NEWS ROUNDUP
Ranchers vow fight over rural growth Setting the stage for a major land-use battle, a coalition of environmentalists plans to begin collecting signatures today for a ballot measure to set strict new development rules for hillsides, ranches and large farms across Santa Clara County. The Sierra Club, Greenbelt Alliance, Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society and other members of the coalition -- which already has $300,000 in the bank -- must collect 36,040 signatures from registered county voters to qualify for the November ballot, something they and their opponents expect will happen. The measure, which farmers and ranchers fear would drive down the value of their land, would affect nearly half of Santa Clara County's 839,000 acres. The complex proposal would essentially do two things. First, it would reduce the number of homes that could be built in unincorporated, rural areas along the east foothills of the Diablo Range from Milpitas to Gilroy, the Santa Cruz Mountains from Gilroy to Los Altos and east of Mount Hamilton. On lands zoned for ranching, for example, it would allow only one home per 160 acres, down from up to eight homes per 160 acres now. It also would set limits for new development in those areas: curbing the amount of square footage that could be built per parcel, reducing building on ridgelines and banning building unless adequate water is available. The measure would not affect land within city limits....
Predator Control Once Again Comes Within The Crosshairs Of Critics A few weeks ago, aerial marksmen working for the federed agency Wildlife Services climbed into a plane and cut a path across the Sonoran desert to kill coyotes in advance of the cattle calving season. It's a taxpayer-subsidized event that every spring is repeated across the West. It's been happening for decades. It's resulted in millions of dead coyotes over the years.It's been an annual short-term fix to cut livestock losses set against the backdrop of a long-term trend yielding more coyotes in America today than at any other time in recent history. Wildlife predators, like coyotes, wolves, bears, cougars, eagles etc., which by legal definition, belong to the public, kill livestock which belong to private operators. Depending upon your point of view, there are differing opinions about what should hold primacy, native wildlife or domestic livestock. It becomes more complicated when you consider that ranchers often own the vital winter range that big game species need in order to survive. he question of who should pay for predator eradication gets especially tricky when private operators are grazing their cattle and sheep on public land, such as on tracts administered by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management....
Environmental groups sue to stop elk slaughter Three environmental groups are suing the federal government to halt a controversial "test-and-slaughter" program aimed at brucellosis-exposed elk in Wyoming and force a hard look at the possibility of phasing out elk feedgrounds. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Wyoming Outdoor Council filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, Wyo. Every winter, the state of Wyoming feeds 10,000 or more elk on hay lines scattered across 13 feedgrounds on U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land. It has other feedgrounds on private land. A wide variety of scientists agree the practice fosters brucellosis by forcing the animals to gather much more closely than they would in the wild....
Timber cutting plan wins on a split decision A federal judge has issued a split decision over a challenge by a pair of environmental groups to the Ashley National Forest's land-use plan and a proposed timber sale. U.S. District Court Judge Tena Campbell upheld the contention of the Utah Environmental Congress and High Uintas Preservation Council that Ashley officials erred when they pared their list of "management indicator species" - used to help monitor overall forest health - from 12 species to two in their forest planning process. Campbell, however, upheld the proposed Trout Slope timber sale, ruling that the Forest Service's approval of the 2,000-acre project was "legally sufficient." Ashley National Forest officials Monday declined comment on the ruling. A call to the Utah Environmental Congress was not immediately returned....
Government Proposes Cuts to Counties with Public Lands Call him PILT-down man. Officials in southwest Colorado’s La Plata and San Juan counties are calling President Bush – or at least his proposed 2007 budget – worse things this week following the 16-percent reduction in PILT funds in the President’s budget submitted last week. Payments in Lieu of Taxes are federal funds distributed to compensate for property taxes in counties with large areas of public land. In southwest Colorado, these mean Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service lands, which comprise some 70 percent of land ownership in western and southern Colorado. In 2005, Colorado received $16.8 million from the program. Statewide, the cuts are estimated at $2 million....
Land Management Professionals Take the Fight for Native Ecosystems to the Nation's Capitol Representatives from some of America's most beautiful public and private lands will congregate in Washington, D.C., for National Invasive Weed Awareness Week (NIWAW7), which will be hosted by the Invasive Weed Awareness Coalition (IWAC), February 26-March 3, 2006. NIWAW attendees come from varying backgrounds, but share a common goal: to manage invasive weeds in the United States and protect our native ecosystems. Now in its seventh year, NIWAW focuses on sharing invasive weed information with government officials and collaborating with experts to address what has become a national and global environmental concern. Non-native plant infestations continue to spread across the United States and weed experts will continue to work through IWAC to educate others on the impacts of these plant invasions. During the week, NIWAW participants will help members of Congress and congressional staff to understand the economic and environmental threat of invasive and noxious weeds to our nation. Participants will showcase successful control strategies and tactics in an effort to expand opportunities for success in new locations that face similar challenges. In 2004, President Bush signed the Noxious Weed Control and Eradication Act, which authorized noxious weed control programs....
Wildcat drilling plan draws concern An independent oil and gas producer is proposing a small exploratory drilling project in the Big Piney Ranger District of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, according to federal officials. Conservationists are objecting to the project and contend oil and gas development doesn't belong in the Wyoming Range. Officials with the Wilderness Society said the U.S. Forest Service should wait until a final forest plan revision is completed before issuing any permits to drill in the Bridger-Teton. District Ranger Greg Clark said in a "scoping" notice the Houston-based Plains Exploration and Production Co. is proposed to drill three exploratory oil and gas wells on leases located about seven miles southeast of Bondurant....
Oil, gas plan fuels protests Environmental groups are challenging proposed oil and gas lease sales on more than 100,000 acres near the Green River and San Rafael River, on the San Rafael desert of southern Utah, and near Dinosaur National Monument in the state's northeast. The leases are among those the Bureau of Land Management conditionally expects to offer on Feb. 21. However, about a week prior to the sale, agency experts will winnow their prospective list and may delete some of the areas. Altogether, BLM is considering offering leases on 172,095 acres on 109 parcels statewide, with the majority in the areas covered by the agency's Vernal and Price field offices, in a regular quarterly lease offering. The oil and gas industry had requested leases on another 188,689 acres on 127 parcels, but the BLM is deferring leases on those areas. The deferred areas could be offered in future sales, said Adrienne Babbitt, spokeswoman for the BLM. Some might be withheld at this time because of considerations such as new land-use plans not yet completed, she said. But many of the parcels not taken out of the lease sale, at least for now, are questioned by the conservationists....
Bald eagle closer to leaving endangered species nest The American bald eagle, after battling back from the threat of extinction because of habitat loss and DDT, took another step Monday toward coming off the endangered species list. The Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service issued a draft of voluntary guidelines spelling out how landowners, land managers and others should protect the bird once it no longer is safeguarded by the 1973 law. It also proposed prohibitions on "disturbing" the bald eagle, which could include anything that would disrupt its breeding, feeding or sheltering or cause injury, death or nest abandonment. The Clinton administration proposed removing the bald eagle from the endangered species list in 1999. But the delisting has taken far longer than the typical year, partly because updated counts are required from each of the states, and some of those have their own rules that add to red tape. Officials said Monday's action could lead to the bald eagle coming off the endangered species list within the next year or so....
Early California: A killing field When explorers and pioneers visited California in the 1700s and early 1800s, they were astonished by the abundance of birds, elk, deer, marine mammals, and other wildlife they encountered. Since then, people assumed such faunal wealth represented California's natural condition – a product of Native Americans' living in harmony with the wildlife and the land and used it as the baseline for measuring modern environmental damage. That assumption now is collapsing because University of Utah archaeologist Jack M. Broughton spent seven years – from 1997 to 2004 – painstakingly picking through 5,736 bird bones found in an ancient Native American garbage dump on the shores of San Francisco Bay. He determined the species of every bone, or, when that wasn't possible, at least the family, and used the bones to reconstruct a portrait of human bird-hunting behavior spanning 1,900 years. Broughton concluded that California wasn't always a lush Eden before settlers arrived. Instead, from 2,600 to at least 700 years ago, native people hunted some species to local extinction, and wildlife returned to "fabulous abundances" only after European diseases decimated Indian populations starting in the 1500s. Broughton's study of bird bones, published in Ornithological Monographs, mirrors earlier research in which he found that fish such as sturgeon, mammals such as elk, and other wildlife also sustained significant population declines at the hands of ancient Indian hunters....
Number of tricolored blackbirds decreasing The population of tricolored blackbirds has been plummeting for decades but the federal government has failed to list them as endangered, a group claimed in a lawsuit filed Monday. The Center for Biological Diversity initially filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2004, asking for the bird to be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. The group claimed the agency's failure to act on their request for 16 months led to the federal lawsuit, which asks for emergency protection. It cited studies showing the tricolored blackbird population declined from the millions in the 1930s to about 162,000 in 2000. The population has continued to drop as birds deprived of their natural habitat by development and farming try to nest among crops, where their nests are plowed over during harvest....
Stream invaders may harm trout Every two months for the past six years, ecologist Dave Richards has scouted a 60-foot-long stretch of the Snake River near Twin Falls, Idaho. He collects cobbles from the river, carefully rinses them in a bucket of water, then counts what he's washed off the rocks: hordes of minuscule New Zealand mud snails. Richards estimates there are 100,000 to 500,000 New Zealand mud snails per square meter on the rocks along about 60 miles of the Snake. The snails graze on algae, and in such high densities, he says, that "they gobble up everything." That's a troubling image, because Richards' sampling area is the beachhead of a biological invasion - it's where New Zealand mud snails were first discovered in the United States, back in the mid-1980s. Since then, the invaders have spread to every Western state except New Mexico....
PFS gets desert N-dump license Private Fuel Storage received the first-ever license for commercial, off-site storage of nuclear waste from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday, but a series of obstacles remain before the proposed facility can open its gates in Utah. Specifically, the group of electric utilities seeking to store 44,000 tons of reactor fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation still has to find an acceptable way to deliver the waste to the site 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, and has to sell the storage space to enough reactor operators to make the economics add up. It also must prevail in a legal challenge filed by the state....
Hearing planned on OSU logging controversy U.S. Rep. Greg Walden announced Monday the details for a congressional field hearing later this month on managing forests damaged by catastrophic events, a hot topic since the release of a controversial Oregon State University study last month. The House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, which is chaired by the Oregon Republican, will review the findings of the OSU study Feb. 24 in Medford. The hearing begins at 1 p.m. in Medford City Hall. Walden, who has co-sponsored a bill to make salvage logging easier after large fires, said the meeting should allow the author of the study — and some of his critics — to weigh in. The three-year study by OSU graduate student Daniel Donato made headlines, and a federal agency suspended funding for study’s final year, further inflaming a debate over how to treat the millions of acres of national forest that burn each year....
Some Trans Texas Corridor details are being kept very quiet Among the Trans Texas Corridor's most fervent opponents are farmers and ranchers who are closely tied to family land. Many are like Susan Ridgeway Garry of Coupland, a small, rural community in the Austin area. "When you say the Trans Texas Corridor 'will be built on state land handed to investors,' you leave out an important step," she wrote. "It is not currently state land, it is Texas citizens' land, some of which has been in the same family for generations." The state intends to take at least 548,000 acres of land — most of it from private owners through eminent domain — in swaths as wide as three football fields laid end to end. On the 4,000 miles of new right of way, the plans call for four sets of vehicular lanes, two rail lanes, and easements, both above and underground, for utilities. The corridor will have no frontage roads, such as those along the interstate highway system that have fostered economic development in many communities. Instead, vehicular access to the tollways will be only from interstate, U.S. and some state highways that intersect it through expensive interchanges. Other intersecting roads — such as farm-to-market roads, county roads, local highways and two-lane state highways — will not provide access to the corridor....
The cost to condemn: going up? Condemnation actions for open space could become much more expensive in the near future, if a bill makes its way through the Colorado legislature. House Bill 1208 will increase the costs of condemnation by as little as 25 percent and as much as 100 percent by giving an extra lump of money to the landowner on top of the "fair market value." The bill's sponsor, Rep. Kevin Lundberg of Berthoud, is concerned with the rights of those whose property is being condemned. "What we should be doing is asking ourselves what the owner has lost," he said. The bill would apply only to condemnation actions that begin after the bill goes into effect. It's not retroactive, and so would not affect Telluride's condemnation case. At least two other bills are also working their way through the Colorado State legislature that look to restrict condemnation or make it more difficult for municipalities....
Foe of Endangered Species Act on Defensive Over Abramoff Growing up on the family ranch here, Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) says, he learned that "you have to work till you're done. There's nobody else to pick up the slack." It's a lesson he carried from the fields of the northern San Joaquin Valley to the committee rooms of Congress, where for more than a decade he has doggedly labored to undo one of America's signature environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act. After finally getting a bill through the House last fall that would eliminate habitat protections on more than 150 million acres, Pombo has never been closer to reaching his goal. But as the Senate prepares to take up his measure this year, Pombo finds himself on the defensive, with his ideology increasingly viewed as extreme and his connections to industry and to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff under scrutiny. A seven-term Republican and chairman of the influential House Resources Committee, Pombo is a tax-cutting, anti-abortion, anti-gun-control conservative. But it is the 33-year-old species law that has been his political obsession....
Still rustling up business Cattle rustlers aren’t hanged anymore, but stealing so much as a single calf qualifies as a felony, with a rustling conviction capable of putting someone in prison for up to 10 years and bringing a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Wyoming Livestock Board Law Enforcement Administrator Jim Siler said livestock theft is not just a thing of the past. With four livestock investigators, his agency “ran over 400 cases last year,” Siler said, the majority of which involved theft, as well as others associated with animal health and welfare. “The truth of the matter is there is a lot of theft that goes on,” Siler said. At the moment, investigators are checking into a case involving 15 head of cows that are missing east of Cheyenne. With cows going for $1,400 to $1,700 a head, the illegal sale of just 10 head of cows could bring $17,000. When just one or two head of livestock are reported missing, Siler said brand inspectors will assist ranchers in combing their grazing ranges for lost animals or look for carcasses. But as a general rule, when it’s five or more animals, “your suspicions grow that it is a theft,” Siler said. When a horse is reported missing, “It’s very rare it’s just lost. It’s usually stolen.”....
