitor the financial transactions of suspected terrorists. ''The disclosure of this program is disgraceful,'' he said. ''For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America,'' Bush said, jabbing his finger for emphasis. He said the disclosure of the program ''makes it harder to win this war on terror.'' The program has been going on since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It was disclosed last week by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. Using broad government subpoenas, the program allows U.S. counterterrorism analysts to obtain financial information from a vast database maintained by a company based in Belgium. It routes about 11 million financial transactions daily among 7,800 banks and other financial institutions in 200 countries. ''Congress was briefed and what we did was fully authorized under the law,'' Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in Iraq. ''We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America,'' the president said. ''What we were doing was the right thing.''....
GOP bill targets NY Times House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records. The resolution is expected to condemn the leak and publication of classified documents, said one Republican aide with knowledge of the impending legislation. The resolution comes as Republicans from the president on down condemn media organizations for reporting on the secret government program that tracked financial records overseas through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), an international banking cooperative. Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), working independently from his leadership, began circulating a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) during a late series of votes yesterday asking his leaders to revoke the Times’s congressional press credentials. The Standing Committee decides which organizations and reporters can be accredited, according to the rules of both the House and Senate press galleries. Members of that committee are elected by accredited members of those galleries....
Damage Study Urged on Surveillance Reports Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, asked the director of national intelligence on Tuesday to assess any damage to American counterterrorism efforts caused by the disclosure of secret programs to monitor telephone calls and financial transactions. Mr. Roberts, Republican of Kansas, singled out The New York Times for an article last week that reported that the government was tracking money transfers handled by a banking consortium based in Belgium. The targeting of the financial data, which includes some Americans' transactions, was also reported Thursday by The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. In his letter to John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, Mr. Roberts wrote that "we have been unable to persuade the media to act responsibly and to protect the means by which we protect this nation." He asked for a formal evaluation of damage to intelligence collection resulting from the revelation of the secret financial monitoring as well as The Times's disclosure in December of the National Security Agency's monitoring of phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans suspected of having links to Al Qaeda. In London, meanwhile, a human rights group said Tuesday that it had filed complaints in 32 countries alleging that the banking consortium, known as Swift, violated European and Asian privacy laws by giving the United States access to its data....
Bush's Use of Authority Riles Senator Senators on the Judiciary Committee accused President Bush of an "unprecedented" and "astonishing" power grab on Tuesday for making use of a device that gave him the authority to revise or ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president. By using what are known as signing statements, memorandums issued with legislation as he signs it, the president has reserved the right to not enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations. A lawyer for the White House said that Mr. Bush was only doing his duty to uphold the Constitution. But Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, characterized the president's actions as a declaration that he "will do as he pleases," without regard to the laws passed by Congress. "There's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes and exclude the ones he doesn't like," Mr. Specter said at a hearing. "Wouldn't it be better, as a matter of comity," he said, "for the president to have come to the Congress and said, 'I'd like to have this in the bill; I'd like to have these exceptions in the bill,' so that we could have considered that?" Mr. Specter and others are particularly upset that Mr. Bush reserved the right to interpret the torture ban passed overwhelmingly by Congress, as well as Congressional oversight powers in the renewal of the Patriot Act....
Court Review of Wiretaps May Be Near, Senator Says Senator Arlen Specter said Sunday that the White House and Congress were close to reaching a resolution on submitting a National Security Agency wiretap program to judicial review. "I think there is an inclination to have it submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and that would be a big step forward for protection of constitutional rights and civil liberties," Mr. Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday." President Bush and his top advisers have resisted calls for formal legal oversight of the program under which the N.S.A. listens in on phone calls and reads e-mail messages to and from Americans and others in the United States who the agency believes may be linked to terrorists. Only those communications into and out of the country are monitored, administration officials say. Until late 2001, the security agency focused only on the foreign end of such conversations; if the agency decided that someone in the United States was of intelligence interest, it was supposed to get a warrant from the intelligence surveillance court. Now such warrants are sought only for communications between two people in the United States. Revelations about that program have incited debate in Congress and beyond about the president's constitutional authority to order the wiretaps, and lawsuits have been filed against the government and phone companies....
Top Court Upholds No-Knock Police Search The Supreme Court made it easier Thursday for police to barge into homes and seize evidence without knocking or waiting, a sign of the court's new conservatism with Samuel Alito on board. The court, on a 5-4 vote, said judges cannot throw out evidence collected by police who have search warrants but do not properly announce their arrival. It was a significant rollback of earlier rulings protective of homeowners, even unsympathetic homeowners like Booker Hudson, who had a loaded gun next to him and cocaine rocks in his pocket when Detroit police entered his unlocked home in 1998 without knocking. The court's five-member conservative majority, anchored by new Chief Justice John Roberts and Alito, said that police blunders should not result in "a get-out-of-jail-free card" for defendants. Dissenting justices predicted that police will now feel free to ignore previous court rulings requiring officers with search warrants to knock and announce themselves to avoid running afoul of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches....
Hard Knocks With No-Knock Last week, a 5-4 majority led by Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that violation of the "knock-and announce" rule—a custom by which police serving a warrant knock on the suspect's door and wait some decent period of time (which in a previous case had been defined as 15 to 20 seconds)—does not require suppression of evidence found in a search. In the case, police searching for drugs and firearms at the home of suspect Booker T. Hudson announced themselves outside Hudson's home, did not knock, and failed to wait more than a few seconds before breaking down his door. They found drugs and a gun as described in the warrant, and the issue at hand was whether the failure to knock and wait was enough to invoke the "exclusionary rule," barring evidence obtained in an unconstitutional fashion. Scalia argues, and supporters of his decision agree, that there is no constitutional issue involved in the no-knock entry. In a glib editorial preemptively mocking "civil libertarians, especially those on the left," the New York Sun notes that the knock and announce rule is not written into the Fourth Amendment, or any other part of the U.S. Constitution. Instead, it is an English common-law practice dating back to the Middle Ages. (It has been part of federal statutory law since 1917.) The George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr finds no conflict between Scalia's alleged "originalism" and his Hudson decision. Does any of this make sense? If you presume that constitutionality is the full measure of your rights as an American citizen and a human being, maybe. But preserving the idea that American citizens are entitled to some dignity is about more than ruling out whatever wasn't specifically mentioned by the founding fathers. The idea that everybody is entitled to the presumption of innocence isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution either, but this concept underlies a range of customs and common law practices (most of which are also absent from the text of the Constitution) that have long been recognized as part of individual liberty. Presuming innocence doesn't mean everybody is innocent; it means authorities must err on the side of your rights as an American citizen....
Supreme Court Ruling on Police Raids Endangers Citizens Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in its 5-4 decision in the case of Hudson v. Michigan that when police conduct an illegal, no-knock raid, any evidence they seize in the raid can still be used against the suspect at trial, even though the raid was conducted illegally. I’ve spent the last year researching these types of volatile, highly-confrontational, paramilitary raids for a forthcoming report for the Cato Institute. The decision in Hudson is almost certain to lead to more illegal no-knock raids, more mistaken raids on innocent people, and more unnecessary deaths, both of civilians and of police officers. As recently as 1995, the Court ruled in the case of Wilson v. Arkansas that the centuries-old common law notion that police should announce themselves before entering a private home was engrained in the Fourth Amendment. That is, it is an inherent part of the Constitution. The Court issued this ruling unanimously, including votes by Justices Thomas and Scalia. In Hudson the Court didn’t overturn Wilson. The announcement requirement still exists. But the Court did take away the only realistic way of enforcing it, which is to punish police by barring evidence when they break it. In his opinion, Scalia argued that there are better ways to punish police who break the rule, such as suing them. But both the state of Michigan and the U.S. government both acknowledged in their briefs in the case that they couldn’t come up with a single case where such a lawsuit had been successful. In other words, with Hudson and Wilson, the Court has said not only is the requirement that police announce themselves before entering a private home law, it’s in the Constitution, the highest law in the land. Yet the Court has also said it’s not too concerned with enforcing that law. The Rule of Law is a value held dear by most conservatives. Conservatives tend to loathe the fact that we have laws on the books that go unenforced. And rightly so. Unenforced law undermines respect for the law and for the criminal justice process. Yet that’s exactly what has happened with Hudson....
FBI Erred Widely in Moussaoui Probe, Report Says The FBI's mistakes in the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui extended from headquarters officials who dismissed the threat posed by the al-Qaeda operative down to field agents and even a prominent FBI whistle-blower, according to a government report made public yesterday. The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said "numerous systemic problems" within the bureau prevented the FBI from unraveling Moussaoui's role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror plot when he was arrested a month before the attacks. Moussaoui later became the only person charged in a U.S. courtroom in connection with the attacks. He was sentenced to life in prison last month. Fine concluded that senior FBI managers failed to move aggressively to gain a warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings before Sept. 11. But unlike previous public criticisms of the FBI's bungling of the case -- which have focused on senior FBI managers in Washington -- Fine's analysis said there was plenty of blame to go around. The inspector general said former FBI lawyer Colleen Rowley, who gained fame as a whistle-blower when she pointed out the errors by headquarters, had failed to properly guide agents on what type of search warrant to seek. He said agents in Minneapolis, who have been hailed for warning supervisors about Moussaoui, rushed to open an intelligence investigation before realizing that they would need a criminal search warrant. The so-called "wall" that existed at the time between intelligence and criminal investigators has been blamed for the failure to examine Moussaoui's belongings until after Sept. 11. Ultimately, Fine concluded, no FBI policies or procedures were violated in the Moussaoui investigation....
A Busy School for Border Patrol in New Mexico Cadets must double up in dorms, and prefabricated temporary classrooms have sprouted almost everywhere. Scores of agents have been withdrawn from policing the border to serve as instructors. And next year, twice as many trainees as this year are expected to troop through the cramped quarters. All in all, the Border Patrol Academy here in the desert of southeastern New Mexico is bursting at the seams and bustling with activity as the agency strives to train enough cadets to fulfill President Bush's plan adding 6,000 agents by the end of 2008 as part of his border security program. Charles C. Whitmire, the acting chief of the academy, said Thursday at the conclusion of a two-day tour for the news media that the president's goal would be met. "The answer is absolutely," he said. Several of the cadets, a broad range of former members of the military and law enforcement agencies, recent college and high school graduates, and even a few former missionaries, said the physical training was the most difficult. The recruits hit the deck for endless push-ups, situps and other exercises, along with frequent runs in the heat of the desert, to get them in shape for border assignments in often hostile, dangerous terrain where an agent frequently patrols alone. On average, only 1 in 30 applicants ends up an agent....
Border agents return gunfire after smugglers shoot at vehicle U.S. Border Patrol agents attempting to stop a marijuana-laden SUV that entered the country illegally Wednesday got into a gunfight with the smugglers. At about 7 p.m., agents were notified that the camera operations division "had picked up on" a vehicle crossing the border near the Bar K S Ranch just south of the Royal Road subdivision, said Lu Majeda, agency spokesman. "Our agents responded," Majeda said, "and attempted to intercept a gray newer model SUV. While making that attempt the vehicle eventually stopped and a group of people exited the vehicle. At the same time, shots were fired on our agent. We don't know if the shots came from the suspects that came out of the SUV or if there was a scout or someone already in place that was shooting. Majeda explained that it is common for smugglers to have people in place on the ground to watch as drug loads are moved through an area. "The shots hit our agent's vehicle, but did not hit the agent. He did return fire. At this time, we do not know if any of the others were hit or injured."....
Opponent's Gun Permit Is Revoked Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has revoked the concealed weapons license of a retired sheriff's captain who waged a fiery but unsuccessful campaign to unseat him in last week's election, a move the candidate's lawyer called "blatant retaliation." Undersheriff Larry Waldie notified retired Capt. Ken Masse of the move two days after the election, accusing the failed candidate of waging a deceptive and dishonest campaign that "may have damaged the public's confidence in this agency." Masse, who served 35 years with the department before retiring last year, intends to appeal the revocation. Peace officers in California are routinely issued credentials that allow them to carry concealed weapons after they retire. Those credentials can be revoked upon a showing of "good cause" by the department. Police agencies usually take such action only after retired officers are accused of criminal wrongdoing or other evidence indicates they could pose a danger with a gun or law enforcement credentials, said Masse's attorney, Dieter Dammeier. "It happens when there's dangerous conduct, not when somebody is engaged in politics," Dammeier said....
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NEWS ROUNDUP

