Rumors Floating About Neb. Democrat Replacing Veneman
Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska has been approached about becoming agriculture secretary in the Bush administration, according to two sources. His appointment could add a second Democrat to Bush's Cabinet, as well as possibly increasing the GOP's Senate majority. Republican Gov. Mike Johanns would get to choose Nelson's replacement, which could increase the GOP's advantage in the Senate to 56 seats. President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, spoke to Nelson about the possibility in a telephone conversation last Friday, according to the two sources familiar with their conversation. Nelson has thus far declined to accept what the sources described as an offer or solicitation....
Thursday, November 18, 2004
MAD COW DISEASE
Statement
Andrea Morgan
Associate Deputy Administrator
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
November 18, 2004
“Early this morning, we were notified that an inconclusive BSE test result was received on a rapid screening test used as part of our enhanced BSE surveillance program.
“The inconclusive result does not mean we have found another case of BSE in this country. Inconclusive results are a normal component of screening tests, which are designed to be extremely sensitive so they will detect any sample that could possibly be positive.
“Tissue samples are now being sent to USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories—the national BSE reference lab—which will run confirmatory testing.
“Because this test is only an inconclusive test result, we are not disclosing details specific to this test at this time.
“APHIS has begun internal steps to begin initial tracebacks, if further testing were to return a positive result. However, it is important to note, that this animal did not enter the food or feed chain.
“Confirmatory results are expected back from NVSL within the next 4 to 7 days. If the test comes back positive for BSE, we will provide additional information about the animal and its origin.
“USDA remains confident in the safety of the U.S. beef supply. Our ban on specified risk materials from the human food chain provides the protection to public health, should another case of BSE ever be detected in the United States.
“Screening tests are often used in both human and animal health and inconclusives are not unexpected. These tests cast a very wide net and many end up negative during further testing.
“And some subset of these animals may even turn out to be positive for BSE. While none of us wants to see that happen, that is not unexpected either. Our surveillance program is designed to test as many animals as we can in the populations that are considered to be at high risk for BSE.
“Additional measures to strengthen public health safeguards include the longstanding ban on imports of live cattle, other ruminants, and most ruminant products from high-risk countries; FDA's 1997 prohibition on the use of most mammalian protein in cattle feed; an aggressive surveillance program that has been in place for more than a decade; the banning of non-ambulatory cattle from the human food chain; the process control requirement for establishments using advanced meat recovery (AMR) systems; prohibiting the air-injection stunning of cattle; and, if an animal presented for slaughter is sampled for BSE, holding the carcass until the test results have been confirmed negative.
#
Statement
Andrea Morgan
Associate Deputy Administrator
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
November 18, 2004
“Early this morning, we were notified that an inconclusive BSE test result was received on a rapid screening test used as part of our enhanced BSE surveillance program.
“The inconclusive result does not mean we have found another case of BSE in this country. Inconclusive results are a normal component of screening tests, which are designed to be extremely sensitive so they will detect any sample that could possibly be positive.
“Tissue samples are now being sent to USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories—the national BSE reference lab—which will run confirmatory testing.
“Because this test is only an inconclusive test result, we are not disclosing details specific to this test at this time.
“APHIS has begun internal steps to begin initial tracebacks, if further testing were to return a positive result. However, it is important to note, that this animal did not enter the food or feed chain.
“Confirmatory results are expected back from NVSL within the next 4 to 7 days. If the test comes back positive for BSE, we will provide additional information about the animal and its origin.
“USDA remains confident in the safety of the U.S. beef supply. Our ban on specified risk materials from the human food chain provides the protection to public health, should another case of BSE ever be detected in the United States.
“Screening tests are often used in both human and animal health and inconclusives are not unexpected. These tests cast a very wide net and many end up negative during further testing.
“And some subset of these animals may even turn out to be positive for BSE. While none of us wants to see that happen, that is not unexpected either. Our surveillance program is designed to test as many animals as we can in the populations that are considered to be at high risk for BSE.
“Additional measures to strengthen public health safeguards include the longstanding ban on imports of live cattle, other ruminants, and most ruminant products from high-risk countries; FDA's 1997 prohibition on the use of most mammalian protein in cattle feed; an aggressive surveillance program that has been in place for more than a decade; the banning of non-ambulatory cattle from the human food chain; the process control requirement for establishments using advanced meat recovery (AMR) systems; prohibiting the air-injection stunning of cattle; and, if an animal presented for slaughter is sampled for BSE, holding the carcass until the test results have been confirmed negative.
#
NEWS ROUNDUP
Gov. wants separate wolf lawsuits Gov. Dave Freudenthal warned Friday that merging two anti-wolf lawsuits could bog down efforts to reinstate Wyoming’s controversial plan to manage wolves as predators. Freudenthal told ranchers in Jackson that he did not want to tie a state lawsuit to a similar legal challenge put forward by the Wolf Coalition, which represents 27 groups, including some county commissions who want to keep wolves out of their jurisdiction. Freudenthal explained that the state’s suit makes a very narrow legal claim that the federal government erred in rejecting Wyoming’s wolf plan. In contrast, the Wolf Coalition raises many more questions, including whether the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s handling of wolf recovery in general has violated federal law....
Threats to Rare U.S. Jaguar Increase Along with Sightings As the number of sightings of wild jaguars increases in southeastern Arizona, the endangered cat faces a host of unexpected new threats from drug smugglers, border patrol officers and builders of a proposed power line. Popularly linked to the jungles of Latin America, a small population of jaguars once roamed wilderness areas of the West from California to Texas. Ranchers and hunters were believed to have wiped them out by the mid-20th century. Since 1996, however, there have been a dozen confirmed sightings of the feline in Arizona and New Mexico. Five times since last June, photos and tracks have documented the presence of jaguars between Tucson and the Mexican border....
Man's grizzly encounter is featured on 'Nature' Stop a minute, close your eyes, and try to imagine your head inside a female grizzly bear's mouth. Try to imagine that one of her canines has pierced your skull and the other has ripped part of the skin from your face. You would be as certain as Mark Matheny was that you were going to die. Matheny, president of UDAP Industries Inc. of Bozeman, Mont., is one of the people who populate "The Good, the Bad and the Grizzly," an episode of the Nature series airing Sunday on PBS. Oscar winner Chris Cooper narrates this hour, the focus of which is the icon of Yellowstone National Park, the grizzly bear. The burning question? Should they be removed from the endangered species list?....
Judge says FEMA needs to consider salmon protections A federal judge has ruled the Federal Emergency Management Agency sidestepped its duty to consider how its flood insurance program might harm Puget Sound chinook salmon. U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly said FEMA violated the federal Endangered Species Act by not formally consulting with the National Marine Fisheries Service to make sure the flood insurance program didn't jeopardize salmon habitat. Plaintiffs, who had filed a lawsuit accusing FEMA of threatening the federally protected fish by encouraging development in flood plains, called Zilly's ruling "a victory for salmon over strip malls.''....
Bush's second-term stamp on environment With the newly reelected Bush administration backed up by a tighter GOP grip on Congress, the coming political season could become a watershed mark for environmental protection and energy policy. As a result, federal laws and regulations dealing with everything from endangered species and forest protection to air and water pollution to oil and gas drilling, are likely to see a rigorous shaking out. The administration is eager to achieve things denied it during President Bush's first term: pumping oil out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), allowing loggers access to millions of acres of roadless national forest land, easing Clean Air Act restrictions on some pollutants, making it easier to extract oil and gas in the Rocky Mountains, and passing an energy bill put together by Vice President Dick Cheney with help from the energy industry....
Kick the Habitat: GOP has set its sights on revamping the Endangered Species Act The newly empowered Republican majority on Capitol Hill will grease the skids for plenty of legislation that's sure to gall environmentalists and delight developers, but the most galling and delighting of all could be sweeping changes to the 30-year-old Endangered Species Act. Business leaders, top Bush officials, and many Republicans in Congress have been arguing for the past four years, if not longer, that this cornerstone environmental law is outdated and ineffective, in particular its critical-habitat provision, which constrains development in certain biologically sensitive areas deemed necessary to species rehabilitation....
Predator control helps threatened snowy plovers For the second year in a row, the Western snowy plover has had a strong nesting season on Oregon beaches, in large part due to wildlife managers killing the foxes, crows and ravens that eat the threatened birds' eggs and young. This year the adult population of about 140 plovers in Oregon produced 107 young that survived long enough to learn to fly — known as fledglings — compared to 60 in 2003 and an average of 37 since monitoring began in 1990, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....
Pacific Lumber opens first major California sawmill in a decade Pacific Lumber Co. unveiled its new state-of-the-art sawmill in Humboldt County on Wednesday, the first major sawmill built in California in a decade. The $25 million facility, which can process logs two to three times faster than standard mills, will reduce waste, boost productivity and improve worker safety, company officials said. State and community leaders were invited to tour the facility during a dedication ceremony in Scotia, about 30 miles south of Eureka. When operating at full capacity, the new facility will process 260 million board feet of finished lumber each year, making it one of the country's most productive sawmills....
U.S. Accused of Changing Drilling Rule The Sierra Club alleges in a lawsuit that the Bush administration changed a rule so oil and gas producers could more easily drill under national parks from outside their boundaries. The environmental group alleges in the suit filed Wednesday that the change affects 14 national parks that have privately owned minerals beneath them. The suit asks the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia for an immediate injunction to reverse the change it alleges, which it said was done without public input, and also to drop drilling....
Column: Faith-Based Parks? Two-thirds of the way across the continent, some four million people annually visit Grand Canyon National Park, marveling at the awesome view. In National Park Service (NPS) affiliated bookstores, they can find literature informing them that the great chasm runs for 277 miles along the bed of the Colorado River. It descends more than a mile into the earth, and along one stretch, is some 18 miles wide, its walls displaying impressive layers of limestone, sandstone, shale, schist and granite. And, oh yes, it was formed about 4,500 years ago, a direct consequence of Noah’s Flood. How’s that? Yes, this is the ill-informed premise of “Grand Canyon, a Different View,” a handsomely-illustrated volume also on sale at the bookstores. It includes the writings of creationists and creation scientists and was compiled by Tom Vail, who with his wife operates Canyon Ministries, conducting creationist-view tours of the canyon....
Bill targets settlement of land claims Alaska Natives have waited almost 100 years for land promised by the federal government. And the state of Alaska still hasn't got the land that Congress pledged a half a century ago, back when Elvis Presley was a sergeant in the U.S. Army. Congress on Wednesday acknowledged the slow settlement of land claims is a problem and passed a bill meant to speed things up. A huge chunk of Alaska, almost 90 million acres, is affected by the bill. That is about three times the size of the state of Pennsylvania. The Alaska Statehood Act of 1958 promised the state 104.5 million acres. The state, 46 years later, is still waiting to get final title on more than half that....
Congress Approves Nevada Public Lands Bill Congress gave final approval Wednesday to wide-ranging lands legislation that sells off federal holdings in one of Nevada's least-populated counties, creates more than a dozen wilderness areas in the state and eases the way for a controversial water project. Returning this week after an election recess, the House passed a Senate-amended version of a public lands bill that rewards an array of Nevada interests, including water utilities, wilderness buffs and developers. The bill was sent to President Bush for his signature....
Column: A Lesson in Consensus from Idaho Three years ago, he recommended that the county seek federal legislation to address wilderness and grazing issues before a future president did so unilaterally. He told commissioners they would have to work with environmentalists to succeed. In October, in that same courtroom, Owyhee County Commission Chairman Hal Tolmie and Shoshone-Paiute Tribal Chairman Terry Gibson handed Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo a proposal for protecting 517,194 acres of wilderness and 384 miles of rivers protected as "wild and scenic." Every public-lands rancher in the county had individually signed off on wilderness creation in his area. Conservationists and ranchers hugged. Then, they and motorized recreationists gave Grant a standing ovation for his remarkable mediation of a deal that gives ranchers additional peer review of BLM actions and a locally driven program for landscape management....
Company says coalbed methane fields are renewable Gas-producing bacteria munching on Wyoming coal may be a key solution to the nation's energy future, a Denver company claimed Tuesday. While much of the world's natural gas took millions of years to make, some new gas is being created every day and can be managed to produce a long-lasting supply, according to Luca Technologies Inc. The prolific Powder River Basin in northern Wyoming, the site of thousands of coal-bed methane wells, is producing natural gas in "real time," Luca's researchers said, citing laboratory research....
14 Nations to Participate in Plan to Reduce Methane Thirteen countries agreed yesterday to join a global plan proposed by the Bush administration to curb methane emissions by capturing the greenhouse gas and using it as an energy source before it is released into the atmosphere. Methane ranks second to carbon dioxide among human-generated contributors to global warming: Carbon dioxide accounts for 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, methane for about 16 percent. The administration pledged to spend as much as $53 million over the next five years to encourage companies to provide participating countries with technologies that can trap the gas and make it available to power utilities, private homes and even pottery kilns....
Bill Would Redefine Indian Tribe Campbell (R-Colo.) is sponsoring a bill innocuously titled "Native Americans Technical Corrections Act of 2004," which proposes in Section 14 to amend the definition of Native American in a 1990 law requiring the repatriation of remains to modern indigenous tribes. Instead of defining Native American as "of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United States," the law would read "is, or was indigenous to the United States." Scientists intent on studying the Kennewick remains say the bill, if passed, would effectively overturn an appeals court ruling allowing their research to go forward and instead cede control of the bones to a coalition of four northwestern tribes that want to rebury them....
Animas-La Plata: Digging done, construction begun The digging for the Animas-La Plata Project pumping plant is over. The construction phase began Monday. "This is a huge milestone for us," said project construction engineer Rick Ehat as he watched the first bucket of concrete being dumped into forms for drain channels that will lie beneath the floor of the pumping plant. "We've been waiting for this since July when the contract to come up out of the hole was let."....
Editorial: Due Process on Dams IT'S NO SECRET that the Bush administration wants to tilt environmental rules to favor business interests. But the Interior Department has recently taken that approach to a new level of brazenness. The issue involves environmental requirements imposed on hydropower companies when dams come up for license renewal -- in other words, what steps they must take to protect fish and other natural resources. Under Interior's proposed regulation, hydropower companies would have the exclusive right to appeal to the department's political appointees to try to change or loosen conditions imposed by more junior officials. Others affected by the license renewal -- states, Indian tribes, anglers, environmental groups -- could respond to the power company's arguments, but they wouldn't have any parallel right to this interim appeal....
Utilities sue Montana over riverbed compensation issues Three utilities that own hydroelectric dams here have sued the state, urging a Helena district judge to declare that Montana has no legal basis to be compensated for their use of state lands on state-owned riverbeds. They asked Honzel to declare that the Federal Power Act pre-empts the state's 1931 hydroelectric resources law. What's more, the utilities asked Honzel to rule that the federal government's navigational easement precludes the state from seeking compensation for their use of streambeds for federally licensed hydroelectric projects. In addition, the utilities asked that Honzel rule that the state's course of conduct and statements regarding the hydroelectric resources law, together with the utilities continuous and uninterrupted occupations of the riverbeds, bars the state's claims for compensation....
Congress OKs settlement empowering tribes Arizona secured a surer but leaner water future Wednesday with final congressional approval of the most far-reaching Indian water settlement in U.S. history. The settlement, which now goes to President Bush for his signature, would cede to Indian tribes nearly half the Colorado River water originally set aside for Phoenix and Tucson and allow those tribes to lease it back to growing cities for a profit. The cities would be able to claim a small amount of new water to add to their existing shares of the river. Some central Arizona farmers would eventually lose water to satisfy the tribal claims, but it would be a gradual loss. The deal wouldn't take any water from cities or private water companies and wouldn't raise water rates unless cities signed huge tribal leases in the future....
Greens Paint Grim Picture of Future, Warmer World Environmentalists forecast a grim future for planet Earth Thursday, predicting that droughts, heatwaves and hurricanes will become increasingly common and more severe if global warming is allowed to continue unchecked. A coalition of eight of the world's largest conservation organizations said Russia's recent ratification of the Kyoto protocol on carbon dioxide emissions had given fresh impetus to the drive to cut global output of greenhouse gases. However, they said more had to be done if the world's average temperature was going to stop short of a critical two degrees Celsius rise above its mean in the pre-industrial era....
California's mammoth farm sector ponders life after Veneman Far from Washington, D.C., and growing crops unfamiliar in many agricultural states, California's farmers are eyeing winter without the comfort of a U.S. secretary of agriculture from their own soil. Monday's resignation of Modesto native Ann M. Veneman from the federal government's top farm post leaves the state without an agriculture secretary who intimately understands its unique crops, climate and pests, say officials who preside over a farm economy that produced $32 billion last year....