It's All Trew: Pampa man's diary tells story of 1936 A diary dated 1936, acquired at an estate sale, recorded the thoughts of William Floyd Jr. of Pampa during this difficult period of our Panhandle history. It is a day-to-day story about drought, hard financial times and family. Yes, this is a “true” story. Between hard work, long hours and little spending money, there are many “average everyday life” descriptions among the pages. On Jan. 30 the family listened to wrestling on the radio. I’ll bet there aren’t many radio wrestling announcers around anymore. On Feb. 4, “wife & self “ saw “The Farmer Takes A Wife” at the local Pampa theater. The temperature was four above zero. He also noted a payment made on their newly purchased Bible and cleaned his .22-caliber rifle. Next day, it warmed up to 32 degrees and they bought $4.37 worth of merchandise from the Fuller Brush man....
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Monday, February 13, 2006
FLE
U.S. gives Mexico millions for security
The U.S. government has sent more than $376 million to Mexico in the past decade for that country's military and police to help stop alien and drug smugglers, guard against terrorists and protect America's southern border, including $50 million due this year. The money, quietly authorized through State and Defense department programs, has been used to train and equip the Mexican military and police, drawing disagreement on whether those institutions are part of the solution for U.S. border security, or are part of the problem. Rep. Rick Renzi, Arizona Republican and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the program has had "great success" and helped put narcoterrorists and smugglers "on the defense." "While Mexico does have too much corruption, there are elements within the Mexican government on the front lines of the war against terrorists and smugglers willing to fight and die to bring back honor and integrity," he said. "The United States and Mexico must stay engaged, so we both can be successful in this battle." But T.J. Bonner, a veteran U.S. Border Patrol agent who heads the 10,000-member National Border Patrol Council, described the program as "appalling," saying it amounted to the U.S. government funding attacks on U.S. law-enforcement personnel along the border by rogue Mexican military troops. "This funding program should cease immediately, and the Mexican government needs to be placed on notice that any further incursions by its military or police will not be tolerated," he said, referring to recent incidents on the border in which men in Mexican military uniforms confronted U.S. law-enforcement officers in this country....
Danger escalates for border agents
The bare-bones steel pipe and metal roof structure overlooking the Rio Grande resembles a worn-out bus stop. But to the Border Patrol agents who use it, it's become a monument to the rising tide of violence aimed their way. A few yards away, an agent's windshield was shot out. And on Jan. 13, another agent trying to stop an illegal entry was hit near the left eye by a large rock thrown with stunning accuracy from the Mexican bank. It took 25 stitches to repair the wound. The largest number of assaults last year occurred in the San Diego and Tucson sectors. But agents in Texas have seen significant increases. In the El Paso Sector, which covers 125,000 square miles of border, including New Mexico and the two westernmost counties in Texas, agents reported 43 violent attacks in 2005, an increase of 105 percent from 2004. And in the Rio Grande Sector, agents have reported 41 assaults just in January 2006 – 16 more than in all of 2004. Assaults range from firearm use to fistfights to vehicular ramming. In 2004, agents were shot at nine times and were rammed nine times by smuggler vehicles. Those numbers jumped to 32 shootings and 29 vehicular assaults in 2005. Rock throwing, however, remains the favorite weapon....
U.S. doesn't want border violence mentioned in trial
Recent incidents of border violence echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. Now the issue has seeped into at least one court case. The prosecution in the case of two Border Patrol agents who allegedly shot an undocumented immigrant in the buttocks a year ago is seeking to exclude from the jury trial any mention of border violence, in particular the recent standoff in Hudspeth County. The motion, filed by the U.S. Attorney's office last week, asks the judge to instruct the defense not to mention during arguments or witness questioning "the alleged dangerous nature of the border." Court documents show the government is anticipating that the defense will use the current warnings over increased drug activity at the border to excuse the actions of agents Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos. The agents shot Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, a drug smuggler, near Fabens as he ran back to Mexico. Stephen Peters, Ramos' attorney, said he wouldn't discuss his defense strategy in details, but said that "A key factor is what he (Ramos) reasonably believed at the time of the shooting. The circumstances on the border as well as the activity the alien was involved in are relevant." U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone is expected to rule on the motion today and the trial is scheduled to begin Friday....
Drug Smuggling Air Marshals?
For a law enforcement agency that works hard to be invisible, the Federal Air Marshals have been generating a lot of attention lately. On Thursday, two of the agency's several thousand highly trained traveling armed guards were taken into custody in Houston. Although the US Attorney's office would not comment beyond acknowledging that the Air Marshals were arrested by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General's office, Government sources tell TIME that the two Air Marshals, are allegedly involved with the possession or transportation of cocaine, and may have been paid several thousand dollars to move the drugs. The marshals, one of whom is a former agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, will likely appear in court to face criminal charges next week, and will almost certainly be suspended....
Inquiry Into Wiretapping Article Widens
Federal agents have interviewed officials at several of the country's law enforcement and national security agencies in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding a New York Times article published in December that disclosed the existence of a highly classified domestic eavesdropping program, according to government officials. The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said. People who have been interviewed and others in the government who have been briefed on the interviews said the investigation seemed to lay the groundwork for a grand jury inquiry that could lead to criminal charges. The inquiry is progressing as a debate about the eavesdropping rages in Congress and elsewhere. President Bush has condemned the leak as a "shameful act." Others, like Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, have expressed the hope that reporters will be summoned before a grand jury and asked to reveal the identities of those who provided them classified information. Mr. Goss, speaking at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Feb. 2, said: "It is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserve nothing less." The case is viewed as potentially far reaching because it places on a collision course constitutional principles that each side regards as paramount. For the government, the investigation represents an effort to punish those responsible for a serious security breach and enforce legal sanctions against leaks of classified information at a time of heightened terrorist threats. For news organizations, the inquiry threatens the confidentiality of sources and the ability to report on controversial national security issues free of government interference....
Carter allowed surveillance in 1977
Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies. "Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada when his son Jack announced his Senate campaign. The next day at Mrs. King's high-profile funeral, Mr. Carter evoked a comparison to the Bush policy when referring to the "secret government wiretapping" of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. But in 1977, Mr. Carter and his attorney general, Griffin B. Bell, authorized warrantless electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam. The men, Truong Dinh Hung and Ronald Louis Humphrey, challenged their espionage convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which unanimously ruled that the warrantless searches did not violate the men's rights. In its opinion, the court said the executive branch has the "inherent authority" to wiretap enemies such as terror plotters and is excused from obtaining warrants when surveillance is "conducted 'primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons." That description, some Republicans say, perfectly fits the Bush administration's program to monitor calls from terror-linked people to the U.S. The Truong case, however, involved surveillance that began in 1977, before the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which established a secret court for granting foreign intelligence warrants....
'Cyberstorm' tests computer defenses
In the first test of its kind, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staged a mock government-led cyberattack, called Cyberstorm, to test the defenses of both government agencies and leading private sector organizations. IDG News Service, the news service of publications PCWorld, MacWorld, and InfoWorld, reports that the test was carried out in early February with the help of 115 organizations in the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. DHS called the event a "significant milestone." Among the government agencies taking part were the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the State Department and the National Security Agency. Some of the private companies that participated in Cyberstorm were Microsoft Corp., VeriSign Inc. and Symantec Corp. GovExec.com, a news and information site for government employees, reports that Mr. Purdy said the goal of the exercise was to develop a national response system and implement it across all industry and government sectors. The Associated Press reports that the attack not only dealt with possible attacks by hackers, but also simulated how to deal with bloggers who were intentionally spreading misinformation about an attack....
U.S. gives Mexico millions for security
The U.S. government has sent more than $376 million to Mexico in the past decade for that country's military and police to help stop alien and drug smugglers, guard against terrorists and protect America's southern border, including $50 million due this year. The money, quietly authorized through State and Defense department programs, has been used to train and equip the Mexican military and police, drawing disagreement on whether those institutions are part of the solution for U.S. border security, or are part of the problem. Rep. Rick Renzi, Arizona Republican and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the program has had "great success" and helped put narcoterrorists and smugglers "on the defense." "While Mexico does have too much corruption, there are elements within the Mexican government on the front lines of the war against terrorists and smugglers willing to fight and die to bring back honor and integrity," he said. "The United States and Mexico must stay engaged, so we both can be successful in this battle." But T.J. Bonner, a veteran U.S. Border Patrol agent who heads the 10,000-member National Border Patrol Council, described the program as "appalling," saying it amounted to the U.S. government funding attacks on U.S. law-enforcement personnel along the border by rogue Mexican military troops. "This funding program should cease immediately, and the Mexican government needs to be placed on notice that any further incursions by its military or police will not be tolerated," he said, referring to recent incidents on the border in which men in Mexican military uniforms confronted U.S. law-enforcement officers in this country....
Danger escalates for border agents
The bare-bones steel pipe and metal roof structure overlooking the Rio Grande resembles a worn-out bus stop. But to the Border Patrol agents who use it, it's become a monument to the rising tide of violence aimed their way. A few yards away, an agent's windshield was shot out. And on Jan. 13, another agent trying to stop an illegal entry was hit near the left eye by a large rock thrown with stunning accuracy from the Mexican bank. It took 25 stitches to repair the wound. The largest number of assaults last year occurred in the San Diego and Tucson sectors. But agents in Texas have seen significant increases. In the El Paso Sector, which covers 125,000 square miles of border, including New Mexico and the two westernmost counties in Texas, agents reported 43 violent attacks in 2005, an increase of 105 percent from 2004. And in the Rio Grande Sector, agents have reported 41 assaults just in January 2006 – 16 more than in all of 2004. Assaults range from firearm use to fistfights to vehicular ramming. In 2004, agents were shot at nine times and were rammed nine times by smuggler vehicles. Those numbers jumped to 32 shootings and 29 vehicular assaults in 2005. Rock throwing, however, remains the favorite weapon....
U.S. doesn't want border violence mentioned in trial
Recent incidents of border violence echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. Now the issue has seeped into at least one court case. The prosecution in the case of two Border Patrol agents who allegedly shot an undocumented immigrant in the buttocks a year ago is seeking to exclude from the jury trial any mention of border violence, in particular the recent standoff in Hudspeth County. The motion, filed by the U.S. Attorney's office last week, asks the judge to instruct the defense not to mention during arguments or witness questioning "the alleged dangerous nature of the border." Court documents show the government is anticipating that the defense will use the current warnings over increased drug activity at the border to excuse the actions of agents Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos. The agents shot Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, a drug smuggler, near Fabens as he ran back to Mexico. Stephen Peters, Ramos' attorney, said he wouldn't discuss his defense strategy in details, but said that "A key factor is what he (Ramos) reasonably believed at the time of the shooting. The circumstances on the border as well as the activity the alien was involved in are relevant." U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone is expected to rule on the motion today and the trial is scheduled to begin Friday....
Drug Smuggling Air Marshals?
For a law enforcement agency that works hard to be invisible, the Federal Air Marshals have been generating a lot of attention lately. On Thursday, two of the agency's several thousand highly trained traveling armed guards were taken into custody in Houston. Although the US Attorney's office would not comment beyond acknowledging that the Air Marshals were arrested by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General's office, Government sources tell TIME that the two Air Marshals, are allegedly involved with the possession or transportation of cocaine, and may have been paid several thousand dollars to move the drugs. The marshals, one of whom is a former agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, will likely appear in court to face criminal charges next week, and will almost certainly be suspended....
Inquiry Into Wiretapping Article Widens
Federal agents have interviewed officials at several of the country's law enforcement and national security agencies in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding a New York Times article published in December that disclosed the existence of a highly classified domestic eavesdropping program, according to government officials. The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said. People who have been interviewed and others in the government who have been briefed on the interviews said the investigation seemed to lay the groundwork for a grand jury inquiry that could lead to criminal charges. The inquiry is progressing as a debate about the eavesdropping rages in Congress and elsewhere. President Bush has condemned the leak as a "shameful act." Others, like Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, have expressed the hope that reporters will be summoned before a grand jury and asked to reveal the identities of those who provided them classified information. Mr. Goss, speaking at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Feb. 2, said: "It is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserve nothing less." The case is viewed as potentially far reaching because it places on a collision course constitutional principles that each side regards as paramount. For the government, the investigation represents an effort to punish those responsible for a serious security breach and enforce legal sanctions against leaks of classified information at a time of heightened terrorist threats. For news organizations, the inquiry threatens the confidentiality of sources and the ability to report on controversial national security issues free of government interference....
Carter allowed surveillance in 1977
Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies. "Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada when his son Jack announced his Senate campaign. The next day at Mrs. King's high-profile funeral, Mr. Carter evoked a comparison to the Bush policy when referring to the "secret government wiretapping" of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. But in 1977, Mr. Carter and his attorney general, Griffin B. Bell, authorized warrantless electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam. The men, Truong Dinh Hung and Ronald Louis Humphrey, challenged their espionage convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which unanimously ruled that the warrantless searches did not violate the men's rights. In its opinion, the court said the executive branch has the "inherent authority" to wiretap enemies such as terror plotters and is excused from obtaining warrants when surveillance is "conducted 'primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons." That description, some Republicans say, perfectly fits the Bush administration's program to monitor calls from terror-linked people to the U.S. The Truong case, however, involved surveillance that began in 1977, before the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which established a secret court for granting foreign intelligence warrants....