Earth's Climate Warming Abruptly, Scientist Says Earth's climate is undergoing an abrupt change, ending a cooler period that began with a swift "cold snap" in the tropics 5,200 years ago that coincided with the start of cities, the beginning of calendars and the biblical great flood, a leading expert on glaciers has concluded. The warming around Earth's tropical belt is a signal suggesting that the "climate system has exceeded a critical threshold," which has sent tropical-zone glaciers in full retreat and will melt them completely "in the near future," said Lonnie G. Thompson, a scientist who for 23 years has been taking core samples from the ancient ice of glaciers. Thompson, writing with eight other researchers in an article published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the ice samples show that the climate can and did cool quickly, and that a similarly abrupt warming change started about 50 years ago. Humans may not have the luxury of adapting to slow changes, he suggests. "There are thresholds in the system," Thompson said in an interview in his lab at Ohio State University. When they are crossed, "there is the risk of changing the world as we know it to some form in which a lot of people on the planet will be put at risk." Thompson's work summarizes evidence from around the world and ice core sampling from seven locations in the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas. It considerably extends the reach of a growing number of scientific findings documenting the historically unusual warming of Earth. A top scientific panel last week endorsed an earlier study, by Penn State professor Michael E. Mann, that concluded the recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere is of a scale probably unseen for 400 to 1,000 years.....
Country star leads charge in well protest Astride a horse in the shadows of skyscrapers in downtown Calgary, country singer and Alberta rancher Ian Tyson led several community groups yesterday in a protest over energy development plans in the Foothills southwest of Calgary. The Foothills are rolling and beautiful, generally untouched by industrial development, with only the occasional well dotting the celebrated and iconic landscape. The area is also an important watershed. is in the early stages of what could be a large development in the region, with potentially hundreds of wells. "It's scary. Everything is changing," said Mr. Tyson, who has ranched in the Foothills for more than a quarter century and has put out a series of records extolling cowboy culture and ranch life. Three community groups presented a letter to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, which approves oil and natural gas wells, and to Premier Ralph Klein, who is in Washington this week to promote increased energy exports to the United States....
Salazar attacks BLM leases Ten months after the enactment of the Energy Policy Act, the Bureau of Land Management is facing scrutiny over arranging oil and gas leases in Colorado without adequate public input. This issue came to light Tuesday when Kathleen Clarke, director of the Bureau of Land Management, testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. One of the purposes of the Energy Policy Act, which President Bush signed in August, is to combat the growing dependence on foreign energy in part by increasing production in the Rocky Mountain region. The BLM is responsible for managing the oil and gas resources on federal lands. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., demanded that Clarke discuss how the BLM determines its lease-granting process and to consider the public's views before finalizing any arrangements. This comes in the wake of the BLM's plan to lease public lands for oil and gas exploration in the Grand Junction-Palisade area, despite public concern about the effects on the area's watershed....
Small-Business Groups Hail Executive Order on Eminent Domain Small-business advocates are voicing their support for an executive order by President Bush that curbs the powers of federal agencies to seize private property for public projects. The order, which the president signed on Friday, marked exactly a year to the day that the Supreme Court ruled local governments have the right to buy private homes and businesses for the purpose of economic development under the constitutional powers of eminent domain. Bush moved to limit those powers to instances that clearly benefit the general public and "not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interests of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken," the executive order said. The president also directed the attorney general to monitor its use by federal agencies....
Washington Property Rights Initiative Draws Shadowy Supporter and Big Money Opposition The push for an Oregon-style waive-or-pay property rights law in Washington state has a inspired an opposition movement, one that is well-funded and serious and going head-to-head with the property rights folks. I-933 is a Washington state initiative backed by farm bureaus and opposed by environmental groups and unions. The struggle over 933 is one waged by two campaigns that, financially, are remarkably well-matched. According to public finance documents filed with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission, the pro-933 Property Fairness Coalition (PFC) had raised $378,000 by the end of May. The opposition group called Citizens for Community Protection (CCP) raised $387,000. The more rightward PFC, meanwhile, took money from a number of county farm bureaus, but more than half — $200,000 — comes from a deep-pocketed group called Americans for Limited Government, or ALG, according to public records. ALG, based in Illinois, has ties through its board members to other conservative groups like the Cato Institute. The organization is spending millions of dollars in a nationwide ideological campaign of grassroots action. Its money funds libertarian-oriented political initiatives around the country, primarily in the form of spending caps and Measure 37-like property rights laws....
Pull the plug: USGS report is enough to stall Nevada water plan Ranchers in the Snake and Spring valleys in western Utah who depend on a delicate ecological balance of water, plants and weather for their livelihood have had ample reason to protest Nevada's plan to take groundwater out from under them. A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey shows their concerns are justified. Utah officials need more environmental data to confirm and expand on the USGS findings, but this report alone should be enough to pull the plug, at least temporarily, on Nevada's plan to pipe scarce water from Utah's fragile western desert to irrigate Las Vegas' thirsty new casinos and rapidly increasing subdivisions. The study, requested by the Forest Service because of concerns the plan could also hurt natural features in Great Basin National Park, identifies five areas in the park and five outside that would likely be affected by withdrawing water from the aquifer that lies beneath the Nevada-Utah border....
Burns pushes ban on new Front oil, gas leases Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., on Tuesday took steps to permanently prevent new oil and gas leasing on federal, public lands in the Rocky Mountain Front. Based on the language of the bill, no new oil and gas leases would be granted on Forest Service land and adjacent Bureau of Land Management property on the Front, said Matt Mackowiak, a spokesman for Burns. The bill protects valid, existing rights. But if those rights expire or are relinquished to the federal government they are subject to the withdrawal. Based on the bill, Congress also could revoke the measure in the event of an energy emergency caused by an oil or gas shortage. The language went through the Interior Appropriations subcommittee and will go before the full committee on Thursday, Mackowiak said....
Water and Wildlife Threatened by Rio Grande Logging Proposal Today, a coalition of private land owners and conservation groups took action to stop a logging proposal in the remote, upper watersheds of the San Luis Valley. The coalition charged that the US Forest Service failed to follow procedure to protect water resources, has not complied with wildlife requirements, and generally ignored the cumulative effects of the logging. The County Line timber sale is located high in the Conejos River watershed adjacent to the South San Juan Wilderness and the Continental Divide Trail. Several land owners surrounded by national forest slated for logging joined the lawsuit. "The Forest Service is degrading our public assets for the benefit of the extraction industries and disguising the activity as a 'healthy forest' policy. It is proven and observable that the American lumber industry is unable to conduct a salvage logging operation without seriously diminishing the forest's natural capability to regenerate itself." Said Randal McKown, a private property owner in the timber sale area and plaintiff on the lawsuit. "The effect of the County Line operation will be an ugly scar on an important recreational landscape for many generations of Americans."....
Senate subcommittee approves Interior-EPA spending bill Acting swiftly, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday boosted President Bush's request to fund land, air and water programs in a $26.1 billion fiscal 2007 spending bill for the Interior Department and conservation agencies. The Interior Appropriations Subcommittee approved its $26.1 billion measure by voice vote. Members complied with the request of Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Conrad Burns, R-Mont., to hold off amendments until the full committee meets. The bill compares with $26.3 billion enacted for fiscal 2006, $25.5 billion Bush requested and $25.9 billion proposed by the House last month. The House also adopted an amendment to stop giving oil and gas companies relief from paying royalties while fuel prices are at record highs. Senate said a similar proposal is expected in the full committee....
Navy gets permit to use sonar that may affect whales, dolphins Federal regulators granted the Navy a permit Tuesday to use sonar in a maritime exercise despite environmentalists' concerns it could disturb or even kill whales and dolphins. It was the first such permit granted to the Navy, and one environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said it would file a lawsuit today to prevent the sonar's use. The monthlong exercise, which includes anti-submarine training, involves naval forces from eight nations. It began Monday off the Hawaiian Islands. The sonar part of the exercise begins after July 4 and lasts three weeks. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) gave the Navy a permit to use mid-frequency active sonar, which can affect marine mammals' behavior. In documents released Tuesday, NOAA determined that the exercise would cause no significant environmental impact....
A sea of opinions surrounds future of Santa Rosa Island Tim Vail, a fourth-generation California rancher, is on Capitol Hill this week for the second time in his life. His first visit was in 1986 when his family sold Santa Rosa Island to the National Park Service but continued to operate a commercial elk- and deer-hunting operation on it. And now Vail, along with two cousins who run the island’s hunting business, is back because Santa Rosa, part of Southern California’s Channel Islands National Park, is caught in a fierce legislative battle surrounding the island’s deer and elk, as well as the hunting operation. “We are ranchers, not politicos,” Vail said. At issue is a provision introduced by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and adopted as part of the House 2007 defense authorization bill that would allow veterans and their families to hunt on Santa Rosa past a court-set deadline of 2011. After following the measure’s progress, the Vails say, they believed it was time to come to the Hill to offer a different solution for the island’s future....
Investigate This: Wetlands Restoration Flap Tempers are flaring in Marin County over a project to restore wetlands, a project some claim is happening at the expense of humans' health and safety. Homeowners in a new Novato development say it was never disclosed to them that big trucks would be hauling toxic materials so close to their backyards. The work starts early in the morning and continues throughout the day, along Todd Road, barely 20 feet from their homes – and right under some people's bedroom windows. "We're in bed with trucks,” said homeowner Chrissy Theran. So why are the trucks here? Because next to the development is the old Hamilton Air Force Base, which sat for decades right next to the bay, in Novato. The huge construction project now underway will turn the base back into what it was in the first place – wetlands bordering the water. Tempers are flaring in Marin County over a project to restore wetlands, a project some claim is happening at the expense of humans' health and safety. Moreover, the entire wetlands restoration project isn't scheduled to be completed until roughly the year 2020....
Troubles for farmers may linger even after dry spell ends A drought over a third of the nation has grown so severe that consumers could be facing higher prices for everything from beef to bread by the end of the year. Conditions have become so dire that "the middle of the United States and certainly the Southwest are well on their way to one of the worst droughts in history," says Carl Anderson, professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M University. Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and Mississippi have been hit the hardest, and the dry weather continues to heighten the risk of fire. Fires have scorched 3.5 million acres this year. Some cities in Texas and the entire state of Georgia have begun restricting water use, even after rains this week. For ranchers, the financial losses are likely to linger beyond the drought....
Anti-NAFTA Sentiment Rising in Mexico Concerned about the looming elimination of tariffs on different agricultural products, Mexican farm and labor organizations are renewing calls for a renegotiation of sections of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In Tamaulipas state, leaders of the Federation of Rural Landowners, and the Tamaulipas Regional Ranchers Union, support the growing demands to reopen the agricultural clauses of the NAFTA for revision. Eduardo Espronceda Galindo, the president of the landowner's group, contended that increased trade liberalization would trigger a larger "exodus to the big cities." Espronceda's warnings come less than two years before all tariffs on corn, bean and powdered milk products are set to expire. Anticipating economic blows from the 2008 tariff teardown, several Mexican national organizations have prepared a preliminary document that urges the next Mexican president to demand either the partial suspension or cancellation of NAFTA's agricultural provisions. Sometimes identified with the PRI and PRD political parties, the organizations backing the appeal include the Mexican Electrical Workers Union, Caritas, the General Union of Workers and Farmers (Ugcom), and the big National Farmers Confederation. The groups maintain that NAFTA has "represented the total collapse of the agricultural and industrial productive economy," resulting in massive unemployment and the disappearance of thousands of small businesses....
AMC's cable TV western "Broken Trail" scores big The debut of "Broken Trail," an AMC network western starring Oscar winner Robert Duvall, rounded up nearly 10 million viewers to rank as the biggest cable telecast so far this year, Nielsen Media Research reported on Tuesday. The two-hour premiere on Sunday night also achieved the rare feat of drawing the night's largest audience of any show on all of U.S. television, including the four major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. Part one of the four-hour epic, the first original TV movie ever to air on AMC, averaged 9.8 million viewers in all, surpassing the night's No. 1 program on broadcast TV, "60 Minutes," which drew 9.2 million on CBS. In addition to being 2006's most watched cable telecast to date, "Broken Trail" also shattered AMC's own all-time ratings record while ranking as the second-most watched cable movie on any network since 1995 (behind the TNT western "Crossfire Trail," starring Tom Selleck, in 2001)....
On the Edge of Common Sense: No beast more noble than the mighty horse Why the horse? It's like asking why the sun? Why the heart? Why the color purple? If there were a monarchy, the horse would be king. Equidae hold an exalted position in the society of mankind. On their backs, humans become a better species. No matter how you stack up other domesticated animals, none has quite the stature of the horse. Perhaps it is because of the inherent wildness that is always lurking behind their eyes. It is a quality that is shared with cats. Regardless of how tame or trustworthy, the potential for a feral reaction that can maim or destroy lies within their power. Horses have always possessed the potential for heroism. Thunderous poetry like "The Man From Snowy River" to "East is East and West is West" elevates the horse to mythical proportions. I grant there are many examples of dogs saving the day, but dogs have become too domesticated, too subservient. Indians had dogs for millennia and never invented the wheel. Coronado gave them the horse, and they became warriors....
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Home, Home on the Range: An Evening of Western Music with RW Hampton