Republicans push to repeal law for food country-of-origin labels Telling consumers where their meat, fruit and vegetables came from seemed such a good idea to U.S. ranchers and farmers in competition with imports that Congress two years ago ordered the food industry to do it. However, meatpackers and food processors fought the law from the start, and newly strengthened Republicans now plan to repeal it before Thanksgiving....
Powell mercantile serves as model for others The people running the Powell Mercantile didn't expect their downtown clothing store to become a tourist destination, but people come to The Merc by the busload. The answer to the first part of the question is "pretty good." It has been three years since 800 community investors plunked down one or more $500 shares to put The Merc in business. Last year, the community-owned business cleared $560,000 in gross sales and shareholders should see "sizeable" dividends in the next few years, said Ken Witzeling, a retired pharmacist who sits in the president's chair on The Merc's Board of Directors. "We've made money since day one," Witzeling said....
After hard work, Ely sees dream come true Never give people in Ely a challenge because they will reach up and meet it, said Beverly J. Cornutt, a member of the Community Owned Mercantile Project Inc. board of directors. With those words, the town of 4,000 celebrated a major moment of life, as COMP opened the Garnet Mercantile Monday, filling the void left when J.C. Penney closed the town’s only department store — which opened in 1910. After exploring a variety of alternatives, such as trying to lure another chain store to town, the group heard about how the town of Powell, Wyo., handled a similar problem....
Gov. wants separate wolf lawsuits Gov. Dave Freudenthal warned Friday that merging two anti-wolf lawsuits could bog down efforts to reinstate Wyoming’s controversial plan to manage wolves as predators. Freudenthal told ranchers in Jackson that he did not want to tie a state lawsuit to a similar legal challenge put forward by the Wolf Coalition, which represents 27 groups, including some county commissions who want to keep wolves out of their jurisdiction. Freudenthal explained that the state’s suit makes a very narrow legal claim that the federal government erred in rejecting Wyoming’s wolf plan. In contrast, the Wolf Coalition raises many more questions, including whether the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s handling of wolf recovery in general has violated federal law....
Threats to Rare U.S. Jaguar Increase Along with Sightings As the number of sightings of wild jaguars increases in southeastern Arizona, the endangered cat faces a host of unexpected new threats from drug smugglers, border patrol officers and builders of a proposed power line. Popularly linked to the jungles of Latin America, a small population of jaguars once roamed wilderness areas of the West from California to Texas. Ranchers and hunters were believed to have wiped them out by the mid-20th century. Since 1996, however, there have been a dozen confirmed sightings of the feline in Arizona and New Mexico. Five times since last June, photos and tracks have documented the presence of jaguars between Tucson and the Mexican border....
Man's grizzly encounter is featured on 'Nature' Stop a minute, close your eyes, and try to imagine your head inside a female grizzly bear's mouth. Try to imagine that one of her canines has pierced your skull and the other has ripped part of the skin from your face. You would be as certain as Mark Matheny was that you were going to die. Matheny, president of UDAP Industries Inc. of Bozeman, Mont., is one of the people who populate "The Good, the Bad and the Grizzly," an episode of the Nature series airing Sunday on PBS. Oscar winner Chris Cooper narrates this hour, the focus of which is the icon of Yellowstone National Park, the grizzly bear. The burning question? Should they be removed from the endangered species list?....
Judge says FEMA needs to consider salmon protections A federal judge has ruled the Federal Emergency Management Agency sidestepped its duty to consider how its flood insurance program might harm Puget Sound chinook salmon. U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly said FEMA violated the federal Endangered Species Act by not formally consulting with the National Marine Fisheries Service to make sure the flood insurance program didn't jeopardize salmon habitat. Plaintiffs, who had filed a lawsuit accusing FEMA of threatening the federally protected fish by encouraging development in flood plains, called Zilly's ruling "a victory for salmon over strip malls.''....
Bush's second-term stamp on environment With the newly reelected Bush administration backed up by a tighter GOP grip on Congress, the coming political season could become a watershed mark for environmental protection and energy policy. As a result, federal laws and regulations dealing with everything from endangered species and forest protection to air and water pollution to oil and gas drilling, are likely to see a rigorous shaking out. The administration is eager to achieve things denied it during President Bush's first term: pumping oil out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), allowing loggers access to millions of acres of roadless national forest land, easing Clean Air Act restrictions on some pollutants, making it easier to extract oil and gas in the Rocky Mountains, and passing an energy bill put together by Vice President Dick Cheney with help from the energy industry....
Kick the Habitat: GOP has set its sights on revamping the Endangered Species Act The newly empowered Republican majority on Capitol Hill will grease the skids for plenty of legislation that's sure to gall environmentalists and delight developers, but the most galling and delighting of all could be sweeping changes to the 30-year-old Endangered Species Act. Business leaders, top Bush officials, and many Republicans in Congress have been arguing for the past four years, if not longer, that this cornerstone environmental law is outdated and ineffective, in particular its critical-habitat provision, which constrains development in certain biologically sensitive areas deemed necessary to species rehabilitation....
Predator control helps threatened snowy plovers For the second year in a row, the Western snowy plover has had a strong nesting season on Oregon beaches, in large part due to wildlife managers killing the foxes, crows and ravens that eat the threatened birds' eggs and young. This year the adult population of about 140 plovers in Oregon produced 107 young that survived long enough to learn to fly — known as fledglings — compared to 60 in 2003 and an average of 37 since monitoring began in 1990, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....
Pacific Lumber opens first major California sawmill in a decade Pacific Lumber Co. unveiled its new state-of-the-art sawmill in Humboldt County on Wednesday, the first major sawmill built in California in a decade. The $25 million facility, which can process logs two to three times faster than standard mills, will reduce waste, boost productivity and improve worker safety, company officials said. State and community leaders were invited to tour the facility during a dedication ceremony in Scotia, about 30 miles south of Eureka. When operating at full capacity, the new facility will process 260 million board feet of finished lumber each year, making it one of the country's most productive sawmills....
U.S. Accused of Changing Drilling Rule The Sierra Club alleges in a lawsuit that the Bush administration changed a rule so oil and gas producers could more easily drill under national parks from outside their boundaries. The environmental group alleges in the suit filed Wednesday that the change affects 14 national parks that have privately owned minerals beneath them. The suit asks the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia for an immediate injunction to reverse the change it alleges, which it said was done without public input, and also to drop drilling....
Column: Faith-Based Parks? Two-thirds of the way across the continent, some four million people annually visit Grand Canyon National Park, marveling at the awesome view. In National Park Service (NPS) affiliated bookstores, they can find literature informing them that the great chasm runs for 277 miles along the bed of the Colorado River. It descends more than a mile into the earth, and along one stretch, is some 18 miles wide, its walls displaying impressive layers of limestone, sandstone, shale, schist and granite. And, oh yes, it was formed about 4,500 years ago, a direct consequence of Noah’s Flood. How’s that? Yes, this is the ill-informed premise of “Grand Canyon, a Different View,” a handsomely-illustrated volume also on sale at the bookstores. It includes the writings of creationists and creation scientists and was compiled by Tom Vail, who with his wife operates Canyon Ministries, conducting creationist-view tours of the canyon....
Bill targets settlement of land claims Alaska Natives have waited almost 100 years for land promised by the federal government. And the state of Alaska still hasn't got the land that Congress pledged a half a century ago, back when Elvis Presley was a sergeant in the U.S. Army. Congress on Wednesday acknowledged the slow settlement of land claims is a problem and passed a bill meant to speed things up. A huge chunk of Alaska, almost 90 million acres, is affected by the bill. That is about three times the size of the state of Pennsylvania. The Alaska Statehood Act of 1958 promised the state 104.5 million acres. The state, 46 years later, is still waiting to get final title on more than half that....
Congress Approves Nevada Public Lands Bill Congress gave final approval Wednesday to wide-ranging lands legislation that sells off federal holdings in one of Nevada's least-populated counties, creates more than a dozen wilderness areas in the state and eases the way for a controversial water project. Returning this week after an election recess, the House passed a Senate-amended version of a public lands bill that rewards an array of Nevada interests, including water utilities, wilderness buffs and developers. The bill was sent to President Bush for his signature....
Column: A Lesson in Consensus from Idaho Three years ago, he recommended that the county seek federal legislation to address wilderness and grazing issues before a future president did so unilaterally. He told commissioners they would have to work with environmentalists to succeed. In October, in that same courtroom, Owyhee County Commission Chairman Hal Tolmie and Shoshone-Paiute Tribal Chairman Terry Gibson handed Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo a proposal for protecting 517,194 acres of wilderness and 384 miles of rivers protected as "wild and scenic." Every public-lands rancher in the county had individually signed off on wilderness creation in his area. Conservationists and ranchers hugged. Then, they and motorized recreationists gave Grant a standing ovation for his remarkable mediation of a deal that gives ranchers additional peer review of BLM actions and a locally driven program for landscape management....
Company says coalbed methane fields are renewable Gas-producing bacteria munching on Wyoming coal may be a key solution to the nation's energy future, a Denver company claimed Tuesday. While much of the world's natural gas took millions of years to make, some new gas is being created every day and can be managed to produce a long-lasting supply, according to Luca Technologies Inc. The prolific Powder River Basin in northern Wyoming, the site of thousands of coal-bed methane wells, is producing natural gas in "real time," Luca's researchers said, citing laboratory research....
14 Nations to Participate in Plan to Reduce Methane Thirteen countries agreed yesterday to join a global plan proposed by the Bush administration to curb methane emissions by capturing the greenhouse gas and using it as an energy source before it is released into the atmosphere. Methane ranks second to carbon dioxide among human-generated contributors to global warming: Carbon dioxide accounts for 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, methane for about 16 percent. The administration pledged to spend as much as $53 million over the next five years to encourage companies to provide participating countries with technologies that can trap the gas and make it available to power utilities, private homes and even pottery kilns....
Bill Would Redefine Indian Tribe Campbell (R-Colo.) is sponsoring a bill innocuously titled "Native Americans Technical Corrections Act of 2004," which proposes in Section 14 to amend the definition of Native American in a 1990 law requiring the repatriation of remains to modern indigenous tribes. Instead of defining Native American as "of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United States," the law would read "is, or was indigenous to the United States." Scientists intent on studying the Kennewick remains say the bill, if passed, would effectively overturn an appeals court ruling allowing their research to go forward and instead cede control of the bones to a coalition of four northwestern tribes that want to rebury them....
Animas-La Plata: Digging done, construction begun The digging for the Animas-La Plata Project pumping plant is over. The construction phase began Monday. "This is a huge milestone for us," said project construction engineer Rick Ehat as he watched the first bucket of concrete being dumped into forms for drain channels that will lie beneath the floor of the pumping plant. "We've been waiting for this since July when the contract to come up out of the hole was let."....
Editorial: Due Process on Dams IT'S NO SECRET that the Bush administration wants to tilt environmental rules to favor business interests. But the Interior Department has recently taken that approach to a new level of brazenness. The issue involves environmental requirements imposed on hydropower companies when dams come up for license renewal -- in other words, what steps they must take to protect fish and other natural resources. Under Interior's proposed regulation, hydropower companies would have the exclusive right to appeal to the department's political appointees to try to change or loosen conditions imposed by more junior officials. Others affected by the license renewal -- states, Indian tribes, anglers, environmental groups -- could respond to the power company's arguments, but they wouldn't have any parallel right to this interim appeal....
Utilities sue Montana over riverbed compensation issues Three utilities that own hydroelectric dams here have sued the state, urging a Helena district judge to declare that Montana has no legal basis to be compensated for their use of state lands on state-owned riverbeds. They asked Honzel to declare that the Federal Power Act pre-empts the state's 1931 hydroelectric resources law. What's more, the utilities asked Honzel to rule that the federal government's navigational easement precludes the state from seeking compensation for their use of streambeds for federally licensed hydroelectric projects. In addition, the utilities asked that Honzel rule that the state's course of conduct and statements regarding the hydroelectric resources law, together with the utilities continuous and uninterrupted occupations of the riverbeds, bars the state's claims for compensation....
Congress OKs settlement empowering tribes Arizona secured a surer but leaner water future Wednesday with final congressional approval of the most far-reaching Indian water settlement in U.S. history. The settlement, which now goes to President Bush for his signature, would cede to Indian tribes nearly half the Colorado River water originally set aside for Phoenix and Tucson and allow those tribes to lease it back to growing cities for a profit. The cities would be able to claim a small amount of new water to add to their existing shares of the river. Some central Arizona farmers would eventually lose water to satisfy the tribal claims, but it would be a gradual loss. The deal wouldn't take any water from cities or private water companies and wouldn't raise water rates unless cities signed huge tribal leases in the future....
Greens Paint Grim Picture of Future, Warmer World Environmentalists forecast a grim future for planet Earth Thursday, predicting that droughts, heatwaves and hurricanes will become increasingly common and more severe if global warming is allowed to continue unchecked. A coalition of eight of the world's largest conservation organizations said Russia's recent ratification of the Kyoto protocol on carbon dioxide emissions had given fresh impetus to the drive to cut global output of greenhouse gases. However, they said more had to be done if the world's average temperature was going to stop short of a critical two degrees Celsius rise above its mean in the pre-industrial era....
California's mammoth farm sector ponders life after Veneman Far from Washington, D.C., and growing crops unfamiliar in many agricultural states, California's farmers are eyeing winter without the comfort of a U.S. secretary of agriculture from their own soil. Monday's resignation of Modesto native Ann M. Veneman from the federal government's top farm post leaves the state without an agriculture secretary who intimately understands its unique crops, climate and pests, say officials who preside over a farm economy that produced $32 billion last year....
Republicans push to repeal law for food country-of-origin labels Telling consumers where their meat, fruit and vegetables came from seemed such a good idea to U.S. ranchers and farmers in competition with imports that Congress two years ago ordered the food industry to do it. However, meatpackers and food processors fought the law from the start, and newly strengthened Republicans now plan to repeal it before Thanksgiving....
Powell mercantile serves as model for others The people running the Powell Mercantile didn't expect their downtown clothing store to become a tourist destination, but people come to The Merc by the busload. The answer to the first part of the question is "pretty good." It has been three years since 800 community investors plunked down one or more $500 shares to put The Merc in business. Last year, the community-owned business cleared $560,000 in gross sales and shareholders should see "sizeable" dividends in the next few years, said Ken Witzeling, a retired pharmacist who sits in the president's chair on The Merc's Board of Directors. "We've made money since day one," Witzeling said....
After hard work, Ely sees dream come true Never give people in Ely a challenge because they will reach up and meet it, said Beverly J. Cornutt, a member of the Community Owned Mercantile Project Inc. board of directors. With those words, the town of 4,000 celebrated a major moment of life, as COMP opened the Garnet Mercantile Monday, filling the void left when J.C. Penney closed the town’s only department store — which opened in 1910. After exploring a variety of alternatives, such as trying to lure another chain store to town, the group heard about how the town of Powell, Wyo., handled a similar problem....
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rollback of Wild Land Protection Gets Support The Schwarzenegger administration signaled its support Tuesday for a plan to drop Clinton-era protections that barred road-building and other development on nearly a third of the country's national forest land, including more than 4 million acres in California. In a letter to the Bush administration that was released Tuesday, state Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman said California welcomed the chance for greater state involvement in federal forest management. Nonetheless, he said, the state did not plan to identify areas for protection or development. Instead, he said, California preferred to work with the U.S. Forest Service as it updates management plans for roadless areas....
Governor: Roadless rules not needed The Bush administration's proposed roadless rule is unnecessary and ultimately will be detrimental to Wyoming, Gov. Dave Freudenthal says. The governor said in a letter to the head of the U.S. Forest Service released Tuesday that forest policy should be made at the federal level, not by states. Freudenthal said he sees no real need for the Bush administration's proposed roadless rule...
Mono Lake scenic area may face development Congress created the nation's first federal scenic area 20 years ago, stepping in to protect Mono Lake, the high desert oddity nearly three times as salty as the ocean that fascinated author Mark Twain during the 1860s. The law signed by President Reagan helped preserve a major stopover for migratory birds and save an inland sea that was being drained to slake Los Angeles' thirst. Now, residents and the U.S. Forest Service say the Mono Lake protections are imperiled by a plan to subdivide 120 acres for luxury homes on the lake's western shore....