'Cyberstorm' tests computer defenses
In the first test of its kind, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staged a mock government-led cyberattack, called Cyberstorm, to test the defenses of both government agencies and leading private sector organizations. IDG News Service, the news service of publications PCWorld, MacWorld, and InfoWorld, reports that the test was carried out in early February with the help of 115 organizations in the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. DHS called the event a "significant milestone." Among the government agencies taking part were the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the State Department and the National Security Agency. Some of the private companies that participated in Cyberstorm were Microsoft Corp., VeriSign Inc. and Symantec Corp. GovExec.com, a news and information site for government employees, reports that Mr. Purdy said the goal of the exercise was to develop a national response system and implement it across all industry and government sectors. The Associated Press reports that the attack not only dealt with possible attacks by hackers, but also simulated how to deal with bloggers who were intentionally spreading misinformation about an attack....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Surprise! Bush has approved 1.4 million acres of wilderness Environmentalists revile George W. Bush as the president who wants to drill for oil in a pristine Alaskan wildlife refuge and sell off national forests. So it might be surprising to learn that Bush has signed nine bills creating a total of 1.4 million acres of new wilderness on federal land, protecting it from development and saving it for people who like to hike, hunt, fish and get away from it all. In the last four months alone, Bush has approved three wilderness areas totaling more than 120,000 acres in New Mexico, Utah and Puerto Rico. The largest chunk is in Utah's rugged Cedar Mountain range, home to pronghorn antelope, bobcats and golden eagles. Has the conservative Texas rancher gone green? No, environmentalists say. In fact, Bush angered conservationists again last week with his budget plan to sell off some 300,000 acres of national forests and other public lands worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So why would the president prevent so much land from ever being mined, drilled for oil and gas or disturbed by motor vehicles? He's doing what every president since Lyndon Johnson has done — going along with what local folks want for their states, says Bart Koehler, director of the Wilderness Society's Wilderness Support Center in Colorado....
Schweitzer blasts Bush's public land sale proposal The Bush administration Friday unveiled a list of more than 300,000 publicly owned acres it wants to sell to provide cash for states and counties. The list includes 13,948 acres in Montana, most of them in national forests west of the Continental Divide. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, called the proposed land sale a "wrongheaded" idea proposed by a "U.S. government that is living beyond its means." He compared it to a rancher who keeps selling land to buy new pickups and tractors, a man who lives well until he eventually finds himself broke. "It's a damn poor way to run a ranch and it's a way worse way to run a government," Schweitzer, a third-generation farmer, said Friday in a telephone interview....Go here for a state by state list of property for sale
Ranchers pleased, enviros unhappy Rancher Sonny Clarke's job these days isn't just barreling around in his pickup truck to shore up aging dirt watering tanks. It's also fixing up fences knocked down by illegal immigrants and keeping an eye out for drug smugglers. That's one reason he agrees with a new federal decision to lower public land ranchers' grazing fees by 23 cents per animal-unit month. An animal-unit month is the amount of forage a cow and her calf eat in a month. The fee drop starts March 1, and stems from sharply higher gasoline prices. Critics say the fee decrease is wrong, since it comes less than five months after a congressional watchdog office warned that the fees don't come close to paying the cost of running the grazing program. The Government Accountability Office report was the second one from that agency since 1991 to suggest that the grazing fee structure is out of whack. But federal officials have no choice, legally, but to lower the fee right now. The official formula requires the cut to reflect increases in the costs of being a rancher, U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman Tom Gorey said. The formula is based partly on the rancher's ability to pay, as a way of keeping the livestock industry healthy, said Linda Hutton, of the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Washington, D.C....
Western Water: Solutions to Overallocation The world of water has changed of late and it is about time. For almost 20 years, a gradual shift has been ongoing: water that was historically used for agriculture and ranching is increasingly going to western cities. Called reallocation, this process has become common throughout the West. It is so pervasive that the real question is no longer whether water will be transferred from rural to urban use. The debate concerns the terms of the transfer, how rural communities that cede water will derive fair and valuable benefits from it. Although this process first gained momentum in California, the Southern Nevada Water Authority gets a good portion of the credit for its systematic implementation. Out of necessity, SNWA reinvented water in the Southwest. Nevada had received such short shrift from the original Colorado River Compact that the Silver State found itself backed against a formidable wall when growth in southern Nevada, began to outstrip groundwater supplies. Forced to rely on federal dollars to ferry its trickle of the Colorado from Lake Mead to Las Vegas, southern Nevada faced a crisis in the 1980s....
Ranchers worry about long-term effects of salt water leak The director of North Dakota's oil and gas division says it could take up to a decade to deal with a large salt water leak in the northwestern part of the state, and ranchers in the region are worried. "If I don't have access to (Charbonneau) Creek by summer, there's no way I can keep my cattle numbers here," said Ned Hermanson. "I'll have to look for other pasture." The leak detected Jan. 4 in a Zenergy Inc. pipeline about six miles west of Alexander, near Charbonneau Creek, was estimated at more than 900,000 gallons. Salt water is a waste product of oil production that can kill vegetation and hurt animals. Oil companies pipe it underground to dispose of it. The state Industrial Commission also is inspecting the 200 oil field salt water pipelines in North Dakota to ensure they have proper equipment to detect leaks. Helms said oil operators will be asked to add any necessary monitoring devices, and if they do not the Industrial Commission could implement an emergency rule....
Unease on the open range In this remote corner of northwest Eagle County, elk outnumber humans by a long shot, and eagles seem as common as crows. Ranches, some of which have been in the same family for generations, comprise most of the land that isn't publicly owned, and the abundant wildlife moves back and forth between them without a thought for the controversy brewing around their presence. Around Burns, ranchers are incensed by a new set of rules proposed by the county that would require any new development to be screened in terms of its effects on wildlife habitat. The rules apply to properties larger than 35 acres, which means ranches in many cases. And while agricultural buildings are exempt, ranchers say the proposed regulations would have a devastating effect on their livelihood....
Groups want feds to buy ranch Nearly three dozen wildlife and conservation groups, including one that Theodore Roosevelt started more than a century ago, want the federal government to buy land where the former president ranched in North Dakota's western Badlands. It's the latest development in a four-year struggle by the Eberts family to sell 5,150 acres of picturesque property amid hills, buttes and the Little Missouri River. The Ebertses say they want to preserve the land, but neighbors worry about a federal land grab. The Boone and Crockett Club, started by Roosevelt in 1887, hopes to enlist the support of other groups around the country to lobby Congress to approve the purchase. A U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee is considering legislation to allow the Forest Service to start the land acquisition by spending $1.45 million within its present budget....
A New Proposal for Tejon Ranch A coalition of environmental groups says it will withdraw its opposition to development of the sprawling Tejon Ranch if the builder agrees to set aside about 380 square miles in the Tehachapi Mountains as wilderness. The coalition hopes its offer persuades developers to scale back their plans on the 270,000-acre site and to more than double the amount of land to be preserved. The coalition now wants to save 245,000 acres — a swath of land bigger than Chicago and Philadelphia combined. Tejon Ranch officials dismissed the new proposal as unreasonable but left open the possibility for more discussions with environmentalists over the fate of the tableau of mountains, grasslands and twisted oaks 60 miles north of Los Angeles. One thing is clear: The proposal marks yet another juncture in the long-running debate over development of Tejon Ranch. Just eight months ago, Tejon Ranch Co. and a national land trust hailed an agreement to sell more than one-third of the ranch for use as a nature preserve as the most significant conservation project this decade in the West....
Judge's ruling could let water flow to San Diego County A federal court judge last week dismissed several claims that billions of gallons of water expected to be headed to San Diego County by 2008 actually belong to Mexican residents. U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro dismissed seven of eight claims in a lawsuit challenging a long-discussed Imperial Valley canal-lining project that would send water to San Diego County. The seven claims revolved around the argument that the water belonged to the people of Mexico. The eighth claim, which has yet to be heard by the court, challenges the project on the grounds that its environmental studies were inadequate. The court ruling was the latest development in the long-discussed project to build a 23-mile, concrete-lined stretch of the 82-mile All-American Canal in Imperial Valley ---- a project that San Diego County water leaders are counting on to help sustain thousands of households for 110 years....
Community struggles to keep rights to land In the valley below a ring of blue-black mountains in southeastern Arizona, a group of townspeople gathered on a recent Sunday after church to stop a copper-mining giant. They sat shoulder to shoulder on wooden benches in a crowded meeting hall, asking one another in hushed voices: "Did you get a letter?" Dozens of certified letters arrived at the small Dragoon post office in mid-January, sent by foreign mining giants BHP Billiton and General Minerals Corp. The companies wrote that they had filed claims on some of the residents' land and reserved the right to enter property starting last Friday. With copper surging to record prices on the world market, some analysts say more rural areas across the West can expect to see similar notices. Using a near-century-old law, mining companies are legally allowed to check if some rural residents are sitting on a gold mine....
Regulators deal with mines left abandoned Imagine that the state of Utah is chock full of holes, thousands and thousands of them. And that each is a potential environmental or public safety hazard. Now imagine yourself a state or federal abandoned mine program regulator. This is your reality. Utah has anywhere from 17,000 to 20,000 old, abandoned hard rock mines, dotting the state from the west desert to the Wasatch to the Colorado Plateau. Most of them are remote and rarely encountered. But between what they can emit and what can happen to those who unwittingly enter them, regulators, environmentalists and academics see an increasing threat. "What we've got is a huge problem," says Terry Snyder, abandoned mines coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management Office in Utah....
Utah's latest wilds area not just about scenery The dry, rounded ridges of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area stretch north-south for about 55 miles, framing this barren valley with its sagebrush and parched grass. The Cedar range opens to the west on desolate salt flats, where the Air Force has sprayed nerve gas and drops ordnance on a Rhode Island-sized bombing range, and where much of the nation's industrial waste gets entombed for disposal. Of all the spectacular and wild places in Utah worthy of protection as wilderness, the Cedars never ranked high on anyone's list. Yet, after rejecting wilderness proposals for more than two decades, Utah's congressional delegation united behind this site. But more than scenery was on the mind of Utah's congressional delegation. The restrictions of the Wilderness Act of 1964, intended to forever preserve virgin wilderness in a natural state, will make it impractical for a tribe of 121 Goshute Indians to accept nuclear waste for storage on their tiny patch of Skull Valley....
Tensions flare over New Mexico energy deal A royalty deal between the Bureau of Land Management and El Paso Exploration and Production Co. allows 25 more natural gas wells on the privately owned Vermejo Park Ranch, adjacent to a pristine forest area that is the focus of a battle over coal-bed methane. The agreements will let the federal government recover royalty payments on gas under the ranch owned by media mogul Ted Turner. El Paso, not Turner, owns subsurface rights at the ranch, which already has numerous gas wells. The gas comes from coal beds that extend under the eastern portion of the 100,000-acre Valle Vidal, part of the Carson National Forest. The BLM said it signed the agreements to gain royalty payments on wells along the boundary between the ranch and Valle Vidal. The required spacing of wells in the gas field and the irregular, diagonal boundary between the ranch and forest land mean many border gas units, if developed, would drain from under the Valle Vidal, the BLM said....
Work set to begin on Montana meat labeling law Work is set to begin next week on a plan to implement a state law requiring that meat sold in Montana grocery and other stores be labeled to show country of origin. An advisory council charged with writing rules for the so-called placarding law plans to hold its first meeting Feb. 22. The hope is to have a rough draft of rules - or at the least some "very good ideas in place to make a first draft" - by the end of the day, said Jack Kane, chief of the weights and measures bureau in the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. The law requires retailers to post placards denoting the country of origin for beef, lamb, pork and poultry products. If the origin of the product is unknown, that must be disclosed, as well. Kane said the burden to verify the origin of meat will fall on retailers. Those unable or unwilling to do the task would mark the meat as "country of origin unknown," he said....
Argentina cattle market ruminates over beef disease The world's No. 3 beef exporter known for its succulent steaks made from pasture-fed cattle, Argentina last week confirmed an outbreak of the highly contagious disease in the northeastern province of Corrientes. Although the ailment does not generally harm humans, it is shunned in the world market. A host of South American nations, along with Argentina's top clients Russia, Israel, South Africa and Singapore, have already restricted Argentine beef imports. "What bothers cattle ranchers is not being able to plan for the future," broker Gervasio Saenz Valiente said on Friday, as buyers surveyed steer ripe for slaughter inside the bustling Liniers market in Buenos Aires. The news dashed hopes in the thriving sector. Beef exports hit a record $1.4 billion last year and Argentina's government was working to reopen lucrative markets, such as the United States, closed after foot-and-mouth struck in 2001 and 2003....
Mother-daughter team succeeds in Montana designer chaps business Plain brown chaps might suit your average working rancher, but a rodeo queen is more apt to pick a pair with green and purple metallic-colored fringe and her title written in cursive up the leg. From a Fromberg shop called Leather Legends, Marge Taylor outfits working ranchers, Western pleasure riders and motorcyclists in custom-made chaps and leather jackets. She and daughter Tammy also have fitted competitive horseback drill teams from Texas and California, along with a sprinkling of rodeo queens. But the wildest chaps they make are one-of-a-kind collectibles, designed and priced to ride in parades or hang like artwork on a wall. On one pair of chaps, a tooled leather image of Buffalo Bill emerges from the dense, curly, brown hair of a buffalo hide. A matching buffalo serape, designed as a companion piece, depicts a tooled leather landscape of desert mesas and bluffs....