Presented by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
Thursday, August 17, 2006 7:30 PM

RW Hampton is one of the top Cowboy Music performers in America. As a working cowboy, RW has lived what he sings about; the world of early mornings, hard work, rough horses, maverick cattle and the range. He has performed all over the United States including The Grand Ole Opry and The Smithsonian Institution.

Music Series: Inspired by the Environment. Music provides us with a mental picture of nature and at times creates environmental awareness and concern.

Proceeds benefit the Museum. Members $10/adult, $5/child; non-members $15/adult, $7/child

To purchase tickets at member pricing, please join the Museum.

Event Contact Information: Jeff Barber, 805-682-4711 ext. 170 or jbarber@sbnature2.org
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Bush: Climate change is 'serious problem'

US President George W. Bush said it was time to move past a debate over whether human activity is a significant factor behind global warming and into a discussion of possible remedies. "I have said consistently that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused," Bush told reporters. "We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary to enable us to achieve a couple of big objectives: One, be good stewards of the environment; two, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil, for economic reasons as for national security reasons," he said. Bush cited "clean-coal technology," efforts to develop automobiles powered by hydrogen or ethanol, and his push for the United States to develop significant new nuclear energy capabilities. "The truth of the matter is, if this country wants to get rid of its greenhouse gases, we've got to have the nuclear power industry be vibrant and viable," he said.
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NEWS ROUNDUP