U.S. Forest Service Surrenders Computers to Marina Point Development After 13 months of legal action, the U.S. Forest Service has finally agreed to surrender the computers of three federal employees accused of racketeering. In exchange for the Forest Service's agreement, Marina Point will not seek attorneys' fees and costs from the agency. The three employees -- Gene Zimmerman, Scott Eliason and Robin Eliason -- are all employees of the U.S. Forest Service and were recently named as co-conspirators in a lawsuit brought by Marina Point Development Associates, the landowner of a 12.5-acre resort development site and marina on the north shore of Big Bear Lake. The lawsuit alleges the three -- along with a principal member of a purported anti-development group called "Friends of Fawnskin" and a number of "John Does" to be named as more evidence is gathered -- defrauded Marina Point Development and several federal agencies in order to stop the project to advance their personal interests....
Rec fee plan draws praise, fire One man's funding plan for public lands is another's double taxation. House Bill HR 3283, also called the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, calls for basic and expanded recreation fees on public lands administered by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Parks Service, Bureau of Reclamation and Fish and Wildlife. The legislation would repeal the recreational fee demonstration program of 1996, replacing it with a permanent and streamlined means of funding. The bill would also allow fees collected to be used primarily at the site of collection for as long as the legislation is in effect....
DeFazio sees hope for his forest plan DeFazio said Veneman's biggest shortcoming when it came to Northwest issues was that "she didn't evidence much interest in forest policy" despite her role in overseeing the U.S. Forest Service, which owns and manages vast stretches of forest and range lands in Oregon. DeFazio said he would encourage the Republican president's new appointee to take a look at his own forest-thinning proposal or something like it. The legislation, which DeFazio introduced in July, would put public old growth forests off-limits to logging. It also would appropriate $25 million a year for thinning projects in younger forests, resulting in yearly sales of 500 million board feet from westside public lands....
U.S. Forest Service installs smoke/particulate monitor During the past several months, U.S. Forest Service officials have installed and are now operating a monitoring platform in Kernville for observing the impacts of small airborne particulates from smoke on local residents. The particulate monitor is used to better understand public health issues in smoke sensitive areas. The instrumentation measures all particles in the air, including smoke, dust off the Isabella Reservoir, vehicle emissions and any products of combustion....
Conservationists Release State Reports on the Values of Wild Forests On the final day of the public comment period on the Bush administration’s proposal to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the state PIRGs are releasing seventeen state-by-state reports documenting the clean drinking water, recreation, and wildlife habitat benefits of roadless areas in America’s National Forests. The reports, “Our Natural Legacy: The Value of America’s Roadless National Forests,” are available at www.uspirg.org/reports. Among the findings: Sixty million Americans rely on clean drinking water from national forests. Roadless areas provide the purest source of that water due to their pristine and road-free condition. Drinking water from national forests is worth $3.7 billion annually....
Hitting hard, fast Every fire season, select men and women scramble out of helicopters to take on a new wildfire, often miles from the nearest road. If all goes well, they'll cut it off and kill it before it's big enough to make the evening news. If they make a mistake, or are just plain unlucky, they may be the ones cut off and killed....
Mystery surrounds grizzly death Mystery surrounds the death of another grizzly bear in northwest Wyoming, as investigators are revealing little about the incident. Roy Brown, investigator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Lander, said the event is "complicated." "There's some extenuating circumstances that are related and not related as to why we're not releasing any more information," Brown said Tuesday. "Something happened in the time between the first incident and when we got there that needs to be investigated."....
Earth 'heading towards another mass extinction' The Earth is losing species at a rate comparable to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, environmentalists warn today. The World Conservation Union's annual Red List of endangered species, released at its conference in Bangkok, lists five species that have been added to the "extinct" category. Nearly 16,000 species are listed as being threatened with disappearing, with more than 200 of them already described as "possibly extinct", and almost 3,000 as "critically endangered". The list, compiled by a worldwide network of 8,000 scientists, is regarded as the most authoritative statement of the planet's biodiversity and guides environmental policy around the world....
BLM plan will boost sage grouse The federal Bureau of Land Management released a strategy Tuesday to boost sage-grouse numbers, hoping to bolster the population of America's second-largest game bird after a 90 percent decline since the early 1900s. Developers wanting to drill for gas are closely watching government plans, as are cattlemen, off-road enthusiasts, and environmentalists. Already on Tuesday, some of them dismissed the BLM strategy as a failure. According to the BLM, its strategy will guide its federal wildlife managers in restoring bird populations and habitat until programs can be developed on the state and local level....
Conservationists push for gray wolves in northern N.M. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist says returning wolves to the Rocky Mountains is "a chance to undo a great wrong" done when wolves were exterminated from about 98 percent of their range by the mid-1900s. Steve Fritts said he believes the region from northern New Mexico stretching into Colorado and Wyoming could support wolves. Recent scientific studies by the federal government and independent groups suggest it could support as many as 1,100 wolves. About 60 percent of the 108,000-square-mile area is public land....
Bighorn sheep to be brought to Wyoming In two weeks 20 Bighorn sheep will enter a new northern Wyoming home that shares their name - the Bighorn Mountains. A dozen ewes and a handful of lambs and rams will be netted in northern Oregon, transported to Wyoming in horse trailers and deposited in Devil's Canyon by helicopter on Dec. 4. And although Wyoming Game and Fish Department Wildlife Management Coordinator Kevin Hurley says the "Bighorn Mountains were appropriately named," the namesake animal is more likely to arrive in trailers and helicopters than by natural means....
Save the Men! Decaf coffee, sensitivity training, roadside assistance, hybrid cars: These indicators of rampant "metrosexuality" are enough to make real men fear for their very existence, say the macho editors at Maxim magazine. So they filed a petition this week with Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and the Fish and Wildlife Service, demanding that man be declared an endangered species. "This is no joke," a mag rep insists, and Interior officials told us yesterday that the petition was validly filed. The 12-page document argues that without a listing under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, "Man will surely succumb to the ravages of an effeminate, feng shui world-gone-mad." The feds promise to take the petition seriously because, this being Washington, there's legal precedent to follow. So, sorry, guys. Though man is, as the petition points out, the only species capable of "converting simple grains into courage-boosting Tennessee whiskey" and "making cowboy boots out of other animals," you've already been tamed by a more powerful force. Just take a look on any Maxim cover....
Environmental group to file mining claim Great Basin Mine Watch announced Monday it is planning to file a mining claim on land near Reno on Wednesday to illustrate the need for mining law reform. The environmental organization is planning to file the claim with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Washoe County to "mine" 20 acres of land adjacent to a subdivision. Great Basin Mine Watch stated in its announcement that it is one of seven organizations in the western U.S. who have or are going to file mining claims on public land adjacent to urban and suburban neighborhoods, ski resorts and hiking areas....
Cooling the water wars Colorado cities will struggle to get the water they need as the population grows but may be able to lessen the harm to farms and mountain streams with compromise and stronger state involvement, according to a major study presented Tuesday to the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The Statewide Water Supply Initiative, a $2.8 million study funded by the legislature in 2003, said the number of lost farms and costly battles for water could be minimized with cooperation and good information....
Cloud seeding Vail Mountain and Beaver Creek fired up cloud seeding generators earlier this month to prepare for the 2004 to 2005 ski season. "We believe it increases snowfall throughout the season by up to 10 to 16 percent," said Jen Brown, Vail Mountain communication manager. Vail has been cloud seeding its slopes for nearly 30 years. Brown said Vail spends approximately $1.6 million annually on snowmaking....
Board revises land lease regulations The state Land Board on Monday unanimously approved new regulations that eliminate the absolute right of farmers and ranchers to maintain their state land leases by just matching a competitor's high bid. Under the new rules, existing lessees still have an advantage when competing with another bidder for use of the land, but it is no longer an ironclad guarantee. Ultimately, the board has the final say. The change in how lease renewals are handled was forced by a court ruling earlier this year that concluded existing law giving lessees an automatic preference to keep a lease is unconstitutional....
Initiative may have irrigation component An ambitious -- and expensive -- plan to bring water to farmland around Livermore, Pleasanton and Dublin could be part of an open space initiative being developed for Alameda County. County officials are working with environmental and open space preservation groups on an initiative that would raise millions of dollars to protect ranches, farms and wildlife habitat from development. The initiative is an outgrowth of Alameda County's slow-growth ordinance Measure D, which severely limited the county's authority to approve new housing developments outside of cities....
Committee recommends transfer of development rights program Gallatin County should consider a free-market system allowing developers to buy development rights from landowners, a county committee recommended in a new report. The committee believes such a system would encourage more dense projects in areas appropriate for subdivision. The county's "transfer of development rights" committee determined, in a draft report, that such a program could help fight sprawl in the county. But the committee didn't come up with specifics on how a TDR program could work. The program appealed to farmers and ranchers on the committee because it isn't heavy-handed government imposing rules, Jacobsen said....
Column: Anti-biotech crowd takes behind woodshed whipping The huge victories in defeating county anti-biotech initiatives in 3 of 4 California counties in the general election was a behind-the-woodshed whipping. There is no other way to describe the wide margins of victory in defeating anti-biotech initiatives in Butte and San Luis Obispo counties. Humboldt County’s rejection was also a victory, even though the anti-GE crowd there admitted at the last minute that approving a law that would call for arresting dairymen who grow herbicide-resistant corn was not a good idea. They asked voters to reject the initiative. Nevertheless, 28 percent of the voters supported the ban. Humboldt’s anti-biotechers have said they will come back with a non-flawed initiative. After Nov. 2, that likely would be a flawed effort....
Hunting via Internet? Officials wary Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet, a prospect that has state wildlife officials up in arms. A controversial Web site, http:/www.live-shot.com, already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said on Tuesday. Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his 330-acre (133-hectare) southwest Texas ranch by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world....
Keeping them down on the farm Since the 1980s, agritourism has swept through Italy and other European countries. Spain, Italy, and France each have hundred of farms that host travelers and vacationers. In the United Kingdom it's even bigger; there's a network of farms with some 3,000 members, and overnight guests put more than $73 million in the pockets of farmers, according to Nigel Embry, of Farm Stay UK, an organization founded in 1983 to help farmers market their accommodations. The movement has grown in the United States, as well....
Bush to Visit Canada on Nov. 30 Commerce will play a key role in Bush's Ottawa visit. Canada and the United States have the world's largest trading partnership, conducting more than $1 billion a day in business. But Canadian beef has been shut out since May 2003 when mad cow disease was found in Alberta. The U.S. has since opened its border to some Canadian beef, but live cattle are still banned. Canadian ranchers are desperate, estimating they have lost more than $2 billion....
City life, Old West ways collide with fatal results Cars and trucks roar along Rio Verde Drive all day, heading to upscale developments as they pass through an open range where all that separates them from hundreds of cattle and horses is a deteriorating strand of barbed wire. This conflict between the encroaching city and Old West turned deadly this weekend, when a 29-year-old woman died after striking a horse on Rio Verde Drive, a two-lane road that cuts through thick desert brush. The incident took place only minutes after another man struck a horse while driving on the same stretch of road....
Rollback of Wild Land Protection Gets Support The Schwarzenegger administration signaled its support Tuesday for a plan to drop Clinton-era protections that barred road-building and other development on nearly a third of the country's national forest land, including more than 4 million acres in California. In a letter to the Bush administration that was released Tuesday, state Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman said California welcomed the chance for greater state involvement in federal forest management. Nonetheless, he said, the state did not plan to identify areas for protection or development. Instead, he said, California preferred to work with the U.S. Forest Service as it updates management plans for roadless areas....
Governor: Roadless rules not needed The Bush administration's proposed roadless rule is unnecessary and ultimately will be detrimental to Wyoming, Gov. Dave Freudenthal says. The governor said in a letter to the head of the U.S. Forest Service released Tuesday that forest policy should be made at the federal level, not by states. Freudenthal said he sees no real need for the Bush administration's proposed roadless rule...
Mono Lake scenic area may face development Congress created the nation's first federal scenic area 20 years ago, stepping in to protect Mono Lake, the high desert oddity nearly three times as salty as the ocean that fascinated author Mark Twain during the 1860s. The law signed by President Reagan helped preserve a major stopover for migratory birds and save an inland sea that was being drained to slake Los Angeles' thirst. Now, residents and the U.S. Forest Service say the Mono Lake protections are imperiled by a plan to subdivide 120 acres for luxury homes on the lake's western shore....
U.S. Forest Service Surrenders Computers to Marina Point Development After 13 months of legal action, the U.S. Forest Service has finally agreed to surrender the computers of three federal employees accused of racketeering. In exchange for the Forest Service's agreement, Marina Point will not seek attorneys' fees and costs from the agency. The three employees -- Gene Zimmerman, Scott Eliason and Robin Eliason -- are all employees of the U.S. Forest Service and were recently named as co-conspirators in a lawsuit brought by Marina Point Development Associates, the landowner of a 12.5-acre resort development site and marina on the north shore of Big Bear Lake. The lawsuit alleges the three -- along with a principal member of a purported anti-development group called "Friends of Fawnskin" and a number of "John Does" to be named as more evidence is gathered -- defrauded Marina Point Development and several federal agencies in order to stop the project to advance their personal interests....
Rec fee plan draws praise, fire One man's funding plan for public lands is another's double taxation. House Bill HR 3283, also called the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, calls for basic and expanded recreation fees on public lands administered by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Parks Service, Bureau of Reclamation and Fish and Wildlife. The legislation would repeal the recreational fee demonstration program of 1996, replacing it with a permanent and streamlined means of funding. The bill would also allow fees collected to be used primarily at the site of collection for as long as the legislation is in effect....
DeFazio sees hope for his forest plan DeFazio said Veneman's biggest shortcoming when it came to Northwest issues was that "she didn't evidence much interest in forest policy" despite her role in overseeing the U.S. Forest Service, which owns and manages vast stretches of forest and range lands in Oregon. DeFazio said he would encourage the Republican president's new appointee to take a look at his own forest-thinning proposal or something like it. The legislation, which DeFazio introduced in July, would put public old growth forests off-limits to logging. It also would appropriate $25 million a year for thinning projects in younger forests, resulting in yearly sales of 500 million board feet from westside public lands....
U.S. Forest Service installs smoke/particulate monitor During the past several months, U.S. Forest Service officials have installed and are now operating a monitoring platform in Kernville for observing the impacts of small airborne particulates from smoke on local residents. The particulate monitor is used to better understand public health issues in smoke sensitive areas. The instrumentation measures all particles in the air, including smoke, dust off the Isabella Reservoir, vehicle emissions and any products of combustion....
Conservationists Release State Reports on the Values of Wild Forests On the final day of the public comment period on the Bush administration’s proposal to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the state PIRGs are releasing seventeen state-by-state reports documenting the clean drinking water, recreation, and wildlife habitat benefits of roadless areas in America’s National Forests. The reports, “Our Natural Legacy: The Value of America’s Roadless National Forests,” are available at www.uspirg.org/reports. Among the findings: Sixty million Americans rely on clean drinking water from national forests. Roadless areas provide the purest source of that water due to their pristine and road-free condition. Drinking water from national forests is worth $3.7 billion annually....
Hitting hard, fast Every fire season, select men and women scramble out of helicopters to take on a new wildfire, often miles from the nearest road. If all goes well, they'll cut it off and kill it before it's big enough to make the evening news. If they make a mistake, or are just plain unlucky, they may be the ones cut off and killed....
Mystery surrounds grizzly death Mystery surrounds the death of another grizzly bear in northwest Wyoming, as investigators are revealing little about the incident. Roy Brown, investigator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Lander, said the event is "complicated." "There's some extenuating circumstances that are related and not related as to why we're not releasing any more information," Brown said Tuesday. "Something happened in the time between the first incident and when we got there that needs to be investigated."....
Earth 'heading towards another mass extinction' The Earth is losing species at a rate comparable to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, environmentalists warn today. The World Conservation Union's annual Red List of endangered species, released at its conference in Bangkok, lists five species that have been added to the "extinct" category. Nearly 16,000 species are listed as being threatened with disappearing, with more than 200 of them already described as "possibly extinct", and almost 3,000 as "critically endangered". The list, compiled by a worldwide network of 8,000 scientists, is regarded as the most authoritative statement of the planet's biodiversity and guides environmental policy around the world....