PRCA headquarters, HOF moving to N.M. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson today announced that the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the largest and oldest rodeo sanctioning body in the world, has chosen Albuquerque, N.M., as the location for its new headquarters and ProRodeo Hall of Fame facility. This move will bring 85 full-time jobs, a $3.35 million payroll and approximately 50,000 annual Hall of Fame visitors to Albuquerque. "The move to New Mexico is a very exciting development for the sport of ProRodeo," stated PRCA Commissioner Troy Ellerman. "The PRCA Board of Directors and administration sees this as more than an attractive financial offer. It's also a great opportunity to grow the ProRodeo brand, and elevate professional rodeo to the level of other major league sports." ProRodeo is a multimillion-dollar industry that will have a major positive impact on New Mexico's economy. As part of the agreement, the PRCA has agreed to both bring major rodeo events to New Mexico and promote the state at their out-of-state events. In 2005, 24 million spectators purchased tickets to PRCA events, PRCA rodeos paid out over $35 million in prize money and contributed in excess of $25 million to charitable causes and scholarships. The exact details of the agreement to move the PRCA to New Mexico are still being finalized. This includes the exact location of the headquarters and ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Albuquerque. However, the package will include state funding assistance to help finance the construction of a new facility within the next 18 months, and $5 million to promote the sport of ProRodeo. The Governor will announce more of the funding details on Monday, Feb. 13 at a news conference with PRCA officials at 1:30 p.m. (MT) in the Governor's Office in Santa Fe....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Need to shepherd draws woman to alpacas She was an authentic animal lover. Dee grew up on a western cattle ranch. After she moved away, her suburban neighborhood prevented her from raising cows. "They are so bulky," she said. But her need to "shepherd" was not satisfied by dogs, cats or even a gerbil. One day she discovered alpacas. They are the Porsche of camelids compared to the Ford Explorer llama or the Humvee dromedary. Any good stockman can affirm that it is possible to develop an affection for a bum lamb or a good and faithful cow. So when I say she loved her alpacas, we livestock people understand that particular bond. But, I admit, I did not entirely grasp the depth of her animal husbandryness....
Surprise! Bush has approved 1.4 million acres of wilderness Environmentalists revile George W. Bush as the president who wants to drill for oil in a pristine Alaskan wildlife refuge and sell off national forests. So it might be surprising to learn that Bush has signed nine bills creating a total of 1.4 million acres of new wilderness on federal land, protecting it from development and saving it for people who like to hike, hunt, fish and get away from it all. In the last four months alone, Bush has approved three wilderness areas totaling more than 120,000 acres in New Mexico, Utah and Puerto Rico. The largest chunk is in Utah's rugged Cedar Mountain range, home to pronghorn antelope, bobcats and golden eagles. Has the conservative Texas rancher gone green? No, environmentalists say. In fact, Bush angered conservationists again last week with his budget plan to sell off some 300,000 acres of national forests and other public lands worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So why would the president prevent so much land from ever being mined, drilled for oil and gas or disturbed by motor vehicles? He's doing what every president since Lyndon Johnson has done — going along with what local folks want for their states, says Bart Koehler, director of the Wilderness Society's Wilderness Support Center in Colorado....
Schweitzer blasts Bush's public land sale proposal The Bush administration Friday unveiled a list of more than 300,000 publicly owned acres it wants to sell to provide cash for states and counties. The list includes 13,948 acres in Montana, most of them in national forests west of the Continental Divide. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, called the proposed land sale a "wrongheaded" idea proposed by a "U.S. government that is living beyond its means." He compared it to a rancher who keeps selling land to buy new pickups and tractors, a man who lives well until he eventually finds himself broke. "It's a damn poor way to run a ranch and it's a way worse way to run a government," Schweitzer, a third-generation farmer, said Friday in a telephone interview....Go here for a state by state list of property for sale
Ranchers pleased, enviros unhappy Rancher Sonny Clarke's job these days isn't just barreling around in his pickup truck to shore up aging dirt watering tanks. It's also fixing up fences knocked down by illegal immigrants and keeping an eye out for drug smugglers. That's one reason he agrees with a new federal decision to lower public land ranchers' grazing fees by 23 cents per animal-unit month. An animal-unit month is the amount of forage a cow and her calf eat in a month. The fee drop starts March 1, and stems from sharply higher gasoline prices. Critics say the fee decrease is wrong, since it comes less than five months after a congressional watchdog office warned that the fees don't come close to paying the cost of running the grazing program. The Government Accountability Office report was the second one from that agency since 1991 to suggest that the grazing fee structure is out of whack. But federal officials have no choice, legally, but to lower the fee right now. The official formula requires the cut to reflect increases in the costs of being a rancher, U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman Tom Gorey said. The formula is based partly on the rancher's ability to pay, as a way of keeping the livestock industry healthy, said Linda Hutton, of the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Washington, D.C....
Western Water: Solutions to Overallocation The world of water has changed of late and it is about time. For almost 20 years, a gradual shift has been ongoing: water that was historically used for agriculture and ranching is increasingly going to western cities. Called reallocation, this process has become common throughout the West. It is so pervasive that the real question is no longer whether water will be transferred from rural to urban use. The debate concerns the terms of the transfer, how rural communities that cede water will derive fair and valuable benefits from it. Although this process first gained momentum in California, the Southern Nevada Water Authority gets a good portion of the credit for its systematic implementation. Out of necessity, SNWA reinvented water in the Southwest. Nevada had received such short shrift from the original Colorado River Compact that the Silver State found itself backed against a formidable wall when growth in southern Nevada, began to outstrip groundwater supplies. Forced to rely on federal dollars to ferry its trickle of the Colorado from Lake Mead to Las Vegas, southern Nevada faced a crisis in the 1980s....
Ranchers worry about long-term effects of salt water leak The director of North Dakota's oil and gas division says it could take up to a decade to deal with a large salt water leak in the northwestern part of the state, and ranchers in the region are worried. "If I don't have access to (Charbonneau) Creek by summer, there's no way I can keep my cattle numbers here," said Ned Hermanson. "I'll have to look for other pasture." The leak detected Jan. 4 in a Zenergy Inc. pipeline about six miles west of Alexander, near Charbonneau Creek, was estimated at more than 900,000 gallons. Salt water is a waste product of oil production that can kill vegetation and hurt animals. Oil companies pipe it underground to dispose of it. The state Industrial Commission also is inspecting the 200 oil field salt water pipelines in North Dakota to ensure they have proper equipment to detect leaks. Helms said oil operators will be asked to add any necessary monitoring devices, and if they do not the Industrial Commission could implement an emergency rule....
Unease on the open range In this remote corner of northwest Eagle County, elk outnumber humans by a long shot, and eagles seem as common as crows. Ranches, some of which have been in the same family for generations, comprise most of the land that isn't publicly owned, and the abundant wildlife moves back and forth between them without a thought for the controversy brewing around their presence. Around Burns, ranchers are incensed by a new set of rules proposed by the county that would require any new development to be screened in terms of its effects on wildlife habitat. The rules apply to properties larger than 35 acres, which means ranches in many cases. And while agricultural buildings are exempt, ranchers say the proposed regulations would have a devastating effect on their livelihood....
Groups want feds to buy ranch Nearly three dozen wildlife and conservation groups, including one that Theodore Roosevelt started more than a century ago, want the federal government to buy land where the former president ranched in North Dakota's western Badlands. It's the latest development in a four-year struggle by the Eberts family to sell 5,150 acres of picturesque property amid hills, buttes and the Little Missouri River. The Ebertses say they want to preserve the land, but neighbors worry about a federal land grab. The Boone and Crockett Club, started by Roosevelt in 1887, hopes to enlist the support of other groups around the country to lobby Congress to approve the purchase. A U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee is considering legislation to allow the Forest Service to start the land acquisition by spending $1.45 million within its present budget....
A New Proposal for Tejon Ranch A coalition of environmental groups says it will withdraw its opposition to development of the sprawling Tejon Ranch if the builder agrees to set aside about 380 square miles in the Tehachapi Mountains as wilderness. The coalition hopes its offer persuades developers to scale back their plans on the 270,000-acre site and to more than double the amount of land to be preserved. The coalition now wants to save 245,000 acres — a swath of land bigger than Chicago and Philadelphia combined. Tejon Ranch officials dismissed the new proposal as unreasonable but left open the possibility for more discussions with environmentalists over the fate of the tableau of mountains, grasslands and twisted oaks 60 miles north of Los Angeles. One thing is clear: The proposal marks yet another juncture in the long-running debate over development of Tejon Ranch. Just eight months ago, Tejon Ranch Co. and a national land trust hailed an agreement to sell more than one-third of the ranch for use as a nature preserve as the most significant conservation project this decade in the West....
Judge's ruling could let water flow to San Diego County A federal court judge last week dismissed several claims that billions of gallons of water expected to be headed to San Diego County by 2008 actually belong to Mexican residents. U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro dismissed seven of eight claims in a lawsuit challenging a long-discussed Imperial Valley canal-lining project that would send water to San Diego County. The seven claims revolved around the argument that the water belonged to the people of Mexico. The eighth claim, which has yet to be heard by the court, challenges the project on the grounds that its environmental studies were inadequate. The court ruling was the latest development in the long-discussed project to build a 23-mile, concrete-lined stretch of the 82-mile All-American Canal in Imperial Valley ---- a project that San Diego County water leaders are counting on to help sustain thousands of households for 110 years....
Community struggles to keep rights to land In the valley below a ring of blue-black mountains in southeastern Arizona, a group of townspeople gathered on a recent Sunday after church to stop a copper-mining giant. They sat shoulder to shoulder on wooden benches in a crowded meeting hall, asking one another in hushed voices: "Did you get a letter?" Dozens of certified letters arrived at the small Dragoon post office in mid-January, sent by foreign mining giants BHP Billiton and General Minerals Corp. The companies wrote that they had filed claims on some of the residents' land and reserved the right to enter property starting last Friday. With copper surging to record prices on the world market, some analysts say more rural areas across the West can expect to see similar notices. Using a near-century-old law, mining companies are legally allowed to check if some rural residents are sitting on a gold mine....
Regulators deal with mines left abandoned Imagine that the state of Utah is chock full of holes, thousands and thousands of them. And that each is a potential environmental or public safety hazard. Now imagine yourself a state or federal abandoned mine program regulator. This is your reality. Utah has anywhere from 17,000 to 20,000 old, abandoned hard rock mines, dotting the state from the west desert to the Wasatch to the Colorado Plateau. Most of them are remote and rarely encountered. But between what they can emit and what can happen to those who unwittingly enter them, regulators, environmentalists and academics see an increasing threat. "What we've got is a huge problem," says Terry Snyder, abandoned mines coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management Office in Utah....
Utah's latest wilds area not just about scenery The dry, rounded ridges of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area stretch north-south for about 55 miles, framing this barren valley with its sagebrush and parched grass. The Cedar range opens to the west on desolate salt flats, where the Air Force has sprayed nerve gas and drops ordnance on a Rhode Island-sized bombing range, and where much of the nation's industrial waste gets entombed for disposal. Of all the spectacular and wild places in Utah worthy of protection as wilderness, the Cedars never ranked high on anyone's list. Yet, after rejecting wilderness proposals for more than two decades, Utah's congressional delegation united behind this site. But more than scenery was on the mind of Utah's congressional delegation. The restrictions of the Wilderness Act of 1964, intended to forever preserve virgin wilderness in a natural state, will make it impractical for a tribe of 121 Goshute Indians to accept nuclear waste for storage on their tiny patch of Skull Valley....
Tensions flare over New Mexico energy deal A royalty deal between the Bureau of Land Management and El Paso Exploration and Production Co. allows 25 more natural gas wells on the privately owned Vermejo Park Ranch, adjacent to a pristine forest area that is the focus of a battle over coal-bed methane. The agreements will let the federal government recover royalty payments on gas under the ranch owned by media mogul Ted Turner. El Paso, not Turner, owns subsurface rights at the ranch, which already has numerous gas wells. The gas comes from coal beds that extend under the eastern portion of the 100,000-acre Valle Vidal, part of the Carson National Forest. The BLM said it signed the agreements to gain royalty payments on wells along the boundary between the ranch and Valle Vidal. The required spacing of wells in the gas field and the irregular, diagonal boundary between the ranch and forest land mean many border gas units, if developed, would drain from under the Valle Vidal, the BLM said....
Work set to begin on Montana meat labeling law Work is set to begin next week on a plan to implement a state law requiring that meat sold in Montana grocery and other stores be labeled to show country of origin. An advisory council charged with writing rules for the so-called placarding law plans to hold its first meeting Feb. 22. The hope is to have a rough draft of rules - or at the least some "very good ideas in place to make a first draft" - by the end of the day, said Jack Kane, chief of the weights and measures bureau in the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. The law requires retailers to post placards denoting the country of origin for beef, lamb, pork and poultry products. If the origin of the product is unknown, that must be disclosed, as well. Kane said the burden to verify the origin of meat will fall on retailers. Those unable or unwilling to do the task would mark the meat as "country of origin unknown," he said....
Argentina cattle market ruminates over beef disease The world's No. 3 beef exporter known for its succulent steaks made from pasture-fed cattle, Argentina last week confirmed an outbreak of the highly contagious disease in the northeastern province of Corrientes. Although the ailment does not generally harm humans, it is shunned in the world market. A host of South American nations, along with Argentina's top clients Russia, Israel, South Africa and Singapore, have already restricted Argentine beef imports. "What bothers cattle ranchers is not being able to plan for the future," broker Gervasio Saenz Valiente said on Friday, as buyers surveyed steer ripe for slaughter inside the bustling Liniers market in Buenos Aires. The news dashed hopes in the thriving sector. Beef exports hit a record $1.4 billion last year and Argentina's government was working to reopen lucrative markets, such as the United States, closed after foot-and-mouth struck in 2001 and 2003....