Wyoming methane drilling lags behind last year Difficulties in getting water discharge permits have slowed drilling for coal-bed methane in Wyoming 20 percent below last year's average of 50 rigs, the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission says. However, regulatory officials say they expect the pace of coal-bed methane drilling to pick up because seasonal restrictions were lifted June 15. "We're in the heart of the field season now, because we can do all the field work without delays for snow and muddy conditions," said Chris Hanson, field manager at the Buffalo field office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Although coal-bed methane drilling is down this year, the BLM Buffalo field office has issued more permits this year than last. So far this year, the office has issued 1,546 permits, compared with 1,392 issued at this time last year....
Wild horse adoptions see decreased turnout Dozens of wild horses will have to try again to find new homes. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management hosted an adoption auction this past weekend at Flickerwood Arena in Jackson, about 100 miles south of St. Louis. But of 70 horses and 11 burros available, only 16 animals were adopted. At a similar event two years ago, nearly all of the horses and burros were adopted. Organizer Randy Anderson was disappointed with the low turnout but said there are many factors in reduced demand for horses. "Normally in Missouri, we do pretty well," Anderson said. "But nationwide, the horse industry is going through some challenges. There’s a lot of animals out there, less people to adopt them, a lot of competition from other organizations, the price of fuel and economic considerations." Arena owner Mark Boardham wondered if the government did enough to promote the auction....
Prairie dogs to move as highway project looms The state wildlife agency plans to move about 150 white-tailed prairie dogs in Montana’s sensitive population, to save them from a highway construction project near Wyoming. A decision this week from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks authorizes relocating three of Montana’s 10 active colonies of white-tailed prairie dogs, all of which are in Carbon County. The agency plans to trap the squirrel-like rodents this summer and move them to federal land, so they will be spared harm from the widening of Montana 72 southwest of Billings. White-tailed prairie dogs are classified as a ‘‘species of concern’’ in Montana. The 10 colonies inhabit about 250 acres in the state, down roughly two-thirds from their acreage in the 1970s, when there were 15 colonies. Fish, Wildlife and Parks attributes the decline to disease and the conversion of habitat for agriculture or other uses. White-tailed prairie dogs contribute to prey and habitat for eagles, hawks, black-footed ferrets and other wildlife. The prairie dogs to be moved are a significant part of Montana’s population, said Allison Puchniak, a native species biologist for the wildlife agency. Puchniak said Thursday that she did not have a figure for the state’s total population....
Grassland could again see ferrets Using a special rule under the Endangered Species Act, federal officials hope to bring the endangered black-footed ferret back to Thunder Basin National Grassland without hampering public and private land use. Commonly considered the most endangered mammal in North America, the black-footed ferret once lived on the grassland, where it hunted prairie dogs as a main food source and used the prairie dog’s tunnels for shelter from predators. Historically, ferrets occupied grasslands from Montana to Mexico. The animal was thought to be extinct until a small group of ferrets was found on a ranch near Meeteetse in 1981. Today, the only population of ferrets in the wild in Wyoming is found in the Shirley Basin south of Casper, established through a series of transplants from a federal captive breeding program. Reintroduction programs have met with spotty success at best, as the ferrets' survival depends on maintaining high numbers of prairie dogs, which are easily killed by plague. Thunder Basin is one of the few remaining grasslands with prairie dog populations adequate to support ferret reintroduction, officials say. U.S. Forest Service officials who manage the Thunder Basin grassland have planned for a ferret reintroduction for years, incorporating that into a major management plan....
Number of gray whales increases along Calif. coast While many whale species remain endangered, the gray whale calf count along the California coast rose sharply this spring, marine scientists reported Monday. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the increase probably reflects the whales' greater access to their Arctic Ocean feeding grounds. That's likely due to warmer temperatures that have reduced sea ice. "For gray whales, reduced ice provides greater access to prey, just the opposite of what we see with polar bears, where reduced ice means reduced access to prey," said Wayne Perryman, a biologist at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. The center has been counting gray whale calves since 1991 from a point of land that pokes out into the Pacific at Piedras Blancas Light Station, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Gray whales swim close to the shore there when migrating between Baja California and the Bering Sea. The count reached an estimated 1,018 gray whale calves this year. That's up from 945 last year and 300 to 500 in the 1999-2001 migrations....
Developer sentenced for destroying eagle nest A Fort Myers development supervisor who admitted to destroying an eagle nest was sentenced today to a year of probation, a $2,000 fine and 50 hours of community service with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. William Martin Murphy, 62, pleaded guilty in March to plowing down a tree where a pair of nesting eagles had decided to take up residence. The tree, growing on a lot between Colonial Boulevard and Winkler Avenue, just north of Heritage Palms in Fort Myers, stood in the way of an imminent development. When he pleaded out in court Murphy, an employee of the Levitt & Sons development firm, admitted to destroying the tree because he thought it would cause permitting problems. Today, attorneys for Murphy argued for a lenient sentence because Murphy had no criminal record....
Baby pelicans starving along California coast Miles from the shoreline, 10 baby brown pelicans lounge by a pool in a roomy cage, large buckets of fish there for the taking. Just days ago, these birds could not feed themselves at all. Scores of starving baby pelicans — emaciated, cold and too weak to fly — are washing up on California beaches in disturbing numbers this spring. The underfed California brown pelicans have stirred concerns over the endangered species, which in recent years has shown strong signs of recovery. Biologists say the recovery could actually be the source of the problem: There are more pelicans competing for food. The International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia, in the grassy hills about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco, has taken in almost two dozen pelicans this month, most of them near Santa Cruz and Monterey, all of them 2 to 4 months old....
Grass variety hazardous to wildlife, domestic animals The grass variety once considered a solution for ranchers looking to build Missouri's cattle industry is now being described much differently - as a nuisance. Tall fescue - the hardy, dense and easily grown grass that is common in parks, lawns and in many grazing fields in Missouri and Kansas - is earning a reputation as an environmental terror and livestock health hazard. Its strands prevent game birds from moving through it, and its tendency to crowd out native grasses and wildflowers depletes food and shelter. Some varieties also create a fungus that can be hazardous to grazing animals, including cattle and horses. "In the eastern United States, fescue is the Number 1 threat to wildlife," said Steve Clubine, grasslands biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation. "Inch by inch, foot by foot, we keep losing habitat." The number of prairie chickens, an endangered species in Missouri, has rapidly declined, and quail and songbirds such as the meadowlark are dying out. Grassland bird populations in eastern Kansas have also dropped. "I don't think there's any doubt, in eastern Kansas where fescue has been dominant, our quail population went in the tank," said Jim Pittman of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks....
A call to revitalize once-lush estuary There were once so many mallards, they seemed like thick, dark clouds against the sky. So loud, they reminded Germán Muñoz of an entire stadium, wild with applause, when their webbed feet struck the water's surface. But the migratory ducks stopped coming years ago when the wetlands dried up and salt cedar shrubs took over. Muñoz longs for their return, and at 59, the hunting guide is working to bring them back, cutting away the salt cedar, watching water levels and planting fragrant mesquite trees that once graced this land. Here and elsewhere on the Colorado River Delta, once-lush landscapes now survive largely on runoff, leaks and surpluses. Today, even those flows are threatened as users upstream vie for every drop. As it crosses nine states in two countries, the 1,450-mile river is a lifeline that provides drinking water to 25 million people and irrigation for 3.5 million acres of agricultural land; but few remember the stands of cottonwoods and willow, the cattail marshes filled with wildlife that still persist at the river's ravaged and resilient mouth....
Volunteers guard threatened bird's eggs After months of watching and waiting, on June 18 a group of California State Parks staff and volunteers celebrated an eagerly anticipated addition to their brood of protected wildlife: three tiny, speckled snowy plover eggs. Within an hour of their discovery on Francis Beach, volunteers erected a netted enclosure to protect the plover family from predators. Finding Western snowy plover eggs is so rare, and the chance of their survival so small, that human intervention at this stage has been crucial since the bird was listed as an endangered species in 1993. It's ironic that the small, puffy birds have chosen to lay their eggs on one of the busiest beaches in town. Their predators are everywhere — careless humans, hungry hawks and great horned owls, foxes, skunks, and raccoons. But year after year, the skittish birds continue to hatch their eggs on a strip of beach no more than 50 yards from the ocean. Even their nests, no more than shallow bowls of sand dug by the male plover, seem to invite an attack. Consequently, more than 60 State Parks volunteers have signed up to maintain daylong vigils over the plovers who nest along coastal beaches and waterways. Since 1993, they have spent 300 days a year monitoring known habitat areas, such as the one cordoned off on Francis Beach, for signs of snowy plovers and their nests....
The Spotted Owl Canard and Environmentalists A funny thing happened here in our Northwestern forest; a giant canard has been shot out of the sky. One of the most fought over endangered species in the history of the West, the Spotted Owl, contrary to popular belief appears to be the victim of an invasive species from the eastern forest; the culprit, the Barred Owl. The Spotted Owl is losing territory because the larger, tougher, Barred Owl, desires it also. Barred Owls are a more adaptable species, being more flexible, they spread out effectively, and occupy diverse habitats. Sometimes they interbreed with Spotted Owls creating Spotted-Barred Owl hybrids. Is the Barred Owl invasion natural? Kent Livezey, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said: “The Barred Owl's migration was likely caused by people but not necessarily from fragmentation of forests from logging or development, rather, an increase in tree cover in the center of North America helped along by fire suppression and tree planting prompted the owl's move west. But, they made it here under their own steam.” Native Americans also stopped burning the Great Plains in the 1880’s: an increase of tree density is the result. This accelerated the tree bridge from the eastern forests into the Spotted Owl territory of the Northwest. This paradoxical development begs the question: what is to be done about the Barred Owl invasion?....