BLM plan will boost sage grouse The federal Bureau of Land Management released a strategy Tuesday to boost sage-grouse numbers, hoping to bolster the population of America's second-largest game bird after a 90 percent decline since the early 1900s. Developers wanting to drill for gas are closely watching government plans, as are cattlemen, off-road enthusiasts, and environmentalists. Already on Tuesday, some of them dismissed the BLM strategy as a failure. According to the BLM, its strategy will guide its federal wildlife managers in restoring bird populations and habitat until programs can be developed on the state and local level....
Conservationists push for gray wolves in northern N.M. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist says returning wolves to the Rocky Mountains is "a chance to undo a great wrong" done when wolves were exterminated from about 98 percent of their range by the mid-1900s. Steve Fritts said he believes the region from northern New Mexico stretching into Colorado and Wyoming could support wolves. Recent scientific studies by the federal government and independent groups suggest it could support as many as 1,100 wolves. About 60 percent of the 108,000-square-mile area is public land....
Bighorn sheep to be brought to Wyoming In two weeks 20 Bighorn sheep will enter a new northern Wyoming home that shares their name - the Bighorn Mountains. A dozen ewes and a handful of lambs and rams will be netted in northern Oregon, transported to Wyoming in horse trailers and deposited in Devil's Canyon by helicopter on Dec. 4. And although Wyoming Game and Fish Department Wildlife Management Coordinator Kevin Hurley says the "Bighorn Mountains were appropriately named," the namesake animal is more likely to arrive in trailers and helicopters than by natural means....
Save the Men! Decaf coffee, sensitivity training, roadside assistance, hybrid cars: These indicators of rampant "metrosexuality" are enough to make real men fear for their very existence, say the macho editors at Maxim magazine. So they filed a petition this week with Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and the Fish and Wildlife Service, demanding that man be declared an endangered species. "This is no joke," a mag rep insists, and Interior officials told us yesterday that the petition was validly filed. The 12-page document argues that without a listing under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, "Man will surely succumb to the ravages of an effeminate, feng shui world-gone-mad." The feds promise to take the petition seriously because, this being Washington, there's legal precedent to follow. So, sorry, guys. Though man is, as the petition points out, the only species capable of "converting simple grains into courage-boosting Tennessee whiskey" and "making cowboy boots out of other animals," you've already been tamed by a more powerful force. Just take a look on any Maxim cover....
Environmental group to file mining claim Great Basin Mine Watch announced Monday it is planning to file a mining claim on land near Reno on Wednesday to illustrate the need for mining law reform. The environmental organization is planning to file the claim with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Washoe County to "mine" 20 acres of land adjacent to a subdivision. Great Basin Mine Watch stated in its announcement that it is one of seven organizations in the western U.S. who have or are going to file mining claims on public land adjacent to urban and suburban neighborhoods, ski resorts and hiking areas....
Cooling the water wars Colorado cities will struggle to get the water they need as the population grows but may be able to lessen the harm to farms and mountain streams with compromise and stronger state involvement, according to a major study presented Tuesday to the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The Statewide Water Supply Initiative, a $2.8 million study funded by the legislature in 2003, said the number of lost farms and costly battles for water could be minimized with cooperation and good information....
Cloud seeding Vail Mountain and Beaver Creek fired up cloud seeding generators earlier this month to prepare for the 2004 to 2005 ski season. "We believe it increases snowfall throughout the season by up to 10 to 16 percent," said Jen Brown, Vail Mountain communication manager. Vail has been cloud seeding its slopes for nearly 30 years. Brown said Vail spends approximately $1.6 million annually on snowmaking....
Board revises land lease regulations The state Land Board on Monday unanimously approved new regulations that eliminate the absolute right of farmers and ranchers to maintain their state land leases by just matching a competitor's high bid. Under the new rules, existing lessees still have an advantage when competing with another bidder for use of the land, but it is no longer an ironclad guarantee. Ultimately, the board has the final say. The change in how lease renewals are handled was forced by a court ruling earlier this year that concluded existing law giving lessees an automatic preference to keep a lease is unconstitutional....
Initiative may have irrigation component An ambitious -- and expensive -- plan to bring water to farmland around Livermore, Pleasanton and Dublin could be part of an open space initiative being developed for Alameda County. County officials are working with environmental and open space preservation groups on an initiative that would raise millions of dollars to protect ranches, farms and wildlife habitat from development. The initiative is an outgrowth of Alameda County's slow-growth ordinance Measure D, which severely limited the county's authority to approve new housing developments outside of cities....
Committee recommends transfer of development rights program Gallatin County should consider a free-market system allowing developers to buy development rights from landowners, a county committee recommended in a new report. The committee believes such a system would encourage more dense projects in areas appropriate for subdivision. The county's "transfer of development rights" committee determined, in a draft report, that such a program could help fight sprawl in the county. But the committee didn't come up with specifics on how a TDR program could work. The program appealed to farmers and ranchers on the committee because it isn't heavy-handed government imposing rules, Jacobsen said....
Column: Anti-biotech crowd takes behind woodshed whipping The huge victories in defeating county anti-biotech initiatives in 3 of 4 California counties in the general election was a behind-the-woodshed whipping. There is no other way to describe the wide margins of victory in defeating anti-biotech initiatives in Butte and San Luis Obispo counties. Humboldt County’s rejection was also a victory, even though the anti-GE crowd there admitted at the last minute that approving a law that would call for arresting dairymen who grow herbicide-resistant corn was not a good idea. They asked voters to reject the initiative. Nevertheless, 28 percent of the voters supported the ban. Humboldt’s anti-biotechers have said they will come back with a non-flawed initiative. After Nov. 2, that likely would be a flawed effort....
Hunting via Internet? Officials wary Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet, a prospect that has state wildlife officials up in arms. A controversial Web site, http:/www.live-shot.com, already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said on Tuesday. Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his 330-acre (133-hectare) southwest Texas ranch by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world....
Keeping them down on the farm Since the 1980s, agritourism has swept through Italy and other European countries. Spain, Italy, and France each have hundred of farms that host travelers and vacationers. In the United Kingdom it's even bigger; there's a network of farms with some 3,000 members, and overnight guests put more than $73 million in the pockets of farmers, according to Nigel Embry, of Farm Stay UK, an organization founded in 1983 to help farmers market their accommodations. The movement has grown in the United States, as well....
Bush to Visit Canada on Nov. 30 Commerce will play a key role in Bush's Ottawa visit. Canada and the United States have the world's largest trading partnership, conducting more than $1 billion a day in business. But Canadian beef has been shut out since May 2003 when mad cow disease was found in Alberta. The U.S. has since opened its border to some Canadian beef, but live cattle are still banned. Canadian ranchers are desperate, estimating they have lost more than $2 billion....
City life, Old West ways collide with fatal results Cars and trucks roar along Rio Verde Drive all day, heading to upscale developments as they pass through an open range where all that separates them from hundreds of cattle and horses is a deteriorating strand of barbed wire. This conflict between the encroaching city and Old West turned deadly this weekend, when a 29-year-old woman died after striking a horse on Rio Verde Drive, a two-lane road that cuts through thick desert brush. The incident took place only minutes after another man struck a horse while driving on the same stretch of road....
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
NEWS ROUNDUP
Groups protest "roadless rule" As the public comment period ended Monday on the revised "roadless rule," members of several conservation groups called on the Bush administration to scrap the plan that they say leaves Colorado forests even more vulnerable to logging, energy development and road building. Instead, they want the U.S. Forest Service to adopt the original rule, proposed by then-President Clinton, which blocks development of "roadless" land in 39 states, including Colorado. Either way, conservationists and others could be in for a long wait. A Forest Service spokeswoman said Monday that the agency has "no real timetable" for sorting through the thousands of public comments received since July....
N.M. gov calls on Bush to preserve road building ban in woods ''There's not a mandate for the Bush administration to open up the nation's roadless areas,'' said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. ''And there's no reason the Forest Service needs to create a convoluted ... process for protecting these areas.'' Richardson and other critics called that a cop-out and said forest policy should be made at the federal level, not by states. He said the roadless rule was a factor in close presidential races in several Western states, and dropping the change would ''heal the wounds in the West.'' Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, dismissed Richardson's comments as partisan. ''To think a governor wouldn't want to have direct input in how lands are managed in his state is hypocritical,'' West said. And he said the notion the rule was a factor in the presidential race was ridiculous: ''Anybody who looks at the polling pre-election and post-election knows the environment was so far down the list it didn't have an impact.''....
'Greens' take aim at Leavitt Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt hasn't even rolled out his environmental agenda for the next four years. But already, prominent conservation organizations are taking a "sky-is-falling" approach to their predictions for the next Bush administration, and they have the former Utah governor firmly in their sights — that is, if they can see him through all the dirty air caused by what they fear will be a dismantling of the Clean Air Act and an across-the-board rollback of environmental protections....
Blackfeet begin fight for Badger-Two Medicine land More than a century ago, Montana's Blackfeet Indian Nation lost a sprawling expanse of sacred land. Tuesday, they begin the process of getting it back. If the elders are right, the eastern half of Glacier National Park actually belongs to the Blackfeet. If they're right, the Badger-Two Medicine (named for two primary rivers that run through it) actually belongs to the tribe....
Forest Fire Battle Hits Federal Court California's fire season just ended. Now the battle over how to fight forest fires is heating up. A federal judge in Montana is expected to rule in a few weeks on a lawsuit that could radically change fire fighting in California. A third of the entire state of California is federal land -- the U.S. Forest Service is responsible for protecting all of it. But, could stopping the fight against forest fires be the best way to fight forest fires? NBC11's Garvin Thomas found an environmental advocate that thinks so....
Residents worry about grizzly hunting, genetics Having enough grizzly bears to hunt, maintaining the genetics of Yellowstone's grizzly population and addressing future threats to the animal were the main concerns expressed Monday by southwest Wyoming sportsmen about the state's proposed grizzly bear management plan....
Timber industry expects no change for northern spotted owl A timber-industry group that sued for a review of the threatened-species status of the northern spotted owl said yesterday it does not expect the bird to lose federal protection but hopes new information will allow more logging in national forests. "I don't see how it could be taken off the list," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland. "Let's do what we need to do to protect the species based on the true risk, not some flawed notion they are solely dependent on old growth." Under terms of a 2003 lawsuit settlement, yesterday was the deadline for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether the bird that prompted sharp logging cutbacks in the 1990s still merits federal protection....
Conservative legal group challenges endangered species protection A conservative legal group has threatened to sue the federal government over its plans to protect four dozen endangered species in California ranging from peninsular bighorn sheep to the tiny robust spineflower. The Pacific Legal Foundation notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service on Monday that it would file suit in 60 days, claiming the agencies failed to meet requirements of the Endangered Species Act when they set out to protect 16 animal and 32 plant species. Advance notice is required before filing endangered species lawsuits. Based on a favorable ruling in U.S. District Court in Fresno that overturned habitat protection for the Alameda whipsnake last year, the foundation said the agencies underestimated the economic impact of protection and didn't properly follow the rules to protect habitat....
Conservationists meet to plan global green agenda More than 5,000 scientists, conservationists and politicians meet in Thailand over the next week to hammer out a blueprint for saving some of the world's most endangered species and fragile ecosystems. The IUCN World Conservation Union, which is hosting the four-yearly World Conservation Congress, is billing the eight-day Bangkok convention as the one of biggest environmental meetings in history....
Judge blocks Timbered Rock sales A federal judge blocked timber salvage sales on federal land burned by the Timbered Rock fire in Southern Oregon. Judge Ann Aiken issued the permanent injunction for the Flaming Rock and Smoke Gobbler timber sales on Nov. 8, concluding that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's decision to salvage the timber was arbitrary and capricious. The sale plans called for logging 17 million board feet of timber from 12,000 acres of the BLM's Medford District land burned by the 27,000-acre fire in 2002. Both sales, however, are in late-successional reserves, which are required under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan to be managed to protect and enhance old-growth forest ecosystems....
Norton draws less flak It seems so long ago when Gale Norton was public enemy No. 1. Back in the opening weeks of George W. Bush's presidency, the Interior secretary nominee from Colorado quickly became one of the most vilified members of the president's Cabinet. On the day of her confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, Greenpeace activists swung from the rooftop of the Department of Interior headquarters to unfurl a banner saying, "Bush & Norton: Our land, not oil land!" But then something happened. Public land issues took a back seat to terrorism, war and the economy. The soft-spoken Norton slipped into the background....
Conoco closer to NPR-A Officials with the U.S. Interior Department have given their nod to Conoco Phillips Alaska Inc.'s plan to expand from its existing Alpine oil field into the northeastern edge of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Bureau of Land Management approved development on the two reservoirs that are in its jurisdiction -- which Conoco has dubbed Lookout and Spark -- after tightening some of the environmental restrictions the company must adhere to. The restrictions include barring some of the proposed gravel roads and pipelines from a three-mile protection zone along Fish Creek and requiring that pipelines be built seven feet off the ground, instead of five, to allow migratory caribou to pass under them....
Flake, Franks, Shadegg back federal land acquisition cuts Valley Congressmen Jeff Flake, Trent Franks and John Shadegg are pushing for cuts in federal land acquisition funding. The move could have a big impact in Arizona, where the federal government owns a substantial amount of land. The three Republicans back a proposed $121 million decrease in land acquisition funding. The cut is part of a U.S. House version of the yet-to-be-completed Department of Interior spending package. A rival Senate version of the Interior budget calls for a $215 million increase in the federal government land-buying pool of cash. Flake, Shadegg and Franks have joined 32 other fiscal conservatives in letter to U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., backing the cuts....
Wolf rules eyed The Colorado Division of Wildlife will ask the Wildlife Commission on Wednesday to relax the regulations governing ranchers who kill wolves preying on their livestock. "Right now, the wolf is a state endangered species and can only be killed if it's a threat to human life," said Gary Skiba, state wildlife biologist who heads up the wolf-management effort. If one is killed for any other reason, the charge is a Class 5 felony punishable by up to a $100,000 fine and three years in jail....
Column: Californians, Hug a Miner Today Your car. Your desk. Your computer. Your pots and pans. The road outside. Your lunch. What do these things have in common? All of them involved disturbing the land and the ''exploitation'' of natural resources in their creation. Anything around you that contains metal, plastic or rubber comes directly from mining and oil drilling operations somewhere in the world. Anything that is wood, paper or food was either logged or harvested. Almost everything we have comes from mining, drilling, logging and farming, and yet these industries are increasingly under attack from the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) people, regulators, and environmentalists....
Column: Revolt Rattles Oregon's Land-Use Legacy Washington has apples. Colorado has football and hockey. Oregon? We have land-use laws. It's what built our state's reputation. Planning textbooks often feature a chapter on Oregon, and environmentalists and land-use planners throughout the West look longingly towards our state Legislature in Salem; it's the place where smart people put a cap on sprawl. That was before Nov. 2, when Oregonians questioned their resolve to be sprawl-fighters. Nearly 60 percent of Oregon voters across rural and urban areas passed a ballot initiative that requires state and local governments to either compensate landowners when environmental or planning laws harm property values, or else to waive the regulation. Written by a property-rights group that has worked for years to dismantle land-use laws, the measure provides no funding mechanism for processing claims or for the estimated millions of dollars in compensation that could be due....
Australian court rules cowboy hats too dangerous; helmets needed The sweat-stained felt hats worn by Australian cowboys, as much a part of the Outback as kangaroos and sun-baked soil, may be heading for the history books. They fail modern industrial safety standards. It all stems from the death of a cowboy, who suffered massive head injuries after being trampled in a fall from a horse while mustering bulls in July 2001. His sole protection was the tattered hat provided him for shading from the sun. The New South Wales state government brought charges against the ranch owner, who employed 23-year-old Daniel Croker, convicting and fining the company $72,000 last month for breaches of safety, including failure to provide the horseman with an equestrian helmet....
It's All Trew: Drought wrings the patience from community Two years passed without rain in the Caprock community. Herds were culled as grass and crops died because of the drought. Most people had notes due at the bank and many were working at outside jobs trying to hang on until the drought broke. Nerves were frazzled in frustration. The ladies sponsored a private dance, rented a local hall and hired a western band in an effort to provide the community with a little recreation and relaxation. They decorated the tables and brought dips and snacks while the men brought liquor....
Groups protest "roadless rule" As the public comment period ended Monday on the revised "roadless rule," members of several conservation groups called on the Bush administration to scrap the plan that they say leaves Colorado forests even more vulnerable to logging, energy development and road building. Instead, they want the U.S. Forest Service to adopt the original rule, proposed by then-President Clinton, which blocks development of "roadless" land in 39 states, including Colorado. Either way, conservationists and others could be in for a long wait. A Forest Service spokeswoman said Monday that the agency has "no real timetable" for sorting through the thousands of public comments received since July....