Mother-daughter team succeeds in Montana designer chaps business Plain brown chaps might suit your average working rancher, but a rodeo queen is more apt to pick a pair with green and purple metallic-colored fringe and her title written in cursive up the leg. From a Fromberg shop called Leather Legends, Marge Taylor outfits working ranchers, Western pleasure riders and motorcyclists in custom-made chaps and leather jackets. She and daughter Tammy also have fitted competitive horseback drill teams from Texas and California, along with a sprinkling of rodeo queens. But the wildest chaps they make are one-of-a-kind collectibles, designed and priced to ride in parades or hang like artwork on a wall. On one pair of chaps, a tooled leather image of Buffalo Bill emerges from the dense, curly, brown hair of a buffalo hide. A matching buffalo serape, designed as a companion piece, depicts a tooled leather landscape of desert mesas and bluffs....
PRCA headquarters, HOF moving to N.M. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson today announced that the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the largest and oldest rodeo sanctioning body in the world, has chosen Albuquerque, N.M., as the location for its new headquarters and ProRodeo Hall of Fame facility. This move will bring 85 full-time jobs, a $3.35 million payroll and approximately 50,000 annual Hall of Fame visitors to Albuquerque. "The move to New Mexico is a very exciting development for the sport of ProRodeo," stated PRCA Commissioner Troy Ellerman. "The PRCA Board of Directors and administration sees this as more than an attractive financial offer. It's also a great opportunity to grow the ProRodeo brand, and elevate professional rodeo to the level of other major league sports." ProRodeo is a multimillion-dollar industry that will have a major positive impact on New Mexico's economy. As part of the agreement, the PRCA has agreed to both bring major rodeo events to New Mexico and promote the state at their out-of-state events. In 2005, 24 million spectators purchased tickets to PRCA events, PRCA rodeos paid out over $35 million in prize money and contributed in excess of $25 million to charitable causes and scholarships. The exact details of the agreement to move the PRCA to New Mexico are still being finalized. This includes the exact location of the headquarters and ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Albuquerque. However, the package will include state funding assistance to help finance the construction of a new facility within the next 18 months, and $5 million to promote the sport of ProRodeo. The Governor will announce more of the funding details on Monday, Feb. 13 at a news conference with PRCA officials at 1:30 p.m. (MT) in the Governor's Office in Santa Fe....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Need to shepherd draws woman to alpacas She was an authentic animal lover. Dee grew up on a western cattle ranch. After she moved away, her suburban neighborhood prevented her from raising cows. "They are so bulky," she said. But her need to "shepherd" was not satisfied by dogs, cats or even a gerbil. One day she discovered alpacas. They are the Porsche of camelids compared to the Ford Explorer llama or the Humvee dromedary. Any good stockman can affirm that it is possible to develop an affection for a bum lamb or a good and faithful cow. So when I say she loved her alpacas, we livestock people understand that particular bond. But, I admit, I did not entirely grasp the depth of her animal husbandryness....
Sunday, February 12, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Hearts, candy, flowers... and chicken feathers
By Julie Carter
Saddle up boys, here it comes again. Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Commercialism has painted the world with red and pink hearts and accented it with chocolate.
Some will attest to the theory that Valentine's Day was invented as a clever ploy to stimulate the economy in an otherwise financially sluggish time of year. Greeting card companies, florists, jewelers and chocolate manufacturers who flourish because of the promotion would have to agree.
Valentine's Day advertisements, even locally in a rural part of the world, promise evenings of lasting romance and adoration if you will just come dine with them for only $175 a couple. I don't believe too many pickup trucks will be leaving the ranch for that offer.
There will be some "romantic" gestures made out there on the range. It may not be wine and roses but a cowboy on a Valentine's Day date will offer his heart's delight a romantic late night walk through the frosty pastures for a "just once more" check of the heifers. After all, it is calving season.
I know a gal who books her husband and herself into the dentist for a teeth cleaning every Valentine's Day. "Nothing says 'I love you' like a plaque-less kiss," she claims.
But this year's top story demonstrating "true love" in the best way they know how comes from a local ranch. Recently the rancher left home in the morning as usual to go make his rounds feeding cattle and checking waters.
Millie, the Border collie, was pleased he was going alone because that meant she got to sit up front and ride shotgun in the feed pickup.
Quite a distance into the feed route and miles from the house, the rancher happened to catch a glimpse of something in his rear view mirror. He stopped the pickup and walked to the rear only to find one of his wife's beloved chickens on the back of flatbed pickup.
At this point in time, this man had many options before him, none of which would have been good for the chicken. Most men would have, at the very minimum, denied all knowledge of ever seeing the hen and more than likely left her in the pasture to the natural order of the food chain in the wild. Chickens usually rank pretty low on the compassion scale for most.
But knowing how much his wife adored her birds of all kinds and especially her hand-raised chickens; he gathered the hen up and put her in the front of the pickup on the seat between Millie and himself.
Millie was indignant and completely insulted. She turned her head, nose in the air, and stared out the passenger window the remainder of the trip trying her best to pretend there was NOT a chicken in the seat next to her.
The rancher finished his feed route and returned home a few hours later, the hen nestled tight against him for warmth.
The sight had to be one of those rare moments that none of us actually ever see. The visual of this guy driving down the road with his dog and his wife's chicken in the front seat of the pickup is enough to put anyone into fits of laughter.
It also makes a good "true love" story. Not many, chicken lovers or not, will miss the depth of the affection it took to agree to cozy up to a chicken, even for the little woman.
© Julie Carter 2006
Golden eggs
by Larry Gabriel
Some people think the "farm subsidy program" is the goose that lays golden eggs for farmers.
I certainly won't dispute that Congress knows how to lay an egg, and sometimes they are golden, but the gold is not going into the pocket of the farmers.
The government says the money goes to "the farm" as that is listed in their data base. However, a 5,000-member cooperative can be listed as a single recipient in that data base. USDA says they are fixing that.
The first line of a recent Associated Press news story said, "Federal subsidies for farmers in Minnesota jumped 35 percent last year to nearly $1 billion..."
Does that sound like Minnesota farmers pocketed a billion dollars from the government? Sure it does, but the farmers really don't get to keep that money. They are just a conduit.
Most of that money ends up in someone else's pocket when the farmer buys livestock, seed, fertilizer, pesticides, fuel, machinery, repairs, rentals and labor.
In South Dakota about 85-87 cents out of every dollar received by farmers (including government subsidies) goes for operating costs.
So, of all the subsidy money said to be "for farmers", the farmers might get to keep 15%. One might just as well say this is a subsidy "for the local REA", or "for the bankers", or "for the oil companies", or "for the equipment manufactures" as to say "for the farmers".
The $4 billion South Dakota farmers spend annually on production goes for this: $336 million on feed, $337 million on livestock, $289 million for seed, $240 million for fertilizer and lime, $199 million on pesticides, $168 million on fuel, $100 million on electricity, $269 million on repairs, $294 million in interest, $124 million for labor, $363 million to landlords, $222 million in property taxes, $430 for capitol investments and the rest for miscellaneous costs.
If this subsidy were called a "rural America subsidy", that would be far more accurate than calling it a "farm subsidy" or "subsidy for farmers".
As it is now, the press just keeps saying these farmers are getting all this money and a few people at the top are getting most of the money. Those things are simply not true. The farmers whose names are being published on the internet get only a small portion of that money, and the biggest "farmer recipient" is in some states a cooperative with thousands of members.
The support industries, equipment dealers, fuel distributors and the local county commissioners who impose property taxes do not have their names posted in the "farm subsidy" database. The farmer getting 15% takes the political heat for all of them.
I have written on government subsidies before. I am not a big fan of government subsidies, but let’s be fair about it.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Hearts, candy, flowers... and chicken feathers
By Julie Carter
Saddle up boys, here it comes again. Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Commercialism has painted the world with red and pink hearts and accented it with chocolate.
Some will attest to the theory that Valentine's Day was invented as a clever ploy to stimulate the economy in an otherwise financially sluggish time of year. Greeting card companies, florists, jewelers and chocolate manufacturers who flourish because of the promotion would have to agree.
Valentine's Day advertisements, even locally in a rural part of the world, promise evenings of lasting romance and adoration if you will just come dine with them for only $175 a couple. I don't believe too many pickup trucks will be leaving the ranch for that offer.
There will be some "romantic" gestures made out there on the range. It may not be wine and roses but a cowboy on a Valentine's Day date will offer his heart's delight a romantic late night walk through the frosty pastures for a "just once more" check of the heifers. After all, it is calving season.
I know a gal who books her husband and herself into the dentist for a teeth cleaning every Valentine's Day. "Nothing says 'I love you' like a plaque-less kiss," she claims.
But this year's top story demonstrating "true love" in the best way they know how comes from a local ranch. Recently the rancher left home in the morning as usual to go make his rounds feeding cattle and checking waters.
Millie, the Border collie, was pleased he was going alone because that meant she got to sit up front and ride shotgun in the feed pickup.
Quite a distance into the feed route and miles from the house, the rancher happened to catch a glimpse of something in his rear view mirror. He stopped the pickup and walked to the rear only to find one of his wife's beloved chickens on the back of flatbed pickup.
At this point in time, this man had many options before him, none of which would have been good for the chicken. Most men would have, at the very minimum, denied all knowledge of ever seeing the hen and more than likely left her in the pasture to the natural order of the food chain in the wild. Chickens usually rank pretty low on the compassion scale for most.
But knowing how much his wife adored her birds of all kinds and especially her hand-raised chickens; he gathered the hen up and put her in the front of the pickup on the seat between Millie and himself.
Millie was indignant and completely insulted. She turned her head, nose in the air, and stared out the passenger window the remainder of the trip trying her best to pretend there was NOT a chicken in the seat next to her.
The rancher finished his feed route and returned home a few hours later, the hen nestled tight against him for warmth.
The sight had to be one of those rare moments that none of us actually ever see. The visual of this guy driving down the road with his dog and his wife's chicken in the front seat of the pickup is enough to put anyone into fits of laughter.
It also makes a good "true love" story. Not many, chicken lovers or not, will miss the depth of the affection it took to agree to cozy up to a chicken, even for the little woman.
© Julie Carter 2006
Golden eggs
by Larry Gabriel
Some people think the "farm subsidy program" is the goose that lays golden eggs for farmers.
I certainly won't dispute that Congress knows how to lay an egg, and sometimes they are golden, but the gold is not going into the pocket of the farmers.
The government says the money goes to "the farm" as that is listed in their data base. However, a 5,000-member cooperative can be listed as a single recipient in that data base. USDA says they are fixing that.
The first line of a recent Associated Press news story said, "Federal subsidies for farmers in Minnesota jumped 35 percent last year to nearly $1 billion..."
Does that sound like Minnesota farmers pocketed a billion dollars from the government? Sure it does, but the farmers really don't get to keep that money. They are just a conduit.
Most of that money ends up in someone else's pocket when the farmer buys livestock, seed, fertilizer, pesticides, fuel, machinery, repairs, rentals and labor.
In South Dakota about 85-87 cents out of every dollar received by farmers (including government subsidies) goes for operating costs.
So, of all the subsidy money said to be "for farmers", the farmers might get to keep 15%. One might just as well say this is a subsidy "for the local REA", or "for the bankers", or "for the oil companies", or "for the equipment manufactures" as to say "for the farmers".
The $4 billion South Dakota farmers spend annually on production goes for this: $336 million on feed, $337 million on livestock, $289 million for seed, $240 million for fertilizer and lime, $199 million on pesticides, $168 million on fuel, $100 million on electricity, $269 million on repairs, $294 million in interest, $124 million for labor, $363 million to landlords, $222 million in property taxes, $430 for capitol investments and the rest for miscellaneous costs.
If this subsidy were called a "rural America subsidy", that would be far more accurate than calling it a "farm subsidy" or "subsidy for farmers".
As it is now, the press just keeps saying these farmers are getting all this money and a few people at the top are getting most of the money. Those things are simply not true. The farmers whose names are being published on the internet get only a small portion of that money, and the biggest "farmer recipient" is in some states a cooperative with thousands of members.
The support industries, equipment dealers, fuel distributors and the local county commissioners who impose property taxes do not have their names posted in the "farm subsidy" database. The farmer getting 15% takes the political heat for all of them.
I have written on government subsidies before. I am not a big fan of government subsidies, but let’s be fair about it.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Three Cheers for WTO Decision on Biotech Food
What do an Iowa corn grower, a Thai rice farmer, and a Dutch grocery shopper have in common? You may think the answer is “not very much.” If you do, think again. Despite being separated by thousands of miles and a deep cultural gulf, all three should be cheering today’s World Trade Organization ruling against European biotechnology restrictions. On February 7, the WTO is expected to release its findings in a long-running dispute between the United States, Canada, and Argentina over European regulation of bioengineered, or “Genetically Modified,” food. Today’s decision confirms that several of Europe’s biotechnology rules have no scientific basis and therefore unfairly restrict imports from the rest of the world. Since 1998, European shoppers have been forbidden access to less expensive, high quality foods that are grown on every other continent and eaten daily by millions of people. The EU has refused even to consider approving many new bioengineered products, despite the fact that each has been judged safe by its own scientific committees. It’s bad enough that European consumers have been stripped of their freedom to choose, but the impacts extend far beyond Europe’s borders. Commodity shipments and packaged foods have been turned away from the European market merely for containing bioengineered ingredients. U.S. farmers alone have lost an estimated $300 million worth of grain exports every year for half a decade....
Bush Is Sounding Like Jimmy Carter
Was it a time warp, or did George Bush actually morph into Jimmy Carter last week? How did wood chips and switch grass ever make it into a final State of the Union speech? On April 18, 1977, in a televised speech to the nation, President Carter announced that by the end of the 1980s the world would us up all the proven resources "of the entire world." Carter predicted that by the end of the 1980s we would "not be able to import enough oil -- from any country, at any acceptable price." Simply put, he was wrong. Conservation was Carter's solution to the perceived crisis that we were running out of oil. A classic liberal, Carter decided to blame Americans for their profligate ways. "Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy," Carter proclaimed. "It is no program simply to say 'use less energy,'" Ronald Reagan wisely pointed out in 1979. Today, R&D is President Bush’s solution. Having failed to manage profitably a string of Texas oil companies, President Bush now wants us to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy." Is it possible that George Bush has really bought the political Left's position on oil, or was last week's SOTU simply his "energy malaise" speech?....