Red tape may strangle cottontail rabbits As champion for all things small, furry, and few, David Wade isn't shy about going to bat for bunnies. Which is why he filed a lawsuit last week to have the New England cottontail declared an endangered species. Rabbits, which typically proliferate like, well, themselves, aren't too often on this end of the stick. But the New England cottontail is being decimated as fast-growing suburbs cut into its scrubby habitat and other more aggressive, invasive rabbit species combine to crowd them out. Scientists have known that the New England cottontail - the only cottontail native to the region - was in sad shape since the early 1990s. Several groups, including Mr. Wade, petitioned for the rabbit's protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in August 2000. But after nearly six years of waiting for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to make a decision, the cottontail just can't wait any longer, several experts say....
Cannibalism cited among polar bears Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found. The study reviewed several examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and in northwestern Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth. Polar bears feed primarily on ringed seals and use sea ice for feeding, mating and giving birth. Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food is less common, said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center....
Editorial: Look at big picture to save salmon When they suggested pulling the plug on a lifeline for Idaho's sockeye salmon, scientists swam straight into a political turbine. But the scientists didn't get it entirely wrong. They pointed out — correctly — that myriad factors keep the sockeye teetering on the edge of extinction. The sooner the Northwest faces the big picture, the better the chances of survival for all of the region's imperiled wild salmon. Including, but most profoundly, Idaho's sockeye, now hanging on in a genetic emergency room. The sockeye salmon — the ocean-running red fish that gave the Stanley Basin's Redfish Lake its name — have been on the federal government's endangered species list since 1991. Fourteen summers later, only six adult sockeye returned to the Sawtooths, completing a mind-boggling 900-mile, 6,500-foot climb from the Pacific. The sockeye are hanging on not in their pristine spawning waters, but under man-made conditions at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game Eagle Fish Hatchery in Eagle....
Boom in Ethanol Reshapes Economy of Heartland Dozens of factories that turn corn into the gasoline substitute ethanol are sprouting up across the nation, from Tennessee to Kansas, and California, often in places hundreds of miles away from where corn is grown. Once considered the green dream of the environmentally sensitive, ethanol has become the province of agricultural giants that have long pressed for its use as fuel, as well as newcomers seeking to cash in on a bonanza. The modern-day gold rush is driven by a number of factors: generous government subsidies, surging demand for ethanol as a gasoline supplement, a potent blend of farm-state politics and the prospect of generating more than a 100 percent profit in less than two years. The rush is taking place despite concerns that large-scale diversion of agricultural resources to fuel could result in price increases for food for people and livestock, as well as the transformation of vast preserved areas into farmland. Even in the small town of Hereford, in the middle of the Texas Panhandle's cattle country and hundreds of miles from the agricultural heartland, two companies are rushing to build plants to turn corn into fuel....
Coal Calls Dan Fessler spent five years looking for a site to launch his vision of a new industry that could produce clean fuel from coal — and, last year, he chose Wyoming. “The mines are there; they’re massive and they’re well-financed,’’ he says. “The rail infrastructure is there. For me to do (this project) in Montana would require me to develop a coal reserve and a transportation infrastructure, which is very expensive. “I’m having enough trouble finding financial backing (just) for the coal-to-liquids plant. That’s why you find people like me being at the mouth of the Powder River Basin (in Wyoming) rather than going up and talking to your governor.’’ Fessler and his company, Clear Energy Solutions, illustrate a simple fact: While Gov. Brian Schweitzer has been relentlessly promoting development of coal-to-liquids plants and “clean coal’’ projects in Montana, potential projects are on the drawing board in Wyoming. DKRW Energy of Houston is working on a coal-to-liquids project near Medicine Bow, Wyo., and MidAmerican Energy, the holding company controlled by billionaire investor Warren Buffet, recently bought coal properties south of Sheridan, Wyo., with an eye toward developing a cleaner-burning, coal-fired power plant or possibly coal-to-liquids projects....
Conservation group appeals pipeline decision The proposed natural gas pipeline from Coos Bay to Malin, approximately 225 miles long and running through Douglas County, is facing a legal challenge. Roseburg-based conservation group Umpqua Watersheds is appealing “casual use” activities for the proposed route of the Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline on Bureau of Land Management lands, saying the activities disregard the National Environmental Policy Act. A right-of-way application granted by BLM to the three companies proposing to jointly develop the pipeline includes casual use. The right-of-way allows the companies to proceed with the route’s development and conduct civil, environmental, cultural resources and geotechnical surveys on the ground. Umpqua Watersheds says the establishment of a route on about 40 miles of BLM lands is “illegal and unnecessary” because it doesn’t allow the public to weigh in on a scoping process....
Unlikely Duo Tackles Drilling(Subscription) The House is set to vote this week on a bill to overturn a 25-year ban on oil and gas exploration along much of the nation's coastlines -- the result, in large part, of efforts by a political odd couple. Republican Rep. John Peterson, a former grocer, is a conservative from Pennsylvania, and Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a former college professor, is a liberal from Hawaii. Together, they have forged an industry-labor coalition around the argument that natural-gas prices are driving companies out of the U.S. and costing workers their jobs. "Either we fix this problem, or we become a second-rate nation," says Mr. Peterson, noting that natural-gas prices have doubled for industrial users and small businesses in the past five years. Drilling is prohibited in most U.S. waters within 200 miles of the coastline. (The exception is the western part of the Gulf of Mexico.) The bill pushed by Messrs. Peterson and Abercrombie would allow drilling beyond 50 miles from the shore and give states financial incentives to allow drilling even closer. Over the past three years, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service has made a series of estimates about the amount of natural gas that might be available there, ranging from 85 trillion to 333 trillion cubic feet. The U.S. uses about 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year. Officials caution that the estimates are based on surveys from the '70s and may be outdated. Both supporters and opponents say the House vote, scheduled for Thursday, will be close. The legislation, which is opposed by environmentalists, has picked up support in recent weeks, reflecting lawmakers' need to be seen addressing energy prices in an election year. The bill faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, where Florida's senators have threatened a filibuster....
U.S. Grants 1st License for Major Nuclear Plant in 30 Years The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its first license for a major commercial nuclear facility in 30 years, allowing an international consortium to build what will be the nation's first private fuel source for commercial nuclear power plants. Construction of the $1.5 billion National Enrichment Facility, under review for the past 2 1/2 years, could begin in August, and the plant could be ready to sell enriched uranium by early 2009, said James Ferland, president of the consortium of nuclear companies, Louisiana Energy Services. The plant, licensed on Friday, will be built near the small southeastern New Mexico community of Eunice, where support for the project is strong. Critics say it will pollute the environment, guzzle scarce water and leave the town with tons of radioactive waste and nowhere to put it. Although the state was largely excluded for the licensing process, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), a former energy secretary, said he expects that New Mexicans and their environment will be protected by an agreement state officials had reached with Louisiana Energy Services....
U.S. firefighters in Mexico as American West burns Despite raging wildfires across the American Southwest in recent weeks, the state of California sent more than four dozen firefighters 300 miles south of the U.S. border to battle blazes in Mexico. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) last week dispatched two engine strike teams with a total of ten engines and 54 personnel after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office approved a request by Baja California Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther. "Worse, what protection is offered to U.S. firefighters if they get hurt ... ? What protection do they have from disease while in Mexico? Who is paying for CDF to fight fire in Mexico? Certainly Mexico isn't. That's right folks – again, it's the good ol' USA taxpayer footing the bill for Mexicans in their own country. This is more loco than the human mind can comprehend. ... It's pathetic." This weekend, 23 large blazes were burning more than 275,000 acres in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wyoming....
Landowners Learn Property Is Really National Forest Land A surveying mistake made almost 30 years ago could prove pricey for some landowners in the Crystal Lakes subdivision west of Red Feather Lakes in Larimer County. Property owners recently learned that some of their land is actually within the boundaries of the publicly owned Roosevelt National Forest. Now they might have to buy the land from the U.S. Forest Service at current market prices. A 2003 Bureau of Land Management survey found that a private survey in 1975 failed to accurately locate markers on the ground for section corners, placing the forest boundary in the wrong place. About 20 properties are affected, with forest land of up to 1.63 acres. Canyon Lakes District Ranger Ellen Hodges said the Forest Service wants to work with landowners to settle the issue. But Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave said residents shouldn't have to pay for the land a second time and she's looking into legislative solutions to the problem....