N.M. gov calls on Bush to preserve road building ban in woods ''There's not a mandate for the Bush administration to open up the nation's roadless areas,'' said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. ''And there's no reason the Forest Service needs to create a convoluted ... process for protecting these areas.'' Richardson and other critics called that a cop-out and said forest policy should be made at the federal level, not by states. He said the roadless rule was a factor in close presidential races in several Western states, and dropping the change would ''heal the wounds in the West.'' Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, dismissed Richardson's comments as partisan. ''To think a governor wouldn't want to have direct input in how lands are managed in his state is hypocritical,'' West said. And he said the notion the rule was a factor in the presidential race was ridiculous: ''Anybody who looks at the polling pre-election and post-election knows the environment was so far down the list it didn't have an impact.''....
'Greens' take aim at Leavitt Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt hasn't even rolled out his environmental agenda for the next four years. But already, prominent conservation organizations are taking a "sky-is-falling" approach to their predictions for the next Bush administration, and they have the former Utah governor firmly in their sights — that is, if they can see him through all the dirty air caused by what they fear will be a dismantling of the Clean Air Act and an across-the-board rollback of environmental protections....
Blackfeet begin fight for Badger-Two Medicine land More than a century ago, Montana's Blackfeet Indian Nation lost a sprawling expanse of sacred land. Tuesday, they begin the process of getting it back. If the elders are right, the eastern half of Glacier National Park actually belongs to the Blackfeet. If they're right, the Badger-Two Medicine (named for two primary rivers that run through it) actually belongs to the tribe....
Forest Fire Battle Hits Federal Court California's fire season just ended. Now the battle over how to fight forest fires is heating up. A federal judge in Montana is expected to rule in a few weeks on a lawsuit that could radically change fire fighting in California. A third of the entire state of California is federal land -- the U.S. Forest Service is responsible for protecting all of it. But, could stopping the fight against forest fires be the best way to fight forest fires? NBC11's Garvin Thomas found an environmental advocate that thinks so....
Residents worry about grizzly hunting, genetics Having enough grizzly bears to hunt, maintaining the genetics of Yellowstone's grizzly population and addressing future threats to the animal were the main concerns expressed Monday by southwest Wyoming sportsmen about the state's proposed grizzly bear management plan....
Timber industry expects no change for northern spotted owl A timber-industry group that sued for a review of the threatened-species status of the northern spotted owl said yesterday it does not expect the bird to lose federal protection but hopes new information will allow more logging in national forests. "I don't see how it could be taken off the list," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland. "Let's do what we need to do to protect the species based on the true risk, not some flawed notion they are solely dependent on old growth." Under terms of a 2003 lawsuit settlement, yesterday was the deadline for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether the bird that prompted sharp logging cutbacks in the 1990s still merits federal protection....
Conservative legal group challenges endangered species protection A conservative legal group has threatened to sue the federal government over its plans to protect four dozen endangered species in California ranging from peninsular bighorn sheep to the tiny robust spineflower. The Pacific Legal Foundation notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service on Monday that it would file suit in 60 days, claiming the agencies failed to meet requirements of the Endangered Species Act when they set out to protect 16 animal and 32 plant species. Advance notice is required before filing endangered species lawsuits. Based on a favorable ruling in U.S. District Court in Fresno that overturned habitat protection for the Alameda whipsnake last year, the foundation said the agencies underestimated the economic impact of protection and didn't properly follow the rules to protect habitat....
Conservationists meet to plan global green agenda More than 5,000 scientists, conservationists and politicians meet in Thailand over the next week to hammer out a blueprint for saving some of the world's most endangered species and fragile ecosystems. The IUCN World Conservation Union, which is hosting the four-yearly World Conservation Congress, is billing the eight-day Bangkok convention as the one of biggest environmental meetings in history....
Judge blocks Timbered Rock sales A federal judge blocked timber salvage sales on federal land burned by the Timbered Rock fire in Southern Oregon. Judge Ann Aiken issued the permanent injunction for the Flaming Rock and Smoke Gobbler timber sales on Nov. 8, concluding that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's decision to salvage the timber was arbitrary and capricious. The sale plans called for logging 17 million board feet of timber from 12,000 acres of the BLM's Medford District land burned by the 27,000-acre fire in 2002. Both sales, however, are in late-successional reserves, which are required under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan to be managed to protect and enhance old-growth forest ecosystems....
Norton draws less flak It seems so long ago when Gale Norton was public enemy No. 1. Back in the opening weeks of George W. Bush's presidency, the Interior secretary nominee from Colorado quickly became one of the most vilified members of the president's Cabinet. On the day of her confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, Greenpeace activists swung from the rooftop of the Department of Interior headquarters to unfurl a banner saying, "Bush & Norton: Our land, not oil land!" But then something happened. Public land issues took a back seat to terrorism, war and the economy. The soft-spoken Norton slipped into the background....
Conoco closer to NPR-A Officials with the U.S. Interior Department have given their nod to Conoco Phillips Alaska Inc.'s plan to expand from its existing Alpine oil field into the northeastern edge of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Bureau of Land Management approved development on the two reservoirs that are in its jurisdiction -- which Conoco has dubbed Lookout and Spark -- after tightening some of the environmental restrictions the company must adhere to. The restrictions include barring some of the proposed gravel roads and pipelines from a three-mile protection zone along Fish Creek and requiring that pipelines be built seven feet off the ground, instead of five, to allow migratory caribou to pass under them....
Flake, Franks, Shadegg back federal land acquisition cuts Valley Congressmen Jeff Flake, Trent Franks and John Shadegg are pushing for cuts in federal land acquisition funding. The move could have a big impact in Arizona, where the federal government owns a substantial amount of land. The three Republicans back a proposed $121 million decrease in land acquisition funding. The cut is part of a U.S. House version of the yet-to-be-completed Department of Interior spending package. A rival Senate version of the Interior budget calls for a $215 million increase in the federal government land-buying pool of cash. Flake, Shadegg and Franks have joined 32 other fiscal conservatives in letter to U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., backing the cuts....
Wolf rules eyed The Colorado Division of Wildlife will ask the Wildlife Commission on Wednesday to relax the regulations governing ranchers who kill wolves preying on their livestock. "Right now, the wolf is a state endangered species and can only be killed if it's a threat to human life," said Gary Skiba, state wildlife biologist who heads up the wolf-management effort. If one is killed for any other reason, the charge is a Class 5 felony punishable by up to a $100,000 fine and three years in jail....
Column: Californians, Hug a Miner Today Your car. Your desk. Your computer. Your pots and pans. The road outside. Your lunch. What do these things have in common? All of them involved disturbing the land and the ''exploitation'' of natural resources in their creation. Anything around you that contains metal, plastic or rubber comes directly from mining and oil drilling operations somewhere in the world. Anything that is wood, paper or food was either logged or harvested. Almost everything we have comes from mining, drilling, logging and farming, and yet these industries are increasingly under attack from the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) people, regulators, and environmentalists....
Column: Revolt Rattles Oregon's Land-Use Legacy Washington has apples. Colorado has football and hockey. Oregon? We have land-use laws. It's what built our state's reputation. Planning textbooks often feature a chapter on Oregon, and environmentalists and land-use planners throughout the West look longingly towards our state Legislature in Salem; it's the place where smart people put a cap on sprawl. That was before Nov. 2, when Oregonians questioned their resolve to be sprawl-fighters. Nearly 60 percent of Oregon voters across rural and urban areas passed a ballot initiative that requires state and local governments to either compensate landowners when environmental or planning laws harm property values, or else to waive the regulation. Written by a property-rights group that has worked for years to dismantle land-use laws, the measure provides no funding mechanism for processing claims or for the estimated millions of dollars in compensation that could be due....
Australian court rules cowboy hats too dangerous; helmets needed The sweat-stained felt hats worn by Australian cowboys, as much a part of the Outback as kangaroos and sun-baked soil, may be heading for the history books. They fail modern industrial safety standards. It all stems from the death of a cowboy, who suffered massive head injuries after being trampled in a fall from a horse while mustering bulls in July 2001. His sole protection was the tattered hat provided him for shading from the sun. The New South Wales state government brought charges against the ranch owner, who employed 23-year-old Daniel Croker, convicting and fining the company $72,000 last month for breaches of safety, including failure to provide the horseman with an equestrian helmet....
It's All Trew: Drought wrings the patience from community Two years passed without rain in the Caprock community. Herds were culled as grass and crops died because of the drought. Most people had notes due at the bank and many were working at outside jobs trying to hang on until the drought broke. Nerves were frazzled in frustration. The ladies sponsored a private dance, rented a local hall and hired a western band in an effort to provide the community with a little recreation and relaxation. They decorated the tables and brought dips and snacks while the men brought liquor....
Monday, November 15, 2004
Veneman to step down as ag secretary Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, the daughter of a California peach farmer and the first woman ag secretary, has resigned from the post, according to press reports. Veneman is expected to remain on the job until her successor is chosen. Among potential replacements are former House Agriculture Committee Chairman and Texas Congressman Larry Combest, fellow Texan and former ranking member on the House Ag Committee Charlie Stenholm; Ambassador Allen Johnson, chief agricultural negotiator with the U.S. Trade Representative's office and White House agriculture advisor Chuck Conner. She made it clear she would like to serve a second term, but it is also clear, said Bagby, with almost of half of President Bush’s cabinet resigning within a few weeks of his election victory that the “President is making a bunch of changes.”....
Statement by the President
Ann Veneman has been a strong advocate for America's farm and ranch families. As Secretary of Agriculture, she has been a valuable member of my Cabinet, working to ensure that we promote economic opportunities for farmers and ranchers, ensure a safe and wholesome food supply, and sell American farm products all around the world. I commend Ann for her efforts to enact and implement a responsible farm bill with strong conservation provisions. I greatly appreciate Ann's leadership in ensuring that we responded quickly and effectively to protect the American food supply following the discovery of BSE in the United States and following September 11th. She has helped ensure commonsense forest management and skillfully implemented the Healthy Forests Initiative. She has played a key role in opening markets and in ensuring a level playing field for America's farm products. Ann has served our country with distinction and integrity. I appreciate her fine work and wish her well.
Democrats, Greens Aim to Overturn Bush Forest Plan Democrats and environmental groups on Monday expressed hope that changes in the Bush administration Cabinet could moderate a White House plan to open some 60 million acres of federal forests to logging. "With the president reaching out and seeing that in the West his candidacy was very contested, this was one of the reasons," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, told reporters on a teleconference. We hope "a new secretary of agriculture would use this issue to bring people together," he said. Agriculture Department Secretary Ann Veneman resigned on Monday after four years leading the department that oversees the U.S. Forest Service. It was not clear how soon a successor would be named....
Greens see hope in Veneman departure Conservationists were hopeful Monday the departure of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman might lead to better protections for the nation's wildlands. Phil Clapp of the National Environmental Trust said Veneman's eventual successor might have a keener interest in protecting federal lands than did Veneman, whom he described as more interested in traditional farm issues rather than forestry....
Veneman: not popular with farmers after all Shortly after President George W. Bush's re-election, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's name appeared on lists of cabinet officials who might be leaving the administration. Apparently, many farmers shared the view that she should go. Others posting comments said she supported the Pork Checkoff after farmers voted it out and fought country of origin labeling on behalf of meat packers. She was also criticized for slow implementation of parts of the 2002 Farm Bill. Delays in rules for the Conservation Security Program were criticized by many farm groups as well as former Senate Agriculture Committee chair, Tom Harkin (D-IA)....
Farm groups react to Veneman, Abraham resignations Upon hearing of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's resignation from the Bush Administration today, Farm Bureau praised her service to agriculture. The leaders of the National Farmers Union, National Pork Producers Council, National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Corn Growers Association also weighed in. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham also turned in his resignation today. NCGA applauded his service as a strong supporter of the ethanol industry. "During her tenure, we have faced a variety of complex issues, some of which were crises, and she handled them adeptly," said Bob Stallman in a release today. Stallman is the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation....
Veneman presided over wary food supply Weeks after taking office in 2001, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Europe prompted Veneman to increase inspections and testing to prevent its arrival in the United States. After the Sept. 11 attacks that year, concern grew that terrorists might seek to contaminate the nation's food supply. Then came the discovery last year of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States. Veneman quickly upgraded the country's defenses, banning high-risk meat products and meat from cows that could not stand or walk on their own, testing more cattle and promising to speed a nationwide animal tracking system. Farm interests for the most part praised Veneman's response, while consumer advocacy groups said Veneman and her agency had not done enough....
Statement by the President
Ann Veneman has been a strong advocate for America's farm and ranch families. As Secretary of Agriculture, she has been a valuable member of my Cabinet, working to ensure that we promote economic opportunities for farmers and ranchers, ensure a safe and wholesome food supply, and sell American farm products all around the world. I commend Ann for her efforts to enact and implement a responsible farm bill with strong conservation provisions. I greatly appreciate Ann's leadership in ensuring that we responded quickly and effectively to protect the American food supply following the discovery of BSE in the United States and following September 11th. She has helped ensure commonsense forest management and skillfully implemented the Healthy Forests Initiative. She has played a key role in opening markets and in ensuring a level playing field for America's farm products. Ann has served our country with distinction and integrity. I appreciate her fine work and wish her well.
Democrats, Greens Aim to Overturn Bush Forest Plan Democrats and environmental groups on Monday expressed hope that changes in the Bush administration Cabinet could moderate a White House plan to open some 60 million acres of federal forests to logging. "With the president reaching out and seeing that in the West his candidacy was very contested, this was one of the reasons," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, told reporters on a teleconference. We hope "a new secretary of agriculture would use this issue to bring people together," he said. Agriculture Department Secretary Ann Veneman resigned on Monday after four years leading the department that oversees the U.S. Forest Service. It was not clear how soon a successor would be named....
Greens see hope in Veneman departure Conservationists were hopeful Monday the departure of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman might lead to better protections for the nation's wildlands. Phil Clapp of the National Environmental Trust said Veneman's eventual successor might have a keener interest in protecting federal lands than did Veneman, whom he described as more interested in traditional farm issues rather than forestry....
Veneman: not popular with farmers after all Shortly after President George W. Bush's re-election, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's name appeared on lists of cabinet officials who might be leaving the administration. Apparently, many farmers shared the view that she should go. Others posting comments said she supported the Pork Checkoff after farmers voted it out and fought country of origin labeling on behalf of meat packers. She was also criticized for slow implementation of parts of the 2002 Farm Bill. Delays in rules for the Conservation Security Program were criticized by many farm groups as well as former Senate Agriculture Committee chair, Tom Harkin (D-IA)....
Farm groups react to Veneman, Abraham resignations Upon hearing of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's resignation from the Bush Administration today, Farm Bureau praised her service to agriculture. The leaders of the National Farmers Union, National Pork Producers Council, National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Corn Growers Association also weighed in. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham also turned in his resignation today. NCGA applauded his service as a strong supporter of the ethanol industry. "During her tenure, we have faced a variety of complex issues, some of which were crises, and she handled them adeptly," said Bob Stallman in a release today. Stallman is the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation....
Veneman presided over wary food supply Weeks after taking office in 2001, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Europe prompted Veneman to increase inspections and testing to prevent its arrival in the United States. After the Sept. 11 attacks that year, concern grew that terrorists might seek to contaminate the nation's food supply. Then came the discovery last year of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States. Veneman quickly upgraded the country's defenses, banning high-risk meat products and meat from cows that could not stand or walk on their own, testing more cattle and promising to speed a nationwide animal tracking system. Farm interests for the most part praised Veneman's response, while consumer advocacy groups said Veneman and her agency had not done enough....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Column: Moving beyond the roadless impasse The debate about the management of 58.5 million acres of national forest inventoried roadless areas has presented the 2001 roadless areas conservation rule and a state petitioning process, proposed in July 2004, as the only options. Both approaches are dead ends and a third option should be developed. An improved forest planning process, energized by strong policy guidance from the chief of the Forest Service, could provide that option. The 2001 roadless rule has been enjoined by the courts for all but three months since it was promulgated and is currently enjoined. The legal issues may not be decided for years. Some of us are not optimistic that the courts will ever uphold the rule....
Logging Teams Take Skills to Cutting Edge When Gina Lopez told her pals in UC Berkeley's "global-environment" residence hall that she had joined the school's logging team, they were aghast. "Gina, I can't believe you'd do that," one of her housemates said. "It's logging!" But here she was at this weekend's California Conclave intercollegiate logging competition, gripping a double-bladed ax with both hands, rearing back and letting it fly at a bull's-eye painted on a round slab of Douglas fir....