Three Cheers for WTO Decision on Biotech Food
What do an Iowa corn grower, a Thai rice farmer, and a Dutch grocery shopper have in common? You may think the answer is “not very much.” If you do, think again. Despite being separated by thousands of miles and a deep cultural gulf, all three should be cheering today’s World Trade Organization ruling against European biotechnology restrictions. On February 7, the WTO is expected to release its findings in a long-running dispute between the United States, Canada, and Argentina over European regulation of bioengineered, or “Genetically Modified,” food. Today’s decision confirms that several of Europe’s biotechnology rules have no scientific basis and therefore unfairly restrict imports from the rest of the world. Since 1998, European shoppers have been forbidden access to less expensive, high quality foods that are grown on every other continent and eaten daily by millions of people. The EU has refused even to consider approving many new bioengineered products, despite the fact that each has been judged safe by its own scientific committees. It’s bad enough that European consumers have been stripped of their freedom to choose, but the impacts extend far beyond Europe’s borders. Commodity shipments and packaged foods have been turned away from the European market merely for containing bioengineered ingredients. U.S. farmers alone have lost an estimated $300 million worth of grain exports every year for half a decade....
Bush Is Sounding Like Jimmy Carter
Was it a time warp, or did George Bush actually morph into Jimmy Carter last week? How did wood chips and switch grass ever make it into a final State of the Union speech? On April 18, 1977, in a televised speech to the nation, President Carter announced that by the end of the 1980s the world would us up all the proven resources "of the entire world." Carter predicted that by the end of the 1980s we would "not be able to import enough oil -- from any country, at any acceptable price." Simply put, he was wrong. Conservation was Carter's solution to the perceived crisis that we were running out of oil. A classic liberal, Carter decided to blame Americans for their profligate ways. "Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy," Carter proclaimed. "It is no program simply to say 'use less energy,'" Ronald Reagan wisely pointed out in 1979. Today, R&D is President Bush’s solution. Having failed to manage profitably a string of Texas oil companies, President Bush now wants us to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy." Is it possible that George Bush has really bought the political Left's position on oil, or was last week's SOTU simply his "energy malaise" speech?....
Friday, February 10, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Two Utah Ranchers Can't Get Paid for their Hay The hay Trent Jorgensen feeds his cattle in Mount Pleasant, Utah he grows himself. But a huge portion of his annual income comes from hay he sells to others for animal feed. These animals 110 miles away at the Bureau of Land Management auction in Herriman, are eating Trent's hay. He made a deal last September to sell about 150 tons of hay to the government for about 15-thousand dollars. The government got the hay, but Trent called me because he never got his money. "I don't understand why they're not willing to come out and make it right 'cause their horses are eating my hay," said Trent Jorgensen. It is the same deal for Neil Sorenson. From his farm in Spring City, he grew and sold about 150 tons of hay, and sold it to the government for 16-thousand dollars. He also never got paid. “We honestly felt like it was a guaranteed thing, when the BLM showed up, state truck, and looked at the hay inspected it and said yep that's what they want,” said Neil Sorenson....
EPA budget cuts trouble environment groups Grants to state and local governments for land and water conservation would be cut 40 percent, and money for the Environmental Protection Agency's network of libraries for scientists would be slashed severely under President Bush's proposed budget. By contrast, Bush next year would spend $322 million for "cooperative conservation" - up from $312 million the Congress approved last year - to encourage more private landowners to protect endangered species, conserve wildlife habitats and do other nature work traditionally done by government. Other proposed increases are $50 million more for cleaner-burning diesel engines and $5 million more for drinking water improvements. Cuts and proposals to sell some of the government's vast land holdings have upset environmentalists. Early in his presidency, Bush called for restoring the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to the full $900 million authorized by Congress. Last year, it was approved at $142 million. For 2007, he wants just $85 million in grants for creating and preserving non-federal parks, forest land and wildlife refuges, a 40 percent cut. "This is the most troubling budget we've seen from this White House," said Heather Taylor, deputy legislative director for Natural Resources Defense Council. The proposal sent to Congress this week would trim EPA's budget by nearly 5 percent, down to $7.2 billion, and the Interior Department's budget by 2.4 percent, to $9.1 billion....
Washington joins Oregon, California and New Mexico in challenging rule Washington is joining Oregon, California and New Mexico in a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration move to open roadless national forest lands to mining, logging, road-building and other development, Gov. Chris Gregoire said Thursday. ‘‘As a recovering attorney,’’ Gregoire, the state’s former attorney general, said she had tried to avoid litigation, asking the U.S. Agriculture Department for an expedited process would enable the state to adopt the protections of former President Clinton’s roadless rule, which barred development on 58 million acres of national forest across the country, and 2 million acres in Washington state. The Bush administration announced plans last spring to give states a voice in the decision making, with an 18-month span for land-use recommendations and the feds making the final call. Last week, Gregoire said, she got the response to her petition: No. So the state is joining the lawsuit filed last summer in San Francisco. Oral arguments are scheduled for July....
Judge rules against Forest Service in local grazing allotment case In a ruling with potentially far-reaching implications for public lands grazing, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill on Tuesday ruled against the U.S. Forest Service, saying the agency's sheep grazing management plan for four separate grazing allotments in the Sawtooth National Forest violates federal law. Winmill said the management plan violates both the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to analyze at a site-specific level the capability of the lands to support domestic livestock grazing. In his written ruling, Winmill cited five sets of criteria the Forest Service uses to determine whether lands are incapable of supporting livestock grazing. The five criteria are: lands that are inaccessible to livestock, will not produce at least 200 pounds of forage per acre, are not within 1.2 miles of water, have unstable, highly erodible soils, or are on steep slopes. The Forest Service violated federal law when it failed to adequately assess the capability of the land to support grazing based on the five criteria, said Laurie Rule, an attorney for Advocates for the West, which is representing Hailey-based Western Watersheds Project and Dr. Randall Hermann of Ketchum, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed May 13, 2005. "They have to do this capability analysis in a site-specific manner," Rule said....
Officials to trap more grizzlies in eastern Idaho this summer Officials plan to trap more grizzly bears in eastern Idaho's Island Park this summer and fit them with radio collars to get a better understanding of how many grizzlies are in the area and where they roam. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which includes members from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, trapped six grizzlies in Island Park last year and fitted them with radio collars. "It will be interesting to see if we trap the same bears or different ones (this summer)," Lauri Hanauska-Brown, a wildlife biologist with the state fish and game department, told the Standard Journal in Rexburg. Three of the bears trapped last year were released where they were captured, and three others were moved to more remote locations. Of the three relocated bears, one returned to Harriman State Park and was trapped again. Keith Hobbs, the park's manager, said the number of bears trapped, along with signals from two other radio collars, indicate more bears are in the area. U.S. Forest Service officials estimate the grizzly bear population in and around nearby Yellowstone National Park has increased from an estimated low of 136 in 1975, when the bears were listed as a threatened species, to more than 580 bears in 2004....
Roadless rage On oversized furry paws, big cats move silently through the deepest reaches of Colorado's national forests. They bound across frozen meadows, canyons and escarpments, miles away from any human contact. In other words, perfect lynx country. Since being reintroduced from Canada in 1999, the lynx has learned to prosper in these snowy climbs. Last summer brought welcome news to state scientists monitoring the 138 cats known living in Colorado: a baby boom of sorts. They found 46 kittens nestled in deep forest dens. But progress for scientists comes with setbacks. Where stretches of habitat, including Colorado's White River National Forest, intersect roads and highways, the swift and agile creatures can meet with fast-moving fenders. Nine times in the last six years, one of the rare cats has attempted to cross a road and had its tawny pelt plastered to the ground....
April hearing set in Reno on Jarbidge pact A shaky compromise agreement that provides Elko County right-of-way on the South Canyon Road in Jarbidge is set for review in April in Reno federal court. The 2001 pact nearly settled a lawsuit the federal government filed against Elko County that charged the county had undertaken illegal repairs in 1998 on the washed-out road, which runs alongside a fork in the Jarbidge River. The river's population of bull trout was declared threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1999. Under the tentative settlement agreement, the U.S Forest Service promised not to challenge that Elko County has a right-of-way on South Canyon Road and the county pledged to not perform future repair work on the road without prior Forest Service approval. But after the agreement was reached, two environmental groups - The Wilderness Society and the Great Old Broads for Wilderness - were allowed to intervene in the case by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals....
Back from the brink The move to delist Rocky Mountain wolves has been expected since 2002, when wolf populations first exceeded recovery goals—30 breeding pairs and at least 300 wolves in the three-state region—set out by the feds. By the end of 2004, an estimated 835 wolves were spread among the states, with 153 in Montana, 422 in Idaho and 260 in Wyoming. Numbers for 2005 have edged higher still. But a second delisting requirement—that Montana, Idaho and Wyoming each develop federally approved wolf management plans—has yet to be fulfilled. Though Montana successfully took over management of its wolves in June 2005 with FWS’s blessing, and Idaho’s plan was approved in January 2006, Wyoming has so far refused to develop a plan the feds will approve. Wyoming’s proposed plan follows state law in classifying wolves as a “predatory animal,” and allows the killing of wolves outside protected park boundaries on sight, which just doesn’t cut it for the FWS. Wyoming is fighting FWS’s rejection of its plan, and the matter is now before an appeals court. Montana and Idaho’s eagerness to move ahead, and FWS Director H. Dale Hall’s announcement that Wyoming is the sole obstruction, increases the pressure on Wyoming to revise its plan, particularly since the Wyoming legislature will convene this month. At this point, though, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal is holding strong: He fired back at the FWS Feb. 2 with a statement saying, “We will continue to pursue the delisting petition we have filed, as I doubt the Legislature is any more susceptible to blackmail than I am.” Wyoming and its plan may be the region’s highest profile issue regarding wolf delisting, but there’s no shortage of other matters....
Firm leaves rich history as aviation pioneer A World War II-vintage bomber flying low over a raging forest fire to drop flame retardant became a familiar sight in the Intermountain West, but four decades ago it was a radical idea. Realizing that vision took the right combination of circumstances, including affordable planes, veteran pilots willing to take the risk, and a large, well-equipped airport close to forest fires. That's how Hawkins & Powers Aviation of Greybull grew to be an aerial firefighting pioneer and industry powerhouse. At the height of its operations just a few years ago, H&P employed about 200 people and boasted the best fleet of aerial tankers in the business, according to former company executive Duane Powers.* Though a series of recent challenges -- including two deadly accidents and more than $14 million in debt -- may ultimately result in the dissolution of the company, it leaves behind a history rich in innovation and achievement....
Public sounds off on grizzly delisting If it had been a baseball game, it would have been a rout. At a Wednesday public hearing, 38 people opposed removing federal protections for the grizzly bear. Only two people supported removing protections. But it's not a baseball game. Removing an animal from the list of creatures and plants protected by the Endangered Species Act is a difficult and contentious process, as evidenced by the evening meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to delist the grizzly bears living in and near Yellowstone National Park, a move strongly opposed by most environmental groups. Several themes emerged among delisting opponents;....
BLM gathers in a record sum for oil, gas leases The Bureau of Land Management collected a record $11.8 million Thursday from leasing oil and natural-gas prospects in Colorado. The record revenue reflects high energy prices and the increasing national prominence of Colorado's oil and gas fields, federal officials and energy-industry representatives said. But environmentalists said some of the leases are risky because drilling on the properties could put watersheds and wildlife habitats in danger. The quarterly BLM auction delivered 134,582 acres to energy companies - an area equivalent to about 42 percent of metro Denver. Most of the awarded leases were in western Colorado, although a few were in eastern Colorado's Weld and Yuma counties....
City hits dry hole in drilling-lease bid The West Slope's largest city tried a different approach to protecting its watershed from contamination by oil and gas development Thursday - bidding for the drilling leases itself. But it didn't work. "We were outbid, but I felt good about what we tried to do," said city utilities manager Greg Trainor, who went to the auction in Lakewood on the city's behalf. "Whoever bought them sure wanted them. Every time I bid he was right there topping it, and it was for prices much higher than earlier parcels." Thursday's auction was one of the largest sales of leases in Colorado since 1988, another indicator of the feverish interest in natural gas development in Colorado as prices soar. Leases for parcels on Grand Junction's watershed were included in the auction, despite requests to withdraw them from the sale by the cities of Grand Junction and Palisade, as well as Colorado Democrats Sen. Ken Salazar and Rep. John Salazar....
Federal weed spraying debated The federal government's largest land agency is proposing to triple the number of acres it sprays each year to kill weeds in the West. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to treat nearly 932,000 acres — about the same area as Yosemite and Rocky Mountain national parks combined. The annual spraying would be in parts of 17 states from Alaska to Texas. The aim is to eliminate weeds like cheatgrass that can fuel catastrophic wildfires such as those that ravaged parts of Texas and Oklahoma this winter. Noxious weeds and other invasive plants are now the dominant vegetation on an estimated 35 million acres of the bureau's terrain. Vast tracts of sagebrush have been crowded out by non-native plants and destroyed by fires worsened by cheatgrass....