Wilderness bill's fate hinges on access If Rep. Mike Thompson's 300,000-acre wilderness bill protecting some of the most scenic lands along California's North Coast passes this year, what made the difference may well have been negotiations that won the endorsement of a Del Norte County supervisor in February. With the clock ticking down on the congressional session, last-minute pressure is building on House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, to move the bill out of his committee and to the House floor for passage. First introduced in 2002, the legislation would declare as wilderness federal lands owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service from Napa County to the Oregon border. The most spectacular addition would be 42,585 acres in the King Range National Conservation Area, including a 26-mile stretch of beach that is the longest undeveloped coastline remaining in the continental United States....
Udall's Valle Vidal bill now prime for full House vote The Valle Vidal Protection Act of 2005 cleared another major hurdle today, passing the House Committee on Resources, and is now ready for a vote by the full House, bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., announced Wednesday. Udall, who has long served on the House Resources Committee, said "Protecting the Valle Vidal means preserving for New Mexico and the nation a land rich in history and culture and abundant in wildlife. America's earliest inhabitants -- Pueblo cultures, Spanish settlers and extensive populations of wildlife -- have made their homes there and I believe we have a responsibility to protect it for future generations." H.R. 3817 was introduced by Udall on September 15, 2005, and seeks to protect the 102,000-acre Valle Vidal area of the Carson National Forest from energy and mineral extraction and development. The Valle Vidal tract was donated to the Forest Service in 1982 by Pennzoil Co., which never allowed drilling in the area....Donated? Yes, for a huge tax write-off.
RMNP wilderness measure stalls in Congress Proponents of a bill to designate Rocky Mountain National Park a wilderness area say they need the support of U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. Both Republican politicians, however, have yet to sign on to the Senate and House wilderness bills, one introduced by Sen. Ken Salazar and the other by Rep. Mark Udall, both Democrats. The identical bills would ratify a Nixon-era proposal to designate Rocky Mountain National Park a wilderness area. A Musgrave spokesman said the congresswoman still needs one last assurance. “Before she supports that bill, she would like more information and a study of the economic impacts of a wilderness area on Estes Park,” spokesman Guy Short said. He said Musgrave is open to the idea of the designation for the park, but she wants all the economic facts first....
In Defense of Logging and Loggers On the third full weekend of June Encampment Wyoming hosts the annual Rocky Mountain Champion Lumberjack Completion where loggers come from all over the country to compete for the coveted title. Chips fly during this competition using chain saws, axes and hand saws, the men and women competitors cut down trees competing in events that include: Tree Felling, two-man handsaw tree felling, two-man handsaw, two-woman handsaw, power saw log bucking, one-man handsaw, man & woman handsaw team, choker setting, axe chopping, pole throw, axe throw, power saw log bucking, power saw log bucking, and the mad loggers chainsaw throw. It is refreshing to hear that this proud profession is still celebrated despite its vilification by America’s tree huggers who have turned a blind eye to their need for timber products in their crusade to reserve our forests for the Bark Beetle and fire. Scientists and forest managers continue to tell us proactive forest management is a solution for overcrowded, unhealthy and fire-prone forests. Thinning and logging reduce fuels and can make wildfires far less devastating while making mountain communities far safer. But some refuse to listen....
‘Over the River’ artists request EIS The artists proposing the “Over the River” project to drape part of the Arkansas River with fabric panels have requested a more in-depth investigation into the potential impacts the venture could have. The Bureau of Land Management’s Royal Gorge Field Office has already begun work on an Environmental Impact Statement at the request of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The survey is expected to take at least another year. Already working on an Environmental Assessment for the project, the BLM is simply transitioning that information into the more extensive EIS. “This is being done at the request of the artists themselves,” said Roy Masinton, local BLM manager. “They realize we may have to go into an EIS ultimately anyway, and getting into this earlier rather than later would probably save them both money and time.”....
Court won't revisit petroglyph theft A U.S. appeals court panel has refused the Justice Department's request to rehear the government's case that seeks to reinstate convictions for two men who admitted they removed ancient American Indian rock art in Nevada. Federal prosecutors said they were informed by mail earlier this week that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had denied the request for rehearing the case involving the theft of the centuries-old petroglyphs from national forest land in August 2003. The three-judge panel provided no explanation for its decision, which was entered with the court's clerk on June 15 but not previously publicized. The Forest Service believes the petroglyphs -- including etchings of an archer and a big horn sheep -- are at least 1,000 years old....
EPA Testing Waste From Old Smelting Plant in Oxnard Except for the waves crashing nearby, the slag heap at Ormond Beach in Ventura County could double as a moonscape. Ragged berms and cracked plains spread over 28 acres top a 45-foot-high mass of compacted gray ash. Nothing grows there — not even a weed. For decades, community activists have said that the waste pile and the now-shuttered foundry in Oxnard that created it are a scar on the coast and a threat to an adjacent lagoon brimming with bird and sea life. Their goal of seeing the pile removed, and the entire area restored as a wetland, gained unexpected momentum last week with the arrival of a team of inspectors from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Using sensitive monitoring equipment, geologists are testing nearby residential tracts, soil, sand, groundwater, the air and even fish from the lagoon for evidence of radiation and other pollutants....
Norton defends former aide Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton defended her one-time top deputy, J. Steven Griles, after a Senate committee reported it had unanswered questions about his contacts with embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee on Thursday released a report that said it found no evidence of any wrongdoing by Norton in its probe into Abramoff's lobbying on behalf of Indian tribes, including his attempts to influence Interior Department decisions. The report did cite lingering questions about Abramoff's claims to have cultivated a close working relationship with former Deputy Secretary Griles through the help of a woman named Italia Federici, who had known Norton since the mid-1990s in Colorado. And Norton dismissed what she called one "preposterous claim" reportedly made by Abramoff: that he had "interviewed Griles for his position at Interior and, in fact, helped him get his job there." "I worked with Steve during the Reagan administration," Norton wrote. "I had admired and respected him for over 15 years, and I did not need any outside influence to know I wanted Steve to be my deputy. Abramoff played no role, and this claim just shows how much he exaggerated his bragging."....
Pesticide exposure linked to Parkinson`s People exposed to pesticides are at a higher risk of developing Parkinson`s disease, according to the longest and largest study yet to support such a connection. Study participants who reported regular exposure to pesticides had a 70 percent higher incidence of the disease than those who were not exposed to the chemicals. 'This is the first fairly clear evidence that some chemical exposure significantly increases risk for Parkinson`s,' said lead author Dr. Alberto Ascherio, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. 'With the combined evidence of all the studies in humans ... it`s extremely unlikely there is another explanation,' he said. The study will appear in the July issue of the Annals of Neurology. People who reported exposure to pesticides were 14 times more likely to list their occupation as farmer, rancher or fisherman, the authors wrote. Even so, after analysis both farmers and non-farmers demonstrated the same increase -- 70 percent -- in Parkinson`s incidence. Ascherio suspects the non-farmers represent people using pesticides around their home and garden....
Charity trail rides fun way to give As the twin dun-colored mules with the bold lightning stripes down their legs heaved the wagon into motion, the greener horses snorted and stomped, quickly raising dust and their rider's heartbeats. Excitement spiced with a taste of danger evaporated after a few miles as the 85 horses and two wagons spread out and settled down to the trail pace through the Bull Mountains. The second annual Chase Hawks Memorial ride at the Dahl family's Runamuk Ranch attracted more than 100 people from Montana and North Dakota and as far away as Florida. Fifth-generation rancher Toby Dahl started the ride with a short speech: "I'm Toby. I know the way," he said as he rode off, spurs twirling....
Cowboys debate new rules for Calgary Stampede Fewer cowboys will be competing at this year's Calgary Stampede, prompting some grumbles at an Alberta rodeo over the weekend. The Stampede is less than two weeks away and for the first time, rodeo organizers have set up new qualifying rules. Each of the six events at this year's rodeo will have a top prize of $100,000, up from $50,000. But there will be fewer cowboys competing for that money. Only 120 cowboys and cowgirls will rope, wrestle or ride, compared to more than 330 last year. At a rodeo in High River this weekend, some cowboys worried the change would mean fewer Canadians competing in Calgary this year. Lance Mulvahill missed the cut for saddle bronco at the Stampede. He said having fewer Canadians in Canada's biggest rodeo is bad for the sport and bad for the industry that supports it....
It's All Trew: My, how record keeping has changed Today's computers, calculators, spreadsheets, instant messaging and professional accountants make good record keeping a breeze. It wasn’t like that in the old days. Larry Touchon sent information on early records kept in what his family called a "tobacco book." It was about the size of a shirt pocket, contained about 30 pages with blue lines and had a heavier cover sporting tobacco advertising, hence its name. All cotton farmers and field hands had such a book and kept meticulous records of how many pounds of cotton each person picked, how many hours worked or rows whopped. Some kept financial records of bills paid and checks written. Amazingly, the figures in the books were considered correct to the point they stood up in a court of law. The integrity of this method of record keeping was accepted as the gospel in that circle of people. My father, J.T. Trew, had a similar book with the same tobacco advertising on the cover, but he called it his "tally book." Each pasture or field was named along with the number of livestock the area contained. He also kept breeding and birth dates, and one page held the totals of livestock lost to death during the last year. Records of livestock sales were recorded in detail on the pages....
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NEWS