Snow-cat trips get skiers off the beaten path In December, the Kirkwood ski resort will crank up a novel snow-cat program that will let many skiers and snowboarders venture into untracked powder in the back country for the first time. You could call it the poor man's helicopter skiing adventure. Skiers and snowboarders will be able to climb aboard a snow cat with guides and motor into virgin snow above the Red Cliffs area. When they disembark in about 20 minutes, they will have about a thousand feet of vertical powder in front of them for the glide down....
Saving Big Sur/Why California's prized coastline is at risk The Gomeses' experience is typical of the problems facing hikers trying to use Big Sur's 200 miles of trails for recreation. Only about 15 percent of the trails are well maintained. The rest are either overgrown or blocked by fallen trees or landslides. Hamstrung by budget constraints, the Forest Service and other agencies are fighting a never-ending battle to keep the sprawling network of trails and campgrounds throughout Big Sur from being wiped off the map by the encroaching forces of nature. This decline is caused by congressional cuts to the Forest Service budget. Recreation budgets have been particularly hard hit, shrinking by 40 percent in the past two decades, said Manny Madrigal, recreation officer for Los Padres National Forest's Monterey Ranger District, which includes Big Sur....
Drilling lease sale stirs roadless-area rage Bird calls echo off the steep, pine-covered ridges of the Thompson Creek valley, the only sounds in this pristine forest, set aside under a special "roadless" designation by the U.S. Forest Service. But amid the buzz of the region's energy boom, the recent sale of three gas-drilling leases here has broken the tranquility....
Editorial: Stiffer penalties for ORV misuse Riders of ATVs and other off-road vehicles (ORVs) compose only 5 percent of the visitors to the national forests, yet cause most of the complaints. ORVs are ripping up stream banks, churning wildflowers into mud, and frightening wildlife. ORV engines aren't just noisy, they're dirty and inefficient, leaving behind oil and gas slicks. In southwest Colorado, ORVs smash ancient Indian artifacts. On alpine tundra, tire marks from one ATV can remain visible for generations. Congress should dramatically increase penalties for wayward ORV drivers. The existing $75 fine is meaningless, but a fine of several hundred dollars and a bill for thousands of dollars to repair damage to public property would have teeth. The money raised could go to hire more rangers....
Forest official denies charges San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman has denied charges made in a federal lawsuit that he abused his authority by halting the construction of a 100-unit condominium development near Big Bear Lake. Zimmerman also defended two U.S. Forest Service scientists, who are accused in the lawsuit of fabricating reports about the status of the area's bald eagle population and otherwise using their positions to derail the project....
Invasive plants creep into Alaska If you saw an orange and blue blimp floating over the Matanuska River this summer, you weren't hallucinating. Scientists launched the 15-foot long, tethered blimp to help them document a growing problem in Alaska - the invasion of non-native plants. Norm Harris has flown blimps all over Alaska to get a bird's-eye view of everything from soils to salmon habitat....
Environmentalists brace for Bush policies Battles continue over the administration's plan to lift the Clinton era prohibitions on logging and road building in 58 million acres of remote national forests unless governors petition to protect them, rebuilding threatened and endangered runs of salmon, and the Northwest Forest Plan, which balances logging against fish and wildlife habitat. One of Rey's top priorities is boosting the acreage treated under Healthy Forests from 4 million acres this year to 8 million acres, which would be on track to treat the 80 million acres most in need every 10 years. Rey said only 270,000 acres of the 4 million treated produced any kind of logs or fuel for biomass generators, which should satisfy environmentalists who feared Healthy Forests would be a license for logging of old growth forests....
A year later, backcountry shows signs of rebirth Her name was F19, and the radio collar the 90-pound mountain lion wore signaled to biologists that she was still on the move after the Cedar fire's worst days. Yet when residents near Julian began complaining about a mountain lion they couldn't scare away from their homes, the animal's unusual behavior was a signal that something was wrong....
Commercial rafting passengers weigh in A new group representing commercial rafting passengers has been formed to lobby for changes in the way the National Park Service is proposing to assign trip slots on the Colorado River. Dwight Sherwood, president of the Grand Canyon River Runners Association, said Friday that his nonprofit organization is stepping up not for corporate or environmental interests but on behalf of paying customers who like the shorter, motorized trips. Sherwood said he fears that pressure from wilderness advocates and private river runners would leave the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon "only to elitist, skills-based river runners" and not the general public....
Grazing decision under fire The rolling foothills near Round Mountain, south of here, are considered ideal pasture land for cattle in the view of federal officials, but private landowners in the area disagree. A decision by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management authorizes up to 221 cows to forage on 18,090 acres administered under the bureau's grazing allotment program, from Dec. 1 through March 31. Property owners and a conservation group said they will appeal the ruling by Roxie Trost, the bureau's Barstow area field manager, on grounds grazing would damage the region's fragile environment....
Project seeks to turn abandoned mine site into scenic vista For the past several months, big trucks, earthmovers and workers have been restoring this stream 30 miles east of Missoula in the hope of returning it to the pristine state it was in before miners blasted a hole in the side of the mountain more than a half-century ago and tumbled down thousands of cubic yards of rocks and heavy metals. It's really not Moore's land, but belongs instead to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which has overseen the $1.9 million reclamation project designed to clear out waste rock larded with lead and zinc and fill a huge cavern left behind by operations at the Blacktail mine....
Grand Canyon due for another flush Nearly nine years later, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is planning another beach party in the Grand Canyon. Pending the completion of an environmental assessment, the bureau next Sunday will commence what it is calling a "high-flow test experiment" at Glen Canyon Dam in a bid to ship sediment down the Colorado River that it hopes will replace sandbars and backwaters in the Grand Canyon that have been lost over the years because of dam-regulated water fluctuations. The goal: to help native fish species, such as the humpback chub, regain a toehold in the river that has been lost over time to non-native species, such as trout, and to restore beaches that have been washed away. It is a bid to restore the bottom of the canyon to something resembling its natural state prior to the dam's opening in 1962....
Oregonians Hold Their Ground But on Nov. 2, Oregon's voters, angered by what they saw as bureaucratic disregard for landowners, staged a revolt. By a vote of 60% to 40%, they approved a process designed to restore property rights stripped from owners by regulations enacted after they bought their land, or to require governments to pay a fair price for taking those rights away. With passage of Measure 37, Oregon has gone further than any other state to protect individual property rights, essentially prohibiting so-called "down-zoning" without just compensation, experts said. Indeed, Oregon has gone beyond what the U.S. Supreme Court has required in so-called "regulatory taking" cases, according to some legal experts....
Private-land access through state program gets easier for hunters The A&H program, as it's called, was created by the 1993 Legislature as an incentive to private landowners to open more of their land to hunting. Each year, hidden in the annual hunting license fee, the department collects a $2 surcharge and sends it to a separate fund that feeds a budget of about $1.5 million each biennium. The program also receives proceeds from state-sponsored raffles and auctions for premium big-game tags. Some of the money pays for habitat projects on private land. Landowners also can get tax breaks or emergency damage funds to help wildlife through other state programs. The rest of the A&H money finances a state access program that has opened -- at one time or other -- approximately 5 million acres of land to public hunters....
Column: Can the West be one? The vast majority of Americans who call themselves environmentalists, 78 percent in one survey, live in urban areas. They are the "New Westerners." Their connection to the land is mostly as observers, recreationists and infrequent visitors. Most of those who oppose the environmental movement actually live and work in the small rural communities of the West and many of them make their living from the land itself. They still represent the Old West. For the urban enviros, there's the rub. In the past three decades, each side of the conflict has so savagely misrepresented the other, so excessively caricatured their opponents, that they have, in the process, turned themselves into pretty laughable cartoon characters as well....
Of Land and Legacy Truocchio eventually would like to pass along her domain of rolling chaparral hills, cottonwood copses and 250 head of cattle to her daughter, Pat Abel, and thus avoid having it developed into 10-acre ranchettes or sold to a corporate ranching enterprise. That's how the American dream is supposed to work, isn't it? The beloved land stays in the family, and the child profits from the parents' labor? The family ranch, that symbol of the pioneer spirit in the West, would live on. If only it were that simple. The Truocchios, like many other families ranching cattle on California's Central Coast, face a vexing dilemma. With profit margins of less than 1%, ranching is a cash-poor business. Yet in terms of assets, notably real estate, ranchers are among California's rich....
Trade Issues Sour U.S.-Canadian Friendships Gerry Duckworth nails posters around his cattle ranch just north of the Montana border warning American hunters to get off his land as long as Canadian cattle are banned in the United States. "NO BEEF = NO HUNTING," the signs scold. Those are fighting words and reflect the deep feelings of chagrin among western Canadians, who normally look kindly on the United States. Mr. Duckworth has printed thousands of the signs, and they are appearing across Canadian prairies, where American hunters were once welcomed with open arms....
Chupacabra Discoverers United It's a relationship that's as wild as the creatures that brought them together. What exactly are these creatures? A dog? A wolf? The chupacabra? WOAI brings together an Elmendorf rancher and an East Texas animal lover, so they can share their fascinating finds. Whatever they are, they're turning up more and more these days. While we can merely speculate, two people have firsthand knowledge of the critters. Elmendorf rancher Devin MacNally started this chupacabra phenomenon months ago when he shot a mysterious animal on his property. East Texas animal lover Stacy Womack made another mysterious discovery under her house....
1888 blizzard struck most vulnerable "The Children's Blizzard," by David Laskin (HarperCollins, 295 pages, $24.95) Anyone who lived through the blizzard of 1888 remembered the morning of Jan. 13 as unusually mild, a break in the subzero weather of the past few days. Men stood outside in shirtsleeves, children went to school in light jackets, without hats or mittens. Then the blizzard hit, in minutes, "rolling toward us with great fury ... and making a loud noise. It looked like a long string of big bales of cotton," wrote a child. A teacher said the sudden wind "struck her with such violence as to bring her head down to her knees, and she knew that if she fell she would not get up again."....
El Pasoans move 'em out at ranch But Bowen and the Ford Dealers Southwestern Livestock Show and Rodeo are trying to keep the ranching tradition alive. Saturday, the two, along with other organizations, hosted a cattle drive featuring about 100 horse riders and dozens of Texas longhorn and whiteface Hereford cattle. The cattle drive also gave El Pasoans and other area residents a chance to catch a glimpse into the ranching lifestyle. After the cattle drive, riders and onlookers ate a barbecue lunch and toured the ranch's headquarters, which featured children's activities and an area to see chickens, pigs, horses, donkeys and other animals....
On The Edge Of Common Sense: When the frost is on the punkin, round up the cows Compared to the other big seasons in the cow business, - i.e., branding, calving, turning out to summer pasture, or pulling the bulls - shipping time is the Super Bowl! Everyone's pumped up. Expectations are high, a year's work, it's like adding up your score at the end of the game. Most businesses accumulate income daily or weekly. But on a ranch or beef cow herd, the only things you accumulate regularly are bills. Christmas comes in the fall for cowmen....
Column: Moving beyond the roadless impasse The debate about the management of 58.5 million acres of national forest inventoried roadless areas has presented the 2001 roadless areas conservation rule and a state petitioning process, proposed in July 2004, as the only options. Both approaches are dead ends and a third option should be developed. An improved forest planning process, energized by strong policy guidance from the chief of the Forest Service, could provide that option. The 2001 roadless rule has been enjoined by the courts for all but three months since it was promulgated and is currently enjoined. The legal issues may not be decided for years. Some of us are not optimistic that the courts will ever uphold the rule....
Logging Teams Take Skills to Cutting Edge When Gina Lopez told her pals in UC Berkeley's "global-environment" residence hall that she had joined the school's logging team, they were aghast. "Gina, I can't believe you'd do that," one of her housemates said. "It's logging!" But here she was at this weekend's California Conclave intercollegiate logging competition, gripping a double-bladed ax with both hands, rearing back and letting it fly at a bull's-eye painted on a round slab of Douglas fir....
Snow-cat trips get skiers off the beaten path In December, the Kirkwood ski resort will crank up a novel snow-cat program that will let many skiers and snowboarders venture into untracked powder in the back country for the first time. You could call it the poor man's helicopter skiing adventure. Skiers and snowboarders will be able to climb aboard a snow cat with guides and motor into virgin snow above the Red Cliffs area. When they disembark in about 20 minutes, they will have about a thousand feet of vertical powder in front of them for the glide down....
Saving Big Sur/Why California's prized coastline is at risk The Gomeses' experience is typical of the problems facing hikers trying to use Big Sur's 200 miles of trails for recreation. Only about 15 percent of the trails are well maintained. The rest are either overgrown or blocked by fallen trees or landslides. Hamstrung by budget constraints, the Forest Service and other agencies are fighting a never-ending battle to keep the sprawling network of trails and campgrounds throughout Big Sur from being wiped off the map by the encroaching forces of nature. This decline is caused by congressional cuts to the Forest Service budget. Recreation budgets have been particularly hard hit, shrinking by 40 percent in the past two decades, said Manny Madrigal, recreation officer for Los Padres National Forest's Monterey Ranger District, which includes Big Sur....
Drilling lease sale stirs roadless-area rage Bird calls echo off the steep, pine-covered ridges of the Thompson Creek valley, the only sounds in this pristine forest, set aside under a special "roadless" designation by the U.S. Forest Service. But amid the buzz of the region's energy boom, the recent sale of three gas-drilling leases here has broken the tranquility....
Editorial: Stiffer penalties for ORV misuse Riders of ATVs and other off-road vehicles (ORVs) compose only 5 percent of the visitors to the national forests, yet cause most of the complaints. ORVs are ripping up stream banks, churning wildflowers into mud, and frightening wildlife. ORV engines aren't just noisy, they're dirty and inefficient, leaving behind oil and gas slicks. In southwest Colorado, ORVs smash ancient Indian artifacts. On alpine tundra, tire marks from one ATV can remain visible for generations. Congress should dramatically increase penalties for wayward ORV drivers. The existing $75 fine is meaningless, but a fine of several hundred dollars and a bill for thousands of dollars to repair damage to public property would have teeth. The money raised could go to hire more rangers....
Forest official denies charges San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman has denied charges made in a federal lawsuit that he abused his authority by halting the construction of a 100-unit condominium development near Big Bear Lake. Zimmerman also defended two U.S. Forest Service scientists, who are accused in the lawsuit of fabricating reports about the status of the area's bald eagle population and otherwise using their positions to derail the project....
Invasive plants creep into Alaska If you saw an orange and blue blimp floating over the Matanuska River this summer, you weren't hallucinating. Scientists launched the 15-foot long, tethered blimp to help them document a growing problem in Alaska - the invasion of non-native plants. Norm Harris has flown blimps all over Alaska to get a bird's-eye view of everything from soils to salmon habitat....
Environmentalists brace for Bush policies Battles continue over the administration's plan to lift the Clinton era prohibitions on logging and road building in 58 million acres of remote national forests unless governors petition to protect them, rebuilding threatened and endangered runs of salmon, and the Northwest Forest Plan, which balances logging against fish and wildlife habitat. One of Rey's top priorities is boosting the acreage treated under Healthy Forests from 4 million acres this year to 8 million acres, which would be on track to treat the 80 million acres most in need every 10 years. Rey said only 270,000 acres of the 4 million treated produced any kind of logs or fuel for biomass generators, which should satisfy environmentalists who feared Healthy Forests would be a license for logging of old growth forests....
A year later, backcountry shows signs of rebirth Her name was F19, and the radio collar the 90-pound mountain lion wore signaled to biologists that she was still on the move after the Cedar fire's worst days. Yet when residents near Julian began complaining about a mountain lion they couldn't scare away from their homes, the animal's unusual behavior was a signal that something was wrong....
Commercial rafting passengers weigh in A new group representing commercial rafting passengers has been formed to lobby for changes in the way the National Park Service is proposing to assign trip slots on the Colorado River. Dwight Sherwood, president of the Grand Canyon River Runners Association, said Friday that his nonprofit organization is stepping up not for corporate or environmental interests but on behalf of paying customers who like the shorter, motorized trips. Sherwood said he fears that pressure from wilderness advocates and private river runners would leave the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon "only to elitist, skills-based river runners" and not the general public....