BLM whistleblower's ex-boss opposed firing in Nevada mine dispute The immediate supervisor of a former federal site manager for a contaminated Nevada mine said Thursday that he gave Earle Dixon a satisfactory job appraisal a month before Dixon was fired in an ongoing dispute with Atlantic Richfield Co. and state regulators. Two other higher ranking supervisors also testified at an administrative hearing that they opposed Dixon's firing in October 2004 by Bob Abbey, then state director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for Nevada. "Nobody consulted me as to whether it was a good idea or not," said Charles Pope, BLM's assistant field manager in Carson City. Pope testified he completed an appraisal in September 2004 that concluded Dixon had successfully completed his one-year probationary status and should be retained. "I believe technically, Earle was doing a good job," Pope told an administrative law judge for the U.S. Labor Department. Dixon accuses BLM in a federal whistleblower complaint of firing him in retaliation for speaking out about the dangers at the former Anaconda copper mine near Yerington, including health and safety threats posed by uranium, arsenic and heavy metals....
Boom brings flood of cultural reviews Because of Wyoming's energy boom, the State Historic Preservation Office has been inundated with requests to review surveys of cultural resources on federal lands, the office's interim director said. For example, Sara Needles said, the Bureau of Land Management's Buffalo Field Office submitted 4,000 review requests to the seven-person SHPO staff last year -- more than any other state had in total. "That tells you something about the impacts and the increase in energy development and the effect it's having on our office," she said. The surge in those requests is one factor behind a new proposal from SHPO and the BLM to change the guidelines governing how the federal government and the state assess potential effects of oil and gas development and other activities on historic and cultural sites in Wyoming. The BLM consults with states on cultural resources found on federal land, such as historical buildings and burial grounds, and whether they warrant protection from development and other projects. The new agreement allows the BLM to determine whether an area has historic properties, then tell SHPO of its findings....
Small desert pool is site of a species' fight for life The imperiled Devil's Hole pupfish, which has been clinging to existence in a remote rock tub in the Mojave Desert since the Ice Age, may not survive another year, federal biologists have warned. Regional groundwater pumping, mysterious changes in mating behaviors and habitat disruptions inadvertently caused by scientists who have been trying to protect the pupfish are being blamed for decimating the species, long regarded as a symbol of the desert conservation movement. In a tragedy that was not publicly announced, scientists two years ago accidentally killed 80 of the iridescent blue fish — about one-third of the population at the time. Fewer than 80 of the inch-long fish still swim in the spalike turquoise waters of a small pool at the bottom of an isolated limestone depression that became part of Death Valley National Monument — now a national park — by proclamation of President Truman in 1952....
Cowboy Cupid Bares His Horse Sense The “woman business” is a heck of a lot like the horse business, says rancher-turned-matchmaker Ivan Thompson. You’ve got to treat them right to ensure obedience. The politically incorrect but charismatic Thompson is the star of “Cowboy Del Amor,” the latest documentary by acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Michele Ohayon, which opens today at the Nuart Theatre. With cinematic tongue planted firmly in check, she profiles this self-professed “cowboy cupid” as he lassos Mexican brides for older gringos who find American women too demanding. It all began when the rancher sought his third (and now ex) wife from Mexico because he “couldn’t get to Afghanistan,” he says in the film. But she got “too Americanized” after being allowed her own car and cellphone. “Pretty soon, she was the boss of the house — of my business, and that only left me the pissants and the tumbleweeds,” he laments. So the horseman dumped wife No. 3 and in 1989, placed a personal ad in a remote Mexican town where he hoped the women might be tamer. He received 80 responses and realized he could rustle himself up a new career....
Two Utah Ranchers Can't Get Paid for their Hay The hay Trent Jorgensen feeds his cattle in Mount Pleasant, Utah he grows himself. But a huge portion of his annual income comes from hay he sells to others for animal feed. These animals 110 miles away at the Bureau of Land Management auction in Herriman, are eating Trent's hay. He made a deal last September to sell about 150 tons of hay to the government for about 15-thousand dollars. The government got the hay, but Trent called me because he never got his money. "I don't understand why they're not willing to come out and make it right 'cause their horses are eating my hay," said Trent Jorgensen. It is the same deal for Neil Sorenson. From his farm in Spring City, he grew and sold about 150 tons of hay, and sold it to the government for 16-thousand dollars. He also never got paid. “We honestly felt like it was a guaranteed thing, when the BLM showed up, state truck, and looked at the hay inspected it and said yep that's what they want,” said Neil Sorenson....
EPA budget cuts trouble environment groups Grants to state and local governments for land and water conservation would be cut 40 percent, and money for the Environmental Protection Agency's network of libraries for scientists would be slashed severely under President Bush's proposed budget. By contrast, Bush next year would spend $322 million for "cooperative conservation" - up from $312 million the Congress approved last year - to encourage more private landowners to protect endangered species, conserve wildlife habitats and do other nature work traditionally done by government. Other proposed increases are $50 million more for cleaner-burning diesel engines and $5 million more for drinking water improvements. Cuts and proposals to sell some of the government's vast land holdings have upset environmentalists. Early in his presidency, Bush called for restoring the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to the full $900 million authorized by Congress. Last year, it was approved at $142 million. For 2007, he wants just $85 million in grants for creating and preserving non-federal parks, forest land and wildlife refuges, a 40 percent cut. "This is the most troubling budget we've seen from this White House," said Heather Taylor, deputy legislative director for Natural Resources Defense Council. The proposal sent to Congress this week would trim EPA's budget by nearly 5 percent, down to $7.2 billion, and the Interior Department's budget by 2.4 percent, to $9.1 billion....
Washington joins Oregon, California and New Mexico in challenging rule Washington is joining Oregon, California and New Mexico in a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration move to open roadless national forest lands to mining, logging, road-building and other development, Gov. Chris Gregoire said Thursday. ‘‘As a recovering attorney,’’ Gregoire, the state’s former attorney general, said she had tried to avoid litigation, asking the U.S. Agriculture Department for an expedited process would enable the state to adopt the protections of former President Clinton’s roadless rule, which barred development on 58 million acres of national forest across the country, and 2 million acres in Washington state. The Bush administration announced plans last spring to give states a voice in the decision making, with an 18-month span for land-use recommendations and the feds making the final call. Last week, Gregoire said, she got the response to her petition: No. So the state is joining the lawsuit filed last summer in San Francisco. Oral arguments are scheduled for July....
Judge rules against Forest Service in local grazing allotment case In a ruling with potentially far-reaching implications for public lands grazing, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill on Tuesday ruled against the U.S. Forest Service, saying the agency's sheep grazing management plan for four separate grazing allotments in the Sawtooth National Forest violates federal law. Winmill said the management plan violates both the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to analyze at a site-specific level the capability of the lands to support domestic livestock grazing. In his written ruling, Winmill cited five sets of criteria the Forest Service uses to determine whether lands are incapable of supporting livestock grazing. The five criteria are: lands that are inaccessible to livestock, will not produce at least 200 pounds of forage per acre, are not within 1.2 miles of water, have unstable, highly erodible soils, or are on steep slopes. The Forest Service violated federal law when it failed to adequately assess the capability of the land to support grazing based on the five criteria, said Laurie Rule, an attorney for Advocates for the West, which is representing Hailey-based Western Watersheds Project and Dr. Randall Hermann of Ketchum, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed May 13, 2005. "They have to do this capability analysis in a site-specific manner," Rule said....
Officials to trap more grizzlies in eastern Idaho this summer Officials plan to trap more grizzly bears in eastern Idaho's Island Park this summer and fit them with radio collars to get a better understanding of how many grizzlies are in the area and where they roam. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which includes members from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, trapped six grizzlies in Island Park last year and fitted them with radio collars. "It will be interesting to see if we trap the same bears or different ones (this summer)," Lauri Hanauska-Brown, a wildlife biologist with the state fish and game department, told the Standard Journal in Rexburg. Three of the bears trapped last year were released where they were captured, and three others were moved to more remote locations. Of the three relocated bears, one returned to Harriman State Park and was trapped again. Keith Hobbs, the park's manager, said the number of bears trapped, along with signals from two other radio collars, indicate more bears are in the area. U.S. Forest Service officials estimate the grizzly bear population in and around nearby Yellowstone National Park has increased from an estimated low of 136 in 1975, when the bears were listed as a threatened species, to more than 580 bears in 2004....
Roadless rage On oversized furry paws, big cats move silently through the deepest reaches of Colorado's national forests. They bound across frozen meadows, canyons and escarpments, miles away from any human contact. In other words, perfect lynx country. Since being reintroduced from Canada in 1999, the lynx has learned to prosper in these snowy climbs. Last summer brought welcome news to state scientists monitoring the 138 cats known living in Colorado: a baby boom of sorts. They found 46 kittens nestled in deep forest dens. But progress for scientists comes with setbacks. Where stretches of habitat, including Colorado's White River National Forest, intersect roads and highways, the swift and agile creatures can meet with fast-moving fenders. Nine times in the last six years, one of the rare cats has attempted to cross a road and had its tawny pelt plastered to the ground....
April hearing set in Reno on Jarbidge pact A shaky compromise agreement that provides Elko County right-of-way on the South Canyon Road in Jarbidge is set for review in April in Reno federal court. The 2001 pact nearly settled a lawsuit the federal government filed against Elko County that charged the county had undertaken illegal repairs in 1998 on the washed-out road, which runs alongside a fork in the Jarbidge River. The river's population of bull trout was declared threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1999. Under the tentative settlement agreement, the U.S Forest Service promised not to challenge that Elko County has a right-of-way on South Canyon Road and the county pledged to not perform future repair work on the road without prior Forest Service approval. But after the agreement was reached, two environmental groups - The Wilderness Society and the Great Old Broads for Wilderness - were allowed to intervene in the case by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals....
Back from the brink The move to delist Rocky Mountain wolves has been expected since 2002, when wolf populations first exceeded recovery goals—30 breeding pairs and at least 300 wolves in the three-state region—set out by the feds. By the end of 2004, an estimated 835 wolves were spread among the states, with 153 in Montana, 422 in Idaho and 260 in Wyoming. Numbers for 2005 have edged higher still. But a second delisting requirement—that Montana, Idaho and Wyoming each develop federally approved wolf management plans—has yet to be fulfilled. Though Montana successfully took over management of its wolves in June 2005 with FWS’s blessing, and Idaho’s plan was approved in January 2006, Wyoming has so far refused to develop a plan the feds will approve. Wyoming’s proposed plan follows state law in classifying wolves as a “predatory animal,” and allows the killing of wolves outside protected park boundaries on sight, which just doesn’t cut it for the FWS. Wyoming is fighting FWS’s rejection of its plan, and the matter is now before an appeals court. Montana and Idaho’s eagerness to move ahead, and FWS Director H. Dale Hall’s announcement that Wyoming is the sole obstruction, increases the pressure on Wyoming to revise its plan, particularly since the Wyoming legislature will convene this month. At this point, though, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal is holding strong: He fired back at the FWS Feb. 2 with a statement saying, “We will continue to pursue the delisting petition we have filed, as I doubt the Legislature is any more susceptible to blackmail than I am.” Wyoming and its plan may be the region’s highest profile issue regarding wolf delisting, but there’s no shortage of other matters....
Firm leaves rich history as aviation pioneer A World War II-vintage bomber flying low over a raging forest fire to drop flame retardant became a familiar sight in the Intermountain West, but four decades ago it was a radical idea. Realizing that vision took the right combination of circumstances, including affordable planes, veteran pilots willing to take the risk, and a large, well-equipped airport close to forest fires. That's how Hawkins & Powers Aviation of Greybull grew to be an aerial firefighting pioneer and industry powerhouse. At the height of its operations just a few years ago, H&P employed about 200 people and boasted the best fleet of aerial tankers in the business, according to former company executive Duane Powers.* Though a series of recent challenges -- including two deadly accidents and more than $14 million in debt -- may ultimately result in the dissolution of the company, it leaves behind a history rich in innovation and achievement....
Public sounds off on grizzly delisting If it had been a baseball game, it would have been a rout. At a Wednesday public hearing, 38 people opposed removing federal protections for the grizzly bear. Only two people supported removing protections. But it's not a baseball game. Removing an animal from the list of creatures and plants protected by the Endangered Species Act is a difficult and contentious process, as evidenced by the evening meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to delist the grizzly bears living in and near Yellowstone National Park, a move strongly opposed by most environmental groups. Several themes emerged among delisting opponents;....
BLM gathers in a record sum for oil, gas leases The Bureau of Land Management collected a record $11.8 million Thursday from leasing oil and natural-gas prospects in Colorado. The record revenue reflects high energy prices and the increasing national prominence of Colorado's oil and gas fields, federal officials and energy-industry representatives said. But environmentalists said some of the leases are risky because drilling on the properties could put watersheds and wildlife habitats in danger. The quarterly BLM auction delivered 134,582 acres to energy companies - an area equivalent to about 42 percent of metro Denver. Most of the awarded leases were in western Colorado, although a few were in eastern Colorado's Weld and Yuma counties....
City hits dry hole in drilling-lease bid The West Slope's largest city tried a different approach to protecting its watershed from contamination by oil and gas development Thursday - bidding for the drilling leases itself. But it didn't work. "We were outbid, but I felt good about what we tried to do," said city utilities manager Greg Trainor, who went to the auction in Lakewood on the city's behalf. "Whoever bought them sure wanted them. Every time I bid he was right there topping it, and it was for prices much higher than earlier parcels." Thursday's auction was one of the largest sales of leases in Colorado since 1988, another indicator of the feverish interest in natural gas development in Colorado as prices soar. Leases for parcels on Grand Junction's watershed were included in the auction, despite requests to withdraw them from the sale by the cities of Grand Junction and Palisade, as well as Colorado Democrats Sen. Ken Salazar and Rep. John Salazar....