BLM strives to monitor Otero Mesa balancing act More than a hundred wells had been dug in Otero Mesa in the hundred years before Heyco Energy Group"s turn in 1996, but none produced gas or oil until the Roswell-based company dug 1-Y and 25-1. These two test wells detected natural gas reserves large enough to prompt four more applications for drilling permits and a request for a pipeline. The federal land agency approved the permits and the pipeline, but suspended drilling until it could revise its 1986 management plan for the ecologically sensitive mesa. A draft of the revision was released for public comment in October 2000, and a final record of decision and management plan appeared in January 2005. The new plan featured an unprecedented 5 percent use stipulation, which requires leaseholders to treat all their leases as one, and only disturb 5 percent of that total lease area at a time. The plan also stipulates that oil and gas developers must restore the disturbed areas to "a composition and density that closely approximates the surrounding vegetation as prescribed by the BLM, and is free of noxious weeds," before moving on to the next 5 percent of their leased parcel....
Ski group wants to remove roadless designation on 8,000 acres The trade association for 26 Colorado ski areas is seeking to remove 8,000 acres from the U.S. Forest Service's inventoried roadless areas. Colorado Ski Country USA supports preserving most of the 4.43 million roadless acres in the state, but it wants to remove the roadless designation from land within ski-area permit boundaries. The roadless designation does not prohibit skiing, but the use of roadless lands can pose public relations headaches, Arapahoe Basin general manager Alan Henceroth said. Aspen Skiing Co. is facing opposition from some environmentalists and backcountry skiers over a plan to add skiing terrain within its ski-area permit boundary. One of the opposition's arguments is it would harm roadless lands....
Forest Service workers report growing dangers on the job For the nation's forest rangers, the serenity of the woods increasingly is giving way to confrontations with unruly visitors. Attacks, threats and lesser altercations invo|ving Forest Service workers reached an all-time high last year, according to government documents obtained by a public employees advocacy group. Incidents ranged from gunshots to stalking and verbal abuse. The agency tally shows 477 such reports in 2005, compared with 88 logged a year earlier. The total in 2003 was 104; in 1995, it was 34. Among the more serious incidents, a Forest Service worker was run down by a man in a snowmobile in California's Lake Tahoe Basin Management area. The man pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon. Also, Forest Service workers were shot at while trying to confiscate a marijuana plantation in California's Angeles National Forest. Two loaded shotguns and more than 78 kilograms of processed marijuana were seized. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to the Associated Press....
Ranchers keep leery eye on Army Life clings tenuously here to the limestone soil, dry as baby powder and so fragile that wagon tracks still trace the Santa Fe Trail more than 100 years after pioneers rolled southwest. Ranchers and soldiers are uneasy neighbors, but they agree on one thing: it takes a lot of land to do just about anything in this arid region. Cattle need 60 acres apiece to survive on the short-grass prairie, and ranches often stretch across tens of thousands of acres. The Army’s own spread, the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, about 150 miles southeast of Fort Carson, covers 375 square miles and is facing a major increase in training demands. Maj. Gen. Robert Mixon says Fort Carson will soon be responsible for training 25,000 active-duty troops and every Reserve and National Guard soldier west of the Mississippi River — more than 230,000 of them. Mixon knows Piñon Canyon won’t take the pounding of up to 50,000 soldiers rampaging their way through mock war. Without more land, experts say, boots and 72-ton tanks will grind the area into a moonscape. Stopping by the canyon to visit troops in training, Mixon says he needs as much as 725 square miles more to get the job done....
Rainbow Family faces fines but not eviction Thousands of campers flocking to a gathering of the Rainbow Family won't face eviction from a meadow north of town but could face fines and jail time after the U.S. Forest Service denied them a permit, officials said Friday. The counterculture group originally didn't apply for the permit, required of any gathering of more than 74 people, even though the event is expected to draw 20,000 people. When some members did apply this week, officials denied it, citing fire danger, limited road access and other planned events nearby. Rangers will warn campers as they arrive, give them a chance to leave and cite them if they don't, Forest Service spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano said. They could be fined up to $5,000 and sentenced to up to six months in jail if convicted. Ottaviano said the Rainbow Family campers are putting themselves in potential danger because of high fire danger and poor access to the meadow in the Routt National Forest....
Free spirits evoke fear Never has a rainbow struck so much fear. Near Steamboat Springs this week, area law enforcement officers tried to calm residents concerned about the annual gathering of the Rainbow Family of Living Light. The counterculture event 30 miles north of Steamboat Springs is expected to draw 20,000 people. Officers from the U.S. Forest Service, Steamboat Springs police and fire departments, Routt County Department of Environmental Health, North Routt Fire Protection District and Routt County Sheriff's Office held a community meeting Friday to answer questions and explain to the general public how to best handle the July 1 to 7 gathering, which is being held at Big Red Park north of Columbine. Police Capt. Joel Rae told residents that everyone should be more aware of locking cars and homes and safeguarding personal possessions and belongings....
Voters to decide in November whether to accept Santa Clara County initiative The fate of a land-use initiative that seeks to save half of the undeveloped lands and hillsides in Santa Clara County has been placed in the hands of voters come Nov. 7. But the battle already being waged by opposing sides of the issue is sure to give San Benito residents an unpleasant sense of deja vu. Like San Benito's unsuccessful slow-growth Measure G of 2004, the Santa Clara County Land Conservation Initiative would increase new parcel sizes on hillsides, large scale agricultural operations and ranchlands, ultimately decreasing the amount of new homes being built in these areas from some 40 homes to 20 a year. Of the county's 836,000 acres of privately owned rural properties, the initiative would affect 400,000 acres - mostly the sprawling hills and ranches to the south of San Jose, throughout the Mount Hamilton area and outside Morgan Hill and Gilroy city limits, up to the San Benito County line. And as resulted in San Benito's slow growth battle, both sides anticipate a buildup to a war of words between now and Election Day. The issue is expected to pit ranch and rural property owners and developers on one side against environmentalists and county residents advocating slow growth. The former will call it a "land-grab," the latter will dub it a last chance to rein in sprawl....
New Land Coalition to Protect Working Ranchlands Even with several land trusts, operating in Ridgway, Telluride and Montrose, dedicated to preserving agricultural land and open space, Ouray County has fallen behind in terms of land conservation. According to a 2004 assessment by the Colorado Conservation Trust, the Northern San Juan region – and Ouray County, especially – is facing rapidly increasing development of working ranchlands to subdivisions. It also found inadequate public funding in San Miguel County – and a complete lack of any public funding in Ouray County for the purchase of conservation easements or development rights to preserve open space in the region. Residential development in Ouray County and along the San Juan Skyway through San Miguel County is leading to the fragmentation of wildlife habitat, degradation of view corridors and negative impacts on water resources. Increasing land values threaten the existence of a stable rural economy in general, not to mention ranch families ability to preserve their land, from generation to generation. In March of last year, leaders of the Black Canyon Land Trust formed a coalition with the Colorado Conservation Trust, the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Land Restoration. Called the Northern San Juan Initiative, it focuses on protecting private land through an aggressive education program for willing private landowners, offering step-by-step assistance in creating conservation easements (and understanding their economic benefit)....
U.S. study cautious about west desert aquifer pumping A new report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that numerous areas in and around Great Basin National Park could be affected by a groundwater pumping project that has been proposed by Las Vegas water officials. Opponents of the project who live in eastern Nevada and western Utah say the study confirms their worst suspicions about the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to tap groundwater in the Snake and Spring valleys near the park and send it to Las Vegas via a 200-mile pipeline. A Utah water official, though, says it is too early to draw conclusions. The USGS study, released last week, identified five locations in Great Basin and another five outside the park that are "likely susceptible" to groundwater withdrawals, though it did not attempt to quantify how big a withdrawal would be necessary to trigger problems. The Southern Nevada Water Authority has proposed taking 25,000 acre-feet per year out of the giant aquifer that straddles the Utah-Nevada state line - which officials say would leave plenty for the region's ecosystem and scattered cattle ranchers who reside and earn their living there....
Neighbors: Farmer's devices block rain Farmer John Smith's spinach is dense, green and unblemished, just as it should be. His iceberg lettuce is still tiny, but healthy, with leaves sprouting whole and unmarred. They'll hopefully stay that way, Smith says, thanks to the eight hail cannons stationed across his 3,800-acre Southern Colorado Farms, aimed at the sky and poised to fire off sound waves that supposedly stop the nasty ice pellets that can ravage his crop. Smith believes in his cannons. So do many of his neighbors in the San Luis Valley. That's the problem. Although Smith maintains that his cannons, $40,000 apiece, can stave off the damage from summer storms, others are convinced they're doing more than that -- stopping the rain as well, drying up an already parched land and killing their livelihood. "We need all the water we can get, and they're stopping it from raining," said Don Evans, one of the ranchers upset with Smith. He's become their scapegoat, said Smith, a former district attorney in Alamosa. "Nobody likes the drought," he said. "It has to be someone's fault." If some ranchers blame Smith, they're also reserving some of their wrath for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which recently renewed Smith's weather modification permit for the next year. The board concluded that the cannons' effectiveness was questionable, but that there was no evidence they were causing harm....
New CAFO Rule Complies with Court Ruling The American Farm Bureau Federation today commended the Environmental Protection Agency for its proposed Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations rule, released yesterday, saying it would make it easier for farmers and ranchers to operate without onerous federal regulation. AFBF said that the proposed rule appeared to comply with a 2005 court ruling that only those livestock operations that actually discharge or propose to discharge pollution are required to apply for discharge permits. “AFBF will continue to analyze the fine points of the proposed rule, and will submit extensive comments to EPA,” said AFBF President Bob Stallman. “But, at first glance, it looks like the agency did what it needed to do in order to bring federal CAFO regulations into line with the court’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act. We applaud EPA for following the Second Circuit’s ruling....
National Wool Judging Winners Honored Val Verde County's senior wool judges were named top judging team in the nation during the 46th annual National 4-H Wool Judging Contest in Sonora. The contest was held in conjunction with the 69th annual Sonora Wool and Mohair Show and the sixth annual FFA Wool Judging Contest this month. The team's score of 1,784 was only 10 points higher than the second place Sutton County team's. The Val Verde County team members are Laura Allen, Houston Dobbins and Alex Scharton. Laura's father, John Allen, Texas Cooperative Extension agent for Val Verde County, and Bill Zuberbueler, Val Verde County rancher, coached the winning team. Laura's score of 639 points earned her top individual honors....
Bucking the myth about mules For mule shower Bobbi Richmond, it's all about the challenge - the challenge of training mules and proving they're not stubborn and lazy. They're just as capable as horses. The Willamina rancher should know. She returned in late May from the Green Western Pleasure event in Mule Days in Bishop, Calif., as the world champion of mule showing and riding. Going against 45 of the best mule showers in the country, as well as Brazil, Canada and Mexico, Richmond and her 5-year-old mule, Roulette, came out on top. Richmond said, "It was an honor, being able to show with them. I worked hard to get there. For Richmond, the challenge not only lies in training mules, but also breaking the mule stereotype of being lazy and stubborn. "Mules can do anything a horse can do and sometimes even better," she said laughing. "They're the best of both worlds, I tell you what." Richmond described her mules as sure-footed, like donkeys, and athletic and good-minded like horses....
Western goods command premiums Charlie Sands of Jackson was visiting Thursday to do a little furniture shopping, but he knew he was in trouble when he saw an end table sell for nearly $11,000. In town for the Cody Old West Auction, Sands wanted to pick up an original Thomas Molesworth end table. But he dropped out of the bidding at around $6,000. "I really didn't want to go over $5,000, so I'm not sad I lost," Sands said. "I heard there were some heavy hitters here, so obviously some fat cat spent $10,000 on it the way you or I would spend $1." On a day when an oil painting fetched around $50,000 and a saddle sold for close to $90,000, everyone had his own idea of what a "heavy hitter" was. But it's safe to say folks spent plenty of money on chaps, spurs, art, furniture, guns and other Western artifacts during the popular auction, now in its 17th year and started by Brian Lebel, formerly of Cody. Bob Nelson, owner of Manitou Galleries in Cheyenne and Santa Fe, N.M., was keeping an eye on the auction Thursday, and will show pieces today at the Riley Arena as part of a companion show to the auction. Prices for Western collectibles have been climbing for years, said Nelson, and are booming lately thanks to what he said was an infusion of Texas oil money into an already hot market....
Bumpy ride on the Broken Trail Alan Geoffrion, a big man with the kind of bushy mustache favored in the Old West, knows horses as well as anyone in the stable-and-saddle country of Northern Virginia. As the co-owner of Campbell House Stables he has been transporting horses to buyers across the United States for years. But he always yearned to be a writer. Before he settled into the cab of his truck, his routine had been to pack several books on tape. When he wearied of other writers' words, the English- major dropout allowed his mind to range over lines and bits of dialogue for the novels he intended to write, one of these days. Now Geoffrion's long-haul literary musings have come to happy fruition. At 59, Geoffrion has just seen the publication of his first book, Broken Trail, its release paired with a film version, a two-part mini-series that stars veteran actor Robert Duvall. It certainly helped that Duvall was his friend and fellow horseman - and wanted the project to happen. The Oscar winner not only produced Broken Trail and co-starred, but he also served as Geoffrion's writing coach and guided him through the treacherous terrain of Hollywood....
Gunplay followed path of lawlessness to the grave After leaving the Utah State Penitentiary, Clarence L. "Gunplay" Maxwell found work in Carbon County. During a mining strike, the Utah Fuel Co. hired him to help protect its property and act as a bodyguard for its lawyer, Max Braffett. Working basically as a strikebreaker, Maxwell played a prominent role in keeping miners under control in Pleasant Valley. Many coal miners detested Maxwell because he backed the mining company. Another stroke of bad luck plagued Maxwell after his release from prison. His wife left him, and she took their daughter with her. Maxwell drifted to Goldfield, Nev., after the coal strike in Carbon County ended. In Goldfield, Gunplay became a deputy sheriff, using the alias of Thomas Bliss. During a 1907 murder trial, Gunplay served as a prosecution witness favorable to a mining company. His false testimony helped convict two men named Preston and Smith of killing a man whose business was being boycotted by the mining union. A defense witness named Edward Johnson had met Maxwell in Utah soon after Gunplay's release from prison. Johnson tried to discredit Deputy Bliss' testimony by revealing that he was really Gunplay Maxwell, a former member of the Wild Bunch. Despite Johnson's damaging testimony, Maxwell remained a deputy in Goldfield for a short period of time after the trial ended. Gunplay held a grudge against Johnson for the rest of his life. The two would meet again....
Cowgirls lasso rodeo spotlight Ribbon roping might sound like a knitting technique taught at an arts and crafts fair. But there’s absolutely nothing dainty about it. Ribbon roping was one of the main events at Saturday’s Women’s Ranch Rodeo Assn.’s Qualifying Rodeo at Stinson Creek Cattle Co. near Stull. At the rodeo, 11 four-woman teams competed to earn a spot at the National Finals October 22 at Kemper Arena. Events included calf branding, sorting, trailer loading and doctoring. Ranch rodeos are different from other rodeos because the events are based on things ranchers would actually do on the job, like rounding up cattle. Because ranchers wouldn’t usually ride around on bucking bulls, bullriding isn’t a ranch rodeo event. Ten years ago, all-female ranch rodeos were scarce. But today they’re more popular than ever, said Terri Lewis, a rodeo competitor on the Division Ranch team from Strong City....
Local cowboys keep doggies rolling along Local residents Ray Herrera and Alan Richards got the opportunity to be time travelers two weeks ago as they helped drive a herd of 382 longhorn steers and assorted other bovine 72 miles to the Reno Rodeo grounds. The drive, an annual event, helps raise money for the rodeo by charging interested people a fee to participate in the five-day drive that starts in Doyle and crosses the Nevada desert on its way to the Oddie Boulevard Livestock Events Center for the nine-day rodeo. "This was something I always dreamed about doing," Herrera said. "I grew up in ranching, but I never went on a long cattle drive." Herrera and Richards won the chance to sample a bit of the Old West by registering winning bids at the rodeo's fundraiser Rhythm and Rawhide last spring. For Herrera, the experience allowed him to pay homage to his rancher father who passed away last year. "I took his hot roll (bedding) on the drive," Herrera said. "It still smelled like him. It was like having him with me."....
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SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Old Ranchers