Grazing decision under fire The rolling foothills near Round Mountain, south of here, are considered ideal pasture land for cattle in the view of federal officials, but private landowners in the area disagree. A decision by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management authorizes up to 221 cows to forage on 18,090 acres administered under the bureau's grazing allotment program, from Dec. 1 through March 31. Property owners and a conservation group said they will appeal the ruling by Roxie Trost, the bureau's Barstow area field manager, on grounds grazing would damage the region's fragile environment....
Project seeks to turn abandoned mine site into scenic vista For the past several months, big trucks, earthmovers and workers have been restoring this stream 30 miles east of Missoula in the hope of returning it to the pristine state it was in before miners blasted a hole in the side of the mountain more than a half-century ago and tumbled down thousands of cubic yards of rocks and heavy metals. It's really not Moore's land, but belongs instead to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which has overseen the $1.9 million reclamation project designed to clear out waste rock larded with lead and zinc and fill a huge cavern left behind by operations at the Blacktail mine....
Grand Canyon due for another flush Nearly nine years later, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is planning another beach party in the Grand Canyon. Pending the completion of an environmental assessment, the bureau next Sunday will commence what it is calling a "high-flow test experiment" at Glen Canyon Dam in a bid to ship sediment down the Colorado River that it hopes will replace sandbars and backwaters in the Grand Canyon that have been lost over the years because of dam-regulated water fluctuations. The goal: to help native fish species, such as the humpback chub, regain a toehold in the river that has been lost over time to non-native species, such as trout, and to restore beaches that have been washed away. It is a bid to restore the bottom of the canyon to something resembling its natural state prior to the dam's opening in 1962....
Oregonians Hold Their Ground But on Nov. 2, Oregon's voters, angered by what they saw as bureaucratic disregard for landowners, staged a revolt. By a vote of 60% to 40%, they approved a process designed to restore property rights stripped from owners by regulations enacted after they bought their land, or to require governments to pay a fair price for taking those rights away. With passage of Measure 37, Oregon has gone further than any other state to protect individual property rights, essentially prohibiting so-called "down-zoning" without just compensation, experts said. Indeed, Oregon has gone beyond what the U.S. Supreme Court has required in so-called "regulatory taking" cases, according to some legal experts....
Private-land access through state program gets easier for hunters The A&H program, as it's called, was created by the 1993 Legislature as an incentive to private landowners to open more of their land to hunting. Each year, hidden in the annual hunting license fee, the department collects a $2 surcharge and sends it to a separate fund that feeds a budget of about $1.5 million each biennium. The program also receives proceeds from state-sponsored raffles and auctions for premium big-game tags. Some of the money pays for habitat projects on private land. Landowners also can get tax breaks or emergency damage funds to help wildlife through other state programs. The rest of the A&H money finances a state access program that has opened -- at one time or other -- approximately 5 million acres of land to public hunters....
Column: Can the West be one? The vast majority of Americans who call themselves environmentalists, 78 percent in one survey, live in urban areas. They are the "New Westerners." Their connection to the land is mostly as observers, recreationists and infrequent visitors. Most of those who oppose the environmental movement actually live and work in the small rural communities of the West and many of them make their living from the land itself. They still represent the Old West. For the urban enviros, there's the rub. In the past three decades, each side of the conflict has so savagely misrepresented the other, so excessively caricatured their opponents, that they have, in the process, turned themselves into pretty laughable cartoon characters as well....
Of Land and Legacy Truocchio eventually would like to pass along her domain of rolling chaparral hills, cottonwood copses and 250 head of cattle to her daughter, Pat Abel, and thus avoid having it developed into 10-acre ranchettes or sold to a corporate ranching enterprise. That's how the American dream is supposed to work, isn't it? The beloved land stays in the family, and the child profits from the parents' labor? The family ranch, that symbol of the pioneer spirit in the West, would live on. If only it were that simple. The Truocchios, like many other families ranching cattle on California's Central Coast, face a vexing dilemma. With profit margins of less than 1%, ranching is a cash-poor business. Yet in terms of assets, notably real estate, ranchers are among California's rich....
Trade Issues Sour U.S.-Canadian Friendships Gerry Duckworth nails posters around his cattle ranch just north of the Montana border warning American hunters to get off his land as long as Canadian cattle are banned in the United States. "NO BEEF = NO HUNTING," the signs scold. Those are fighting words and reflect the deep feelings of chagrin among western Canadians, who normally look kindly on the United States. Mr. Duckworth has printed thousands of the signs, and they are appearing across Canadian prairies, where American hunters were once welcomed with open arms....
Chupacabra Discoverers United It's a relationship that's as wild as the creatures that brought them together. What exactly are these creatures? A dog? A wolf? The chupacabra? WOAI brings together an Elmendorf rancher and an East Texas animal lover, so they can share their fascinating finds. Whatever they are, they're turning up more and more these days. While we can merely speculate, two people have firsthand knowledge of the critters. Elmendorf rancher Devin MacNally started this chupacabra phenomenon months ago when he shot a mysterious animal on his property. East Texas animal lover Stacy Womack made another mysterious discovery under her house....
1888 blizzard struck most vulnerable "The Children's Blizzard," by David Laskin (HarperCollins, 295 pages, $24.95) Anyone who lived through the blizzard of 1888 remembered the morning of Jan. 13 as unusually mild, a break in the subzero weather of the past few days. Men stood outside in shirtsleeves, children went to school in light jackets, without hats or mittens. Then the blizzard hit, in minutes, "rolling toward us with great fury ... and making a loud noise. It looked like a long string of big bales of cotton," wrote a child. A teacher said the sudden wind "struck her with such violence as to bring her head down to her knees, and she knew that if she fell she would not get up again."....
El Pasoans move 'em out at ranch But Bowen and the Ford Dealers Southwestern Livestock Show and Rodeo are trying to keep the ranching tradition alive. Saturday, the two, along with other organizations, hosted a cattle drive featuring about 100 horse riders and dozens of Texas longhorn and whiteface Hereford cattle. The cattle drive also gave El Pasoans and other area residents a chance to catch a glimpse into the ranching lifestyle. After the cattle drive, riders and onlookers ate a barbecue lunch and toured the ranch's headquarters, which featured children's activities and an area to see chickens, pigs, horses, donkeys and other animals....
On The Edge Of Common Sense: When the frost is on the punkin, round up the cows Compared to the other big seasons in the cow business, - i.e., branding, calving, turning out to summer pasture, or pulling the bulls - shipping time is the Super Bowl! Everyone's pumped up. Expectations are high, a year's work, it's like adding up your score at the end of the game. Most businesses accumulate income daily or weekly. But on a ranch or beef cow herd, the only things you accumulate regularly are bills. Christmas comes in the fall for cowmen....
A LITTLE HUMOR
This is a little off topic for this blog, but iowahawk has posted a hilarious piece. Hope you enjoy....
Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values
"I'm not sure where we went wrong," says Ellen McCormack, nervously fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte. "It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the other children and his care facilitators."
"But now..." she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. "But now, Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray."
Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner courage -- a mother's courage -- and leads me down the hall to "Bobby Ray's" bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation that claimed her son.
She opens the door to a reveal a riot of George Jones CDs, reflective 'mudflap mama' stickers, empty foil packs of Red Man, and U.S. Marine recruiting posters. In the middle of the room: a makeshift table made from a utility cable spool, bearing the remains of a gutted catfish....
This is a little off topic for this blog, but iowahawk has posted a hilarious piece. Hope you enjoy....
Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values
"I'm not sure where we went wrong," says Ellen McCormack, nervously fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte. "It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the other children and his care facilitators."
"But now..." she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. "But now, Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray."
Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner courage -- a mother's courage -- and leads me down the hall to "Bobby Ray's" bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation that claimed her son.
She opens the door to a reveal a riot of George Jones CDs, reflective 'mudflap mama' stickers, empty foil packs of Red Man, and U.S. Marine recruiting posters. In the middle of the room: a makeshift table made from a utility cable spool, bearing the remains of a gutted catfish....
Sunday, November 14, 2004
SOMETHING NEW
We're going to start something new at The Westerner.
As you know, on a weblog you link to an article, study, report, etc. and then either summarize or comment on the linked to item. This takes less space and keeps you from violating copyright law.
There is, however, some good stuff out there that is not available on the internet, or has not been published at all. That is where this new Saturday section of The Westerner will come in. I will post original items to this section. It can be fiction, non-fiction, book or cd reviews, poetry, or whatever. It must, though, be related to the issues this blog covers or to the western lifestyle.
Got a neat story of something that happened on your ranch or on a recent hunting trip? A good joke? A remembrance of a friend, relative or good horse? Want to sound off on a policy issue? Then email me at flankcinch@hotmail.com
We'll start this first edition off with two wonderful pieces by Julie Carter.
Cowhand dot com sends cowboys down the information highway
By Julie Carter
There are just some things a computer can’t do. And a cowboy who doesn’t know a darn thing about a computer will quickly tell you exactly what those things are.
However, technology is persevering even in the pasture. Implanted computer chips with the animals complete data imbedded in them are in use and making themselves quite handy in controlled situations. As a need to track cattle origins from the pasture to the meat counter tops a priority list, “data based cowboying” is on the rise.
Feed programs, breeding programs, market watch and cattle sales are a few items on a long list of things in the cow business that have gone computerized.
In all this, what happens to the everyday run-of-the mill denim-garbed leather-shod felt hat wearing, colt riding cowboy?
Four years ago Dan Roberts, a Texas cowboy, singer and song writer wrote and released an album and song called Cowhand.Com. The title cut takes a humorous look at the adventures of a cowboy who hires onto an outfit that is basically run by computers, not seasoned cowboys.
The misadventures of this technologically challenged cowboy who longs for the old days tell a story that was perhaps more prophetic that Roberts ever dreamed it would be. His intention was a witty take on the concept but the result was an outline of the real dilemma of crossing a cowboy with a computer.
The lyrics point out that no machine every shod a horse, pulled a calf, or broke a bronc to ride. The laptop in his saddle bags got dusty riding drag and all that talk about menus, a mouse and booting up had the cowboy telling his boss to stick that Pentium right in his AOL and pointing out that megabyte-ram-thing sounded inbred.
Book learnin’ as they would call it, isn’t foreign to cowboys, it just comes from books and takes place after dark when the work is done. My cowboy dad was a fiend for learning and was an easy mark for the encyclopedia salesman that somehow found us at the head of Muddy Creek where not many strangers trod.
We had not one, but several sets of encyclopedias just in case we four children needed to look something up. He also bought every update published for years after and several sets of assorted “how to” encyclopedias.
He learned taxidermy, beer making, electronics, mechanics, veterinary and many other useful things from his “how to” books. I often wonder what he would have done with the wealth of knowledge offered in today’s world with the touch of keyboard.
Computerizing the cowboy way will only go so far. Technology has been extended to providing data for the genetic, nutritional and medicinal history of a cow as well as her history of residence for her lifetime.
The good news for the cowboy is it still takes man to bring the cow to the corral.
The statistical information can be downloaded from computer to computer, from hard drive to cd or even sent to the printer. But the paper trail through the office will never completely replace the cow trail through the pasture.
And that cow? She is going to download her own nutritional history into the same green pile she always did.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© 2004 Julie Carter
Cow attacks make big city news
By Julie Carter
First I read the article. Then I let out a huge sigh. My mind raced from sarcastic thoughts to a despair that the world for the cowman is coming to this.
According to a Los Angeles Times story, the wilderness areas in California, specifically the Oakland –East Bay Parks in this story, are making the news because of “cow attacks.” Rated right up there with rattlesnake bites, mountain bike tumbles and twisted ankles, cow attacks are listed as a regular danger to hikers in the vast public parklands.
The public lands are leased for cattle grazing. Late summer calving is the norm there and momma cows with babies are protective. So along comes Jennie the Hiker who hikes right into the cow’s spot who is guarding her newborn and the next thing Jennie knows, she’s flying through the air, crash landing on a barb wire fence.
And so what’s new. That is what happens to anyone, Jennie the Hiker or Joe the Cowboy, if you get too close to momma cow with new baby. Try hiking next to a brown bear with a new cub and see how gentle she is with you.
I’m not without compassion for her plight. Really I’m not. What I am is very short in patience for people who expect unnatural things in a world they profess to be protecting nature itself.
The article goes on to say this guy who walked his dogs was chased by six different cows at different times. HELLLOOOO!! The dogs! Cows with new babies don’t much like dogs (to a cow—read that predators) and they don’t much care if Big Red is on a leash or not.
The very words used to describe the scenarios are as offensive to me as the attitudes themselves. Personal campaigns to eliminate cattle grazing come with descriptions of “the dangers and fearfulness of maternal bovines.”
Park officials contend the grazing is necessary for fire protection and maintaining grasslands. In public hearings four years ago, grazing was strongly supported by most the fire departments as well as other large public landholders, including the San Francisco Water Department which owns and grazes 40,000 acres of watershed.
Without grazing, selective burning and other methods of control are necessary to control accumulation of dry grasses. Of course the burning and resulting pollution are even less acceptable to the public. But whose thinking at this point?
All this aside, give me a cowhided break! I’ve lived around cows all my life. You bet a momma will eat toss you skyward if you make her feel threatened, especially with a new baby calf near by. But she would rather run off with the kid trailing behind her given the option.
Just this spring I went to investigate a report of twins born to one wild high headed very big crazy acting cow. She looked me over several times as I was snapping photos and trying to get a shot of both calves in the picture and her too. Not one of them was much interested in my photography. The calves were just hours old and she paced and pranced and danced until she had them both up and ready to go….and go they did.
I have to wonder just how often Jennie the Hiker types decide they are going to pet that oh so cute new born baby “calfie”--and then cry FOUL when nature acts natural.
Then the cattle business gets one more negative hit in the press from one more Nola Granola who just as easily could have been eaten by a mountain lion.
Anybody kicking the cougars out of the “public” parks yet?
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© 2004 Julie Carter
We're going to start something new at The Westerner.
As you know, on a weblog you link to an article, study, report, etc. and then either summarize or comment on the linked to item. This takes less space and keeps you from violating copyright law.
There is, however, some good stuff out there that is not available on the internet, or has not been published at all. That is where this new Saturday section of The Westerner will come in. I will post original items to this section. It can be fiction, non-fiction, book or cd reviews, poetry, or whatever. It must, though, be related to the issues this blog covers or to the western lifestyle.
Got a neat story of something that happened on your ranch or on a recent hunting trip? A good joke? A remembrance of a friend, relative or good horse? Want to sound off on a policy issue? Then email me at flankcinch@hotmail.com
We'll start this first edition off with two wonderful pieces by Julie Carter.
Cowhand dot com sends cowboys down the information highway
By Julie Carter
There are just some things a computer can’t do. And a cowboy who doesn’t know a darn thing about a computer will quickly tell you exactly what those things are.
However, technology is persevering even in the pasture. Implanted computer chips with the animals complete data imbedded in them are in use and making themselves quite handy in controlled situations. As a need to track cattle origins from the pasture to the meat counter tops a priority list, “data based cowboying” is on the rise.
Feed programs, breeding programs, market watch and cattle sales are a few items on a long list of things in the cow business that have gone computerized.
In all this, what happens to the everyday run-of-the mill denim-garbed leather-shod felt hat wearing, colt riding cowboy?
Four years ago Dan Roberts, a Texas cowboy, singer and song writer wrote and released an album and song called Cowhand.Com. The title cut takes a humorous look at the adventures of a cowboy who hires onto an outfit that is basically run by computers, not seasoned cowboys.
The misadventures of this technologically challenged cowboy who longs for the old days tell a story that was perhaps more prophetic that Roberts ever dreamed it would be. His intention was a witty take on the concept but the result was an outline of the real dilemma of crossing a cowboy with a computer.
The lyrics point out that no machine every shod a horse, pulled a calf, or broke a bronc to ride. The laptop in his saddle bags got dusty riding drag and all that talk about menus, a mouse and booting up had the cowboy telling his boss to stick that Pentium right in his AOL and pointing out that megabyte-ram-thing sounded inbred.
Book learnin’ as they would call it, isn’t foreign to cowboys, it just comes from books and takes place after dark when the work is done. My cowboy dad was a fiend for learning and was an easy mark for the encyclopedia salesman that somehow found us at the head of Muddy Creek where not many strangers trod.
We had not one, but several sets of encyclopedias just in case we four children needed to look something up. He also bought every update published for years after and several sets of assorted “how to” encyclopedias.
He learned taxidermy, beer making, electronics, mechanics, veterinary and many other useful things from his “how to” books. I often wonder what he would have done with the wealth of knowledge offered in today’s world with the touch of keyboard.