by Larry Gabriel

Some people think the "Old West" is a bygone era. They are wrong. All the best of it lives in the hearts of people like Wayne Hage and his wife Helen Chenoweth-Hage.

Never heard of them? Wayne is the Nevada rancher who fought the federal government over water rights on his ranch for more than twenty years. Helen is a former Idaho Congresswoman who married Wayne in 1999.

The whole thing started back in 1978 when Wayne found and bought the ranch of his dreams. As it turned out, some federal officials were dreaming of the same place and wanted it for a park or wilderness area.

Wayne owned the place only about two months before federal officers tried to "buy" it for about half of what he paid. Maybe there are people dumb or scared enough to take such an offer, but not in the West. The fight was on.

Most of what Wayne bought was vested water rights and related improvements on leased federal lands surrounding his private tract of 7,000 acres. All the government wanted to pay for was his deeded acres.

They figured they could get the rest away from him without paying for it. The federal officers proceeded to make life difficult for him and even filed competing water rights claims. They were wrong about water rights.

Water rights are traditionally established by state law and governed by state law. They could take away his lease by simply not renewing it, but the water rights and related improvements were property, under state law.

However, in the process of proving that (over the course of ten years of legal battles), Wayne was forced to sell his herd.

In one sense, you could say the government officials won. They outlived Wayne and they put him out of business, but they didn't win. If you do an internet search on Wayne's name, you will find it on 199,000 pages. Many of the leaders of the states' rights and property rights organizations of America knew him personally.

A person from the East once asked, "Why is it that only the Western States fundamentally grasp the concept of states' rights?" The reason we understand is simple. Everyday we look at a mountain, a valley, a field or stream and know who gives us our rights. We also know that Congress has only the rights we choose to give them and no others.

States' rights and property rights are everything. They are the foundation of our nation and we still understand and respect that foundation. We also know that anyone has only the rights for which they are willing to fight. The rest is just paper.

As Wayne said, "Either you have a right to own property, or you are property."

Wayne is not gone. Old ranchers never really die. They just go to seed. New life will spring from the seeds he planted.

Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture


Varmints need water too; the fuzzy, feathered, or two-legged variety

By Julie Carter

It's dry, it's a drought and yes, it seems to be getting worse. Now we are setting "drought" records. Not the kind of record to make anyone very proud.

The hot winds blow every afternoon and take away any clouds that might want to ponder in the sky. It moves them across the state so possibly it rains somewhere.

The humidity levels are ranging in the single digits to low teens that's the "dry heat" we hear folks talk about.

Wells and springs that have served ranchers for generations are coughing, choking, and sputtering with a death rattle warning of catastrophic consequences. You can feed livestock when you are out of grass but out of water means out of business.

If you ever once thought the ranchers were not tending to the wildlife during the day to day business of caring for livestock, a drought drives that point home hard. Usually the only water available in the majority of the local ranch country is water pumped to the surface by a rancher. All forms of wildlife have moved to the water holes.

The fenced highways have become a death trap for the antelope who find the only green food to eat to be in the right-of-ways.

Pastures along an 80-mile route that I drive every week have noticeably no grass, few if any cattle and an unusual number of highway casualty antelope carcasses providing buzzard feed. It is a "blight" staring every driver in the face.

In three consecutive days I've had close encounters in my yard with varmints I would just as soon not meet in the dark. A snake, family of raccoons and a skunk not that any one of those is unusual but so many in a row so close together isn't the norm.

The antelope have brazenly become part of a mowing operation on the perimeter of the yard. They are hungry enough that they barely look up as I step out the door and leave only if I head out the gate.

I drove to White Oaks today to do an interview for a story. For those of you that are not from around here, White Oaks is tiny old-west town that should have died after the mining boom of the 1880's and didn't. Going to White Oaks is a 125-year step back in time where you might tie your horse to a hitchin' rail but don't plan on filling up with gasoline or buying a burger anywhere and the folks that live there hope to keep it that way.

It was the middle of the day, middle of the week. But the White Oaks watering hole, also known as the No Scum Allowed Saloon, had a full-parking lineup in front and the bar stools, and possibly the patrons, were loaded.

Two-legged varmints and other folks of genteel persuasion—known as tourists—found shade and liquid refreshment while they waited for the ghosts of famous Lincoln County lawmen, gunfighters and cattlemen to drop by.

There are a lot of good folks looking upward these days. They look up with hope for a cloud and they look up to pray. Those same folks wear long tired faces of worry while they stay awake nights trying to figure out how to outlast the drought.

They know two things for certain. Today, although it didn't rain, is one day closer to the day it will. And when it does, it will be needed.

© Julie Carter 2006


The cowboy’s lesson in fine wine

By Julie Carter

A pretty girl will stop a cowboy in his tracks every time. He will then do and say things he would have taken bets against if you had asked him prior to the pretty girl. This story is one of those times.

Ron was a good cowboy working for a good rancher with plenty of New Mexico country to tend. He was also aware this man had a daughter in an Ivy League college somewhere in the direction of “back East.”

Winter had passed, heifers were about done calving, brandings were on the horizon and summer would soon be here. Life was good.

Then this cowboy’s world turned upside down when Pretty Girl came home for Spring Break.

The celebratory barbeque at the ranch gave Ron a little time to visit with Pretty Girl and he knew right-off she was way out of his social league as she chatted about opera, Broadway openings and formal dinner parties. The closest he could hope for was to hold his own at wine tasting. How hard could it be?

Like most cowboys, Ron liked to help the Colorado folks out with their brewery success and occasionally tried to help out the Kentucky folks with their sour mash business. He knew he was going to have to get some schooling on the finer points of wine tasting.

Cowboys are experts at many things, capable of hard work with cattle, horses, fences, and equipment as well as making the hard business decisions required for a modern ranching operation. What they don’t know, they aren’t afraid to ask from someone who has a few more years and little more experience.

After conferring with a few of the hands in the bunkhouse that night, it was the general consensus an expert was required. Their collective thoughts pointed in the direction of the windmill man who was known to be able to fix anything and tell you a little but about just about everything.

In a phone call to this recommended universal expert, Ron was briefed on vintage, bouquet, body, sediment and all the various attributes of fine wine. The windmill man spoke with such knowledge and authority, the cowboy was duly impressed. He gave a brief pause of curious thought as to where this windmill man might have gotten his knowledge, but was in no position to question it.

It was clear his plan would be to invite Pretty Girl to share a little wine with him next time she was home.

Back to work he went, taking more notice than ever of the possibilities of the ranch. In his daydreams he envisioned Pretty Girl bringing him his supper after a hard day’s work on the ranch he had married. By the time she actually came home again, he was in love.

It was summer and the cowboy invited her on a picnic to a pretty spot on the ranch with wine to be the main feature. They set a date and time and the cowboy whistled his way through his work for several days.

As will happen at a ranch, things didn’t go as planned. He was down to choosing between a trip to town to get the wine or helping a late calving heifer through her ordeal. In a bind, he called the windmill man who agreed to bring him some wine in plenty of time for the big date.

Shined up, washed behind the ears and everything, Ron picked the girl up at the boss’s house and headed down the road to the spot on the creek he liked best. They talked and laughed and the afternoon progressed about as smoothly as he could have hoped.

He might have actually realized his dream of capturing Pretty Girl and the ranch -- if only the windmill man had thought to buy wine in bottle instead of a box.

© Julie Carter 2006


Independence Day

by Larry Gabriel

We celebrate it every year with parades, rodeos, picnics and fireworks, just as John Adams predicted in a letter to his wife on July 3, 1776. But, do we really know what we celebrate?

The dictionary says "independence" is a condition of being "independent". The word "independent" has several meanings.

Independent means "self governing", or being "free from the influence, guidance or control" of others. I suspect many of us think of independence as freedom from control. It is part of the rugged individualism concept. It is tied in with self reliance.

All those ideas about independence may be worthy, but that is not what the founding fathers had in mind when they finally finished debating a resolution placed before them by Richard H. Lee of Virginia on June 7, 1776.

This is what it said…Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Actually, most had made up their minds by June 11th, when the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence. The declaration was presented to them on June 28th. On July 2nd, they secretly approved and signed it.

On July 4th they published it to the people. They declared the sovereignty of their states and rang the liberty bell that day. They were not celebrating individual independence, because as Benjamin Franklin noted, "We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately…"

What we celebrate is not independence itself. We celebrate the fact that 56 American forefathers had the courage to put their names on a declaration and announce it to the world, even when doing so was likely to cost them their fortunes, families and lives. We celebrate their courage.

This is what Adams predicted…The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.

How do we honor Adam's request that their act be celebrated, commemorated and solemnized? How does one honor such a gift that evolved into the freedoms and bounty we enjoy?

We can be thankful to all the Americans who gave their lives for our liberty from that day to this. We also can emulate them by never allowing fear to take away that gift.
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