Computerizing the cowboy way will only go so far. Technology has been extended to providing data for the genetic, nutritional and medicinal history of a cow as well as her history of residence for her lifetime.
The good news for the cowboy is it still takes man to bring the cow to the corral.
The statistical information can be downloaded from computer to computer, from hard drive to cd or even sent to the printer. But the paper trail through the office will never completely replace the cow trail through the pasture.
And that cow? She is going to download her own nutritional history into the same green pile she always did.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© 2004 Julie Carter
Cow attacks make big city news
By Julie Carter
First I read the article. Then I let out a huge sigh. My mind raced from sarcastic thoughts to a despair that the world for the cowman is coming to this.
According to a Los Angeles Times story, the wilderness areas in California, specifically the Oakland –East Bay Parks in this story, are making the news because of “cow attacks.” Rated right up there with rattlesnake bites, mountain bike tumbles and twisted ankles, cow attacks are listed as a regular danger to hikers in the vast public parklands.
The public lands are leased for cattle grazing. Late summer calving is the norm there and momma cows with babies are protective. So along comes Jennie the Hiker who hikes right into the cow’s spot who is guarding her newborn and the next thing Jennie knows, she’s flying through the air, crash landing on a barb wire fence.
And so what’s new. That is what happens to anyone, Jennie the Hiker or Joe the Cowboy, if you get too close to momma cow with new baby. Try hiking next to a brown bear with a new cub and see how gentle she is with you.
I’m not without compassion for her plight. Really I’m not. What I am is very short in patience for people who expect unnatural things in a world they profess to be protecting nature itself.
The article goes on to say this guy who walked his dogs was chased by six different cows at different times. HELLLOOOO!! The dogs! Cows with new babies don’t much like dogs (to a cow—read that predators) and they don’t much care if Big Red is on a leash or not.
The very words used to describe the scenarios are as offensive to me as the attitudes themselves. Personal campaigns to eliminate cattle grazing come with descriptions of “the dangers and fearfulness of maternal bovines.”
Park officials contend the grazing is necessary for fire protection and maintaining grasslands. In public hearings four years ago, grazing was strongly supported by most the fire departments as well as other large public landholders, including the San Francisco Water Department which owns and grazes 40,000 acres of watershed.
Without grazing, selective burning and other methods of control are necessary to control accumulation of dry grasses. Of course the burning and resulting pollution are even less acceptable to the public. But whose thinking at this point?
All this aside, give me a cowhided break! I’ve lived around cows all my life. You bet a momma will eat toss you skyward if you make her feel threatened, especially with a new baby calf near by. But she would rather run off with the kid trailing behind her given the option.
Just this spring I went to investigate a report of twins born to one wild high headed very big crazy acting cow. She looked me over several times as I was snapping photos and trying to get a shot of both calves in the picture and her too. Not one of them was much interested in my photography. The calves were just hours old and she paced and pranced and danced until she had them both up and ready to go….and go they did.
I have to wonder just how often Jennie the Hiker types decide they are going to pet that oh so cute new born baby “calfie”--and then cry FOUL when nature acts natural.
Then the cattle business gets one more negative hit in the press from one more Nola Granola who just as easily could have been eaten by a mountain lion.
Anybody kicking the cougars out of the “public” parks yet?
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© 2004 Julie Carter
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Public Trust & Private Rights
Is the public trust doctrine a threat to private property? Is it a vital, evolving common law doctrine? Or a metastasizing source of governmental authority over private land? The Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group took up these questions in a panel Thursday at the Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C. The remainder of this post summarizes the highlights of the session, interspersed with some of my own commentary. Leading off, Lewis & Clark Law School Dean Jim Huffman noted that the public trust doctrine, as initially conceived, was very limited. As developed under Roman law and later English law, the public trust only applied to very limited areas – navigable waters and submerged lands under the waters – and only protected a very limited set of uses, such as fishing, navigation and bathing. Government actions could not limit the public’s access to such areas for such uses, nor could the rights to such uses on these lands be privatized. As initially conceived it was a doctrine designed to prevent a despotic state from limiting the public’s liberties in the public’s resources. In more recent years, however, environmental activists have sought to use the doctrine to control land-use – in effect using a doctrine designed to limit government power over private liberties to expand government power over private lands....
Public Trust & Private Rights
Is the public trust doctrine a threat to private property? Is it a vital, evolving common law doctrine? Or a metastasizing source of governmental authority over private land? The Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group took up these questions in a panel Thursday at the Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C. The remainder of this post summarizes the highlights of the session, interspersed with some of my own commentary. Leading off, Lewis & Clark Law School Dean Jim Huffman noted that the public trust doctrine, as initially conceived, was very limited. As developed under Roman law and later English law, the public trust only applied to very limited areas – navigable waters and submerged lands under the waters – and only protected a very limited set of uses, such as fishing, navigation and bathing. Government actions could not limit the public’s access to such areas for such uses, nor could the rights to such uses on these lands be privatized. As initially conceived it was a doctrine designed to prevent a despotic state from limiting the public’s liberties in the public’s resources. In more recent years, however, environmental activists have sought to use the doctrine to control land-use – in effect using a doctrine designed to limit government power over private liberties to expand government power over private lands....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
DO GROWTH MANAGEMENT ACTS REALLY CONTROL GROWTH?
Growth Management Acts (GMAs) are used by some states and counties to limit uncontrolled growth that proponents say facilitates “urban sprawl.” But in many cases, GMAs are not too effective at controlling growth, and are often influenced by rent-seekers, says Randall G. Holcombe, a professor of economics at Florida State University and Chairman of the Research Advisory Council at the James Madison Institute.
While Oregon has had moderate success with their GMA, Florida has been quite another story. The state passed a GMA in 1985 which was designed to work like the GMA that was passed in Oregon in 1973, but according to observers has fallen short of its intended goals, says Holcombe:
---The flexibility of Florida’s GMA (which allows changes to the plan up to twice a year) provided incentives for local special interest groups to push for changes to suit their own needs.
---Florida’s population is more decentralized than Oregon’s, so restrictions in one area simply resulted in people and building projects moving to other areas; for example, growth restrictions in Leon County created a growth boom in neighboring Wakulla County.
---Florida’s target of halting additional traffic congestion on existing roads prevented the development of urban infill areas; as a result, builders who wished to develop infill had to contribute money for transportation improvements.
Despite the relative ineffectiveness of Florida’s Growth Management Act, the plan has imposed higher costs on developers, made housing less affordable to consumers and created incentives for economic development to go outside of the state to less restrictive areas, says Holcombe.
Source: Randall G. Holcombe, “Why Has Florida’s Growth Management Act Been Ineffective,” James Madison Institute, Spring/Summer 2004.
DO GROWTH MANAGEMENT ACTS REALLY CONTROL GROWTH?
Growth Management Acts (GMAs) are used by some states and counties to limit uncontrolled growth that proponents say facilitates “urban sprawl.” But in many cases, GMAs are not too effective at controlling growth, and are often influenced by rent-seekers, says Randall G. Holcombe, a professor of economics at Florida State University and Chairman of the Research Advisory Council at the James Madison Institute.
While Oregon has had moderate success with their GMA, Florida has been quite another story. The state passed a GMA in 1985 which was designed to work like the GMA that was passed in Oregon in 1973, but according to observers has fallen short of its intended goals, says Holcombe:
---The flexibility of Florida’s GMA (which allows changes to the plan up to twice a year) provided incentives for local special interest groups to push for changes to suit their own needs.
---Florida’s population is more decentralized than Oregon’s, so restrictions in one area simply resulted in people and building projects moving to other areas; for example, growth restrictions in Leon County created a growth boom in neighboring Wakulla County.
---Florida’s target of halting additional traffic congestion on existing roads prevented the development of urban infill areas; as a result, builders who wished to develop infill had to contribute money for transportation improvements.
Despite the relative ineffectiveness of Florida’s Growth Management Act, the plan has imposed higher costs on developers, made housing less affordable to consumers and created incentives for economic development to go outside of the state to less restrictive areas, says Holcombe.
Source: Randall G. Holcombe, “Why Has Florida’s Growth Management Act Been Ineffective,” James Madison Institute, Spring/Summer 2004.
OPINION/COMMENTARY
PETA's Blonde, Buxom Brain Trust
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has added reality-TV personality Anna Nicole Smith to its roster of "spokespeople," which already includes fellow Playboy playmate Pamela Anderson. Posing for a new PETA billboard, Smith -- whose "illiteracy is striking," according to a federal judge -- joins an animal-rights celebrity brain trust with a combined I.Q. that is just high enough to rival Forrest Gump's. While Anderson appeals to our animal instinct, she's not a stickler for consistency. In a July editorial, The Wall Street Journal blasted her hypocritical support of PETA. Even as Anderson is busy raising money to help cure hepatitis, PETA campaigns against that very research. And though Anderson has fronted PETA's anti-leather campaign for years, she sported a chest-to-toe leather outfit in the film "Barb Wire." Anna's new anti-fur ad suggests "gentlemen prefer fur-free blondes." If you ask us, gentlemen also prefer someone who can complete full sentences....
PETA's Blonde, Buxom Brain Trust
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has added reality-TV personality Anna Nicole Smith to its roster of "spokespeople," which already includes fellow Playboy playmate Pamela Anderson. Posing for a new PETA billboard, Smith -- whose "illiteracy is striking," according to a federal judge -- joins an animal-rights celebrity brain trust with a combined I.Q. that is just high enough to rival Forrest Gump's. While Anderson appeals to our animal instinct, she's not a stickler for consistency. In a July editorial, The Wall Street Journal blasted her hypocritical support of PETA. Even as Anderson is busy raising money to help cure hepatitis, PETA campaigns against that very research. And though Anderson has fronted PETA's anti-leather campaign for years, she sported a chest-to-toe leather outfit in the film "Barb Wire." Anna's new anti-fur ad suggests "gentlemen prefer fur-free blondes." If you ask us, gentlemen also prefer someone who can complete full sentences....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Would Wind Farms Hurt Food Farms?
A new simulation finds serious and previously unrecognized environmental threats from massive wind farms in the American Great Plains. A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research by scientists from Princeton and Duke Universities indicates massive wind farms would significantly increase local surface drying and soil heating, which in turn would impact agricultural or range use on or near the wind farm. The modeling experiment used current wind turbine and rotor technology to assess local climate impacts from a simulated wind farm with 10,000 turbines, arranged in a simple, square array of 100 by 100 turbines, each spaced one kilometer apart....
Would Wind Farms Hurt Food Farms?
A new simulation finds serious and previously unrecognized environmental threats from massive wind farms in the American Great Plains. A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research by scientists from Princeton and Duke Universities indicates massive wind farms would significantly increase local surface drying and soil heating, which in turn would impact agricultural or range use on or near the wind farm. The modeling experiment used current wind turbine and rotor technology to assess local climate impacts from a simulated wind farm with 10,000 turbines, arranged in a simple, square array of 100 by 100 turbines, each spaced one kilometer apart....
OPINION/COMMMENTARY
Energy Policy or Anti-Energy Policy?
There was a lot a campaign talk about our nation's energy policy, and Bush and Kerry offered their own competing energy plans. With Bush's victory and increased Republican majorities in Congress, the long-stalled energy bill may finally reach passage. But in truth, we don't really need a new national energy policy so much as we need to end our current anti-energy policy. Too many politicians and far too many regulators believe the federal government's duty is to oppose energy infrastructure. Goaded by environmental activists and like-minded media, they have treated oil and natural gas wells, pipelines, refineries, electric power plants, transmission lines and the like as bad things that need to be stopped, or at least severely limited....
Energy Policy or Anti-Energy Policy?
There was a lot a campaign talk about our nation's energy policy, and Bush and Kerry offered their own competing energy plans. With Bush's victory and increased Republican majorities in Congress, the long-stalled energy bill may finally reach passage. But in truth, we don't really need a new national energy policy so much as we need to end our current anti-energy policy. Too many politicians and far too many regulators believe the federal government's duty is to oppose energy infrastructure. Goaded by environmental activists and like-minded media, they have treated oil and natural gas wells, pipelines, refineries, electric power plants, transmission lines and the like as bad things that need to be stopped, or at least severely limited....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Destroying America To Save The World
This is the third time the MRC’s Free Market Project has analyzed network coverage of global warming. We wanted to know whether the past pro-Kyoto slant continued. To find out, Free Market Project researchers analyzed all the news stories about global warming and the Kyoto Protocol during the George W. Bush presidency – from January 20, 2001 until September 30, 2004. This was a time of a pivotal policy shift in the executive branch of government. The stories aired on the three broadcast network evening news shows (ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News), as well as the two major cable news shows (CNN’s News Night with Aaron Brown and the Fox Report). All three broadcast networks provided a fairly similar amount of coverage. CBS aired the most stories (49 stories, including 37 full reports and the largest number of anchor briefs – 12) followed by NBC with 47 stories (41 full reports, 6 anchor briefs) and ABC with 43 (36 full reports and 7 anchor briefs). The two cable networks ran a total of 26 pieces on global warming. The Fox News Channel led with 16 pieces (9 full reports and 7 anchor briefs). CNN had the lowest level of coverage with only 10 stories. The network news bias strongly favors reporting about the potential impact of global warming over any potential impact from signing the Kyoto agreement....
Destroying America To Save The World
This is the third time the MRC’s Free Market Project has analyzed network coverage of global warming. We wanted to know whether the past pro-Kyoto slant continued. To find out, Free Market Project researchers analyzed all the news stories about global warming and the Kyoto Protocol during the George W. Bush presidency – from January 20, 2001 until September 30, 2004. This was a time of a pivotal policy shift in the executive branch of government. The stories aired on the three broadcast network evening news shows (ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News), as well as the two major cable news shows (CNN’s News Night with Aaron Brown and the Fox Report). All three broadcast networks provided a fairly similar amount of coverage. CBS aired the most stories (49 stories, including 37 full reports and the largest number of anchor briefs – 12) followed by NBC with 47 stories (41 full reports, 6 anchor briefs) and ABC with 43 (36 full reports and 7 anchor briefs). The two cable networks ran a total of 26 pieces on global warming. The Fox News Channel led with 16 pieces (9 full reports and 7 anchor briefs). CNN had the lowest level of coverage with only 10 stories. The network news bias strongly favors reporting about the potential impact of global warming over any potential impact from signing the Kyoto agreement....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Launching the Counter-Offensive: A Sensible Sense of Congress Resolution on Climate Change
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) likens his push for another vote on the Climate Stewardship Act (S. 139), which the Senate rejected 55 to 43 in October of last year, to his seven-year crusade to limit campaign fundraising and political advertising: “It’s an old strategy of mine,” he said. “Force votes on the issues. Ultimately, we will win.” [[i]] Or, ultimately, he will lose. But this much is undeniable: McCain, chief co-sponsor Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), and their advocacy group allies are on offense. They aggressively seek opportunities to publicize their message, expand their support base, and advance their agenda....Supporters of pro-growth energy policy have, in short, done a reasonably good job of fending off several major thrusts by climate alarmists during the past 18 months. However, in politics, as in war, staying permanently on defense rarely leads to victory. A purely defensive posture cedes the initiative to one’s opponents, allowing the other team to generate the headlines, capture the public imagination, and frame the terms of debate. The battle over climate policy is a protracted struggle. To win it, the friends of economic liberty, scientific inquiry, and affordable energy must advance their own vision and compel alarmists to react to it....
Go here(pdf) to view the entire report.
Launching the Counter-Offensive: A Sensible Sense of Congress Resolution on Climate Change
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) likens his push for another vote on the Climate Stewardship Act (S. 139), which the Senate rejected 55 to 43 in October of last year, to his seven-year crusade to limit campaign fundraising and political advertising: “It’s an old strategy of mine,” he said. “Force votes on the issues. Ultimately, we will win.” [[i]] Or, ultimately, he will lose. But this much is undeniable: McCain, chief co-sponsor Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), and their advocacy group allies are on offense. They aggressively seek opportunities to publicize their message, expand their support base, and advance their agenda....Supporters of pro-growth energy policy have, in short, done a reasonably good job of fending off several major thrusts by climate alarmists during the past 18 months. However, in politics, as in war, staying permanently on defense rarely leads to victory. A purely defensive posture cedes the initiative to one’s opponents, allowing the other team to generate the headlines, capture the public imagination, and frame the terms of debate. The battle over climate policy is a protracted struggle. To win it, the friends of economic liberty, scientific inquiry, and affordable energy must advance their own vision and compel alarmists to react to it....
Go here(pdf) to view the entire report.
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