Federal weed spraying debated The federal government's largest land agency is proposing to triple the number of acres it sprays each year to kill weeds in the West. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to treat nearly 932,000 acres — about the same area as Yosemite and Rocky Mountain national parks combined. The annual spraying would be in parts of 17 states from Alaska to Texas. The aim is to eliminate weeds like cheatgrass that can fuel catastrophic wildfires such as those that ravaged parts of Texas and Oklahoma this winter. Noxious weeds and other invasive plants are now the dominant vegetation on an estimated 35 million acres of the bureau's terrain. Vast tracts of sagebrush have been crowded out by non-native plants and destroyed by fires worsened by cheatgrass....
BLM whistleblower's ex-boss opposed firing in Nevada mine dispute The immediate supervisor of a former federal site manager for a contaminated Nevada mine said Thursday that he gave Earle Dixon a satisfactory job appraisal a month before Dixon was fired in an ongoing dispute with Atlantic Richfield Co. and state regulators. Two other higher ranking supervisors also testified at an administrative hearing that they opposed Dixon's firing in October 2004 by Bob Abbey, then state director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for Nevada. "Nobody consulted me as to whether it was a good idea or not," said Charles Pope, BLM's assistant field manager in Carson City. Pope testified he completed an appraisal in September 2004 that concluded Dixon had successfully completed his one-year probationary status and should be retained. "I believe technically, Earle was doing a good job," Pope told an administrative law judge for the U.S. Labor Department. Dixon accuses BLM in a federal whistleblower complaint of firing him in retaliation for speaking out about the dangers at the former Anaconda copper mine near Yerington, including health and safety threats posed by uranium, arsenic and heavy metals....
Boom brings flood of cultural reviews Because of Wyoming's energy boom, the State Historic Preservation Office has been inundated with requests to review surveys of cultural resources on federal lands, the office's interim director said. For example, Sara Needles said, the Bureau of Land Management's Buffalo Field Office submitted 4,000 review requests to the seven-person SHPO staff last year -- more than any other state had in total. "That tells you something about the impacts and the increase in energy development and the effect it's having on our office," she said. The surge in those requests is one factor behind a new proposal from SHPO and the BLM to change the guidelines governing how the federal government and the state assess potential effects of oil and gas development and other activities on historic and cultural sites in Wyoming. The BLM consults with states on cultural resources found on federal land, such as historical buildings and burial grounds, and whether they warrant protection from development and other projects. The new agreement allows the BLM to determine whether an area has historic properties, then tell SHPO of its findings....
Small desert pool is site of a species' fight for life The imperiled Devil's Hole pupfish, which has been clinging to existence in a remote rock tub in the Mojave Desert since the Ice Age, may not survive another year, federal biologists have warned. Regional groundwater pumping, mysterious changes in mating behaviors and habitat disruptions inadvertently caused by scientists who have been trying to protect the pupfish are being blamed for decimating the species, long regarded as a symbol of the desert conservation movement. In a tragedy that was not publicly announced, scientists two years ago accidentally killed 80 of the iridescent blue fish — about one-third of the population at the time. Fewer than 80 of the inch-long fish still swim in the spalike turquoise waters of a small pool at the bottom of an isolated limestone depression that became part of Death Valley National Monument — now a national park — by proclamation of President Truman in 1952....
Cowboy Cupid Bares His Horse Sense The “woman business” is a heck of a lot like the horse business, says rancher-turned-matchmaker Ivan Thompson. You’ve got to treat them right to ensure obedience. The politically incorrect but charismatic Thompson is the star of “Cowboy Del Amor,” the latest documentary by acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Michele Ohayon, which opens today at the Nuart Theatre. With cinematic tongue planted firmly in check, she profiles this self-professed “cowboy cupid” as he lassos Mexican brides for older gringos who find American women too demanding. It all began when the rancher sought his third (and now ex) wife from Mexico because he “couldn’t get to Afghanistan,” he says in the film. But she got “too Americanized” after being allowed her own car and cellphone. “Pretty soon, she was the boss of the house — of my business, and that only left me the pissants and the tumbleweeds,” he laments. So the horseman dumped wife No. 3 and in 1989, placed a personal ad in a remote Mexican town where he hoped the women might be tamer. He received 80 responses and realized he could rustle himself up a new career....
GAO
National Park Service: Opportunities Exist to Clarify and Strengthen Special Uses Permit Guidance on Setting Grazing Fees and Cost-Recovery. GAO-06-355R, February 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-355R
National Park Service: Opportunities Exist to Clarify and Strengthen Special Uses Permit Guidance on Setting Grazing Fees and Cost-Recovery. GAO-06-355R, February 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-355R
FLE
Border drug smugglers threaten deputy's family
Likely drug gangsters have threatened the families of county sheriff's deputies in Texas who thwarted two recent smuggling operations at the U.S.-Mexico border. The San Antonio Express-News quotes Hudspeth County Chief Deputy Mike Doyal as saying three men inside a black and red Ford Bronco approached the wife of one of the deputies last Thursday and made a threat before driving across the Rio Grande into Mexico. As WorldNetDaily reported, in the last several days, there have been two incursions into the U.S. about 50 miles east of El Paso, Texas, by armed men thought to be Mexican troops. The incident on Jan. 23 involved Mexican military Humvees towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the Rio Grande. Thirty American agents were part of that standoff, including the sheriff's deputies. Speaking of last Thursday's threat to a deputy's wife, Doyal said, "They told her that her husband and the other officers needed to stay off the river down there." On Friday, a Hudspeth deputy in the Fort Hancock area received information a cartel was talking about putting together a "death squad" to target the deputies, Doyal told the Express-News. According to the report, the three deputies who were targeted were the same who witnessed the failed Jan. 23 incursion. On that day, Border Patrol agents called for backup after seeing that apparent Mexican army troops had several mounted machine guns on the ground more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border....
Texas boosts border watch
Gov. Rick Perry, declaring Thursday that Texans must combat escalating crime and drug violence along the Mexican border, announced "Operation Rio Grande" to ramp up law enforcement from El Paso to Brownsville. "There is a great concern that the drug trade is becoming more aggressive, but also terrorist organizations are seeking to exploit our porous border," Perry said, flanked by dozens of border-area sheriffs and deputies wearing cowboy hats and star-shaped badges. The governor also placed the State Operations Center on highest alert, meaning members of four state agencies will work around the clock supporting the new operation. The emergency status is typically reserved for natural disasters such as hurricanes. Perry declined to reveal the cost of Operation Rio Grande or how many extra law enforcement officers it deploys to the border. The new initiative follows his December announcement of $10 million in state aid for "Operation Linebacker," which lets local law enforcement provide greater support to U.S. border officers....
Border violence alarms Chertoff
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, concerned about rising border violence, said yesterday nearly $1 billion in next year's proposed $42.7 billion department budget will be used for new U.S. Border Patrol agents, upgraded electronic security measures, and more fences, roads, and detention beds. "There has been an over-100 percent increase in the last fiscal year in border violence aimed at our Border Patrol agents, and that ranges from gunshots fired across the border to rocks being thrown, sometimes flaming rocks, and let me tell you, rockings are serious," Mr. Chertoff said at a press conference in Washington. "We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior ... if they think they're going to back us down or chase us away, the answer to that is no. Our Border Patrol is properly trained. They have rules of engagement. They are entitled to defend themselves. They will defend themselves. We will support them in applying these rules of engagement," he said. Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar noted there had already been 192 assaults on his agents since the start of the new fiscal year in October. Mr. Chertoff said much of the border violence has been the result of increased enforcement efforts by the U.S. government, but that the department was committed to securing the nation's borders as part of the strategy that "involves not only apprehensions at the border, but detention, removal and more vigorous work site enforcement." The new budget calls for $458.9 million for 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, doubling the number of agents added to 3,000 since 2005. This represents a 42 percent increase in the agent work force since the September 11 attacks....
Patriot Act Compromise Clears Way for Senate Vote
Efforts to extend the USA Patriot Act cleared a major hurdle yesterday when the White House and key senators agreed to revisions that are virtually certain to secure Senate passage and likely to win House approval, congressional leaders said. The proposal would restrict federal agents' access to library records, one of the Patriot Act's most contentious provisions. A form of secret subpoena known as a National Security Letter could no longer be used to obtain records from libraries that function "in their traditional capacity, including providing basic Internet access," Sununu and others said in a statement. But libraries that are "Internet service providers" would remain subject to the letters, Durbin said. The Senate proposal would no longer require National Security Letter recipients to tell the FBI the identity of their lawyers. The compromise bill also addresses "Section 215 subpoenas," which are granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Recipients of such subpoenas originally were forbidden to tell anyone about the action. The proposed Senate measure would allow them to challenge the "gag order" after one year, rather than the 90-day wait in earlier legislation. Sununu said the administration insisted on the longer waiting period. "You now have a process to challenge the gag order," he said, defending the concession. "That didn't exist before." Sununu said he and his allies were disappointed that the compromise does not require agents to "show a connection to a suspected terrorist or spy" before obtaining a Section 215 subpoena. Instead, a FISA judge would have to agree that there are reasonable grounds to believe the items being sought are relevant to an investigation into terrorism....
US plans massive data sweep
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy. The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year. A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or "dataveillance," as some call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card issuers use data-mining to look for patterns of suspicious activity. What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events, according to a report summarizing a 2004 DHS conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage requirements alone are huge - enough to retain information about 1 quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If each entity were a penny, they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high - roughly double the height of the Empire State Building. But ADVISE and related DHS technologies aim to do much more, according to Joseph Kielman, manager of the TVTA portfolio....
Specter wants special court to supervise surveillance
A special federal court would be given power to supervise the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program under a bill being written by a key Senate Republican. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an interview Wednesday that he wants to "assert Congress' constitutional authority" while allowing the anti-terrorism program to continue under court supervision. Specter said he hopes to work with President Bush on the bill but is trying to build a bipartisan coalition to override a potential presidential veto. Bush and Specter haven't discussed the bill, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. On Monday, Specter held a Judiciary Committee hearing in which he and other senators told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales they had doubts about the program's legality. "We welcome ideas that they have," McClellan said. Specter said his proposal would empower the court established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to review the National Security Agency's domestic anti-terrorist surveillance every 45 days to ensure it does not go beyond limits described by the administration. Currently, Bush himself reviews the program and signs off on its continuation every 45 days....
Judge Gives U.S. Wiretap Response Deadline
A federal judge gave the government two months to respond to an Ohio trucker's request that his terrorism conviction be thrown out on grounds that the government illegally spied on him. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema cited "the potentially weighty issues raised in the defendant's motion" in an order Wednesday that set a 60-day timetable for the government to respond to Iyman Faris' arguments. Faris' challenge is among the first to seek evidence of warrantless electronic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, a practice that began after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Government officials have reportedly credited eavesdropping with uncovering terrorist plots, including one by Faris to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Critics say President Bush didn't have authority to order the wiretaps, but he has staunchly defended the practice. At his sentencing, prosecutors acknowledged that federal agents were led to Faris by a telephone call intercepted in another investigation....
Passenger Security Check Program Scrapped
An ambitious program to check every domestic airline passenger's name against government terrorist watch lists may not be immune from hackers, a congressional investigator said Thursday. And because of security concerns, the government is going back to the drawing board with the program called Secure Flight after spending nearly four years and $150 million on it, the Senate Commerce Committee was told. Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley did not say whether any security breaches had been discovered. An agency spokeswoman, Amy von Valter, told reporters, "We don't believe any passenger information has been compromised." Cathleen Berrick, the investigator for the Government Accountability Office, said in written testimony that "TSA may not have proper controls in place to protect sensitive information." Currently, airlines check the names of passengers against watch lists that the government gives them. Under Secure Flight the government would take over from the airlines the task of checking names against watch lists. According to the GAO testimony, Secure Flight was given formal authority to go live in September, but a government team found that the system software and hardware had 82 security vulnerabilities....
Overkill: The Latest Trend in Policing
On Jan. 24, a SWAT team in Fairfax shot and killed Salvatore J. Culosi Jr., an optometrist who was under investigation for gambling. According to a Jan. 26 front-page story in The Post, Culosi had emerged from his home to meet an undercover officer when a police tactical unit swarmed around him. An officer's gun discharged, killing the suspect. Culosi, police said, was unarmed and had displayed no threatening behavior. It's unlikely that the officer who shot Culosi did so intentionally. But it's also unlikely that the investigation into this shooting will address why police sent a military-style unit to arrest an optometrist under investigation for a nonviolent crime and why the officers had their guns drawn when approaching a man with no history of violence. This isn't the first time a SWAT team in Virginia has killed someone while serving a gambling warrant. In 1998 a team in Virginia Beach conducted a 3 a.m. raid at a private club believed to be involved in organized gambling. Security guard Edward C. Reed was sitting in a parked car outside the club, which had been robbed a few months earlier. As the black-clad police team raided, a few officers confronted Reed, who had fallen asleep. Reid awoke and, probably startled by the sight of armed men outside his car, reached for his gun. The SWAT team shot and killed him. Reed's last words were, "Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book." During the past 15 years, The Post and other media outlets have reported on the unsettling "militarization" of police departments across the country. Armed with free surplus military gear from the Pentagon, SWAT teams have multiplied at a furious pace. Tactics once reserved for rare, volatile situations such as hostage takings, bank robberies and terrorist incidents increasingly are being used for routine police work. Eastern Kentucky University's Peter Kraska -- a widely cited expert on police militarization -- estimates that SWAT teams are called out about 40,000 times a year in the United States; in the 1980s, that figure was 3,000 times a year. Most "call-outs" were to serve warrants on nonviolent drug offenders....
First duty is to yourself
The law says you must act like a coward. In your own home. Even when your life is threatened. Many states have criminal-friendly "duty to retreat" laws. A victim in his house is mandated to retreat from an attacker until he is cornered. Only then is the prey allowed to use lethal force on the predator. Prosecutors in those states have been known to victimize the victim (such as charging him with manslaughter) who prefers to fire back rather than to back off. The National Rifle Association has been trying to end the insanity state by state. Florida came to its senses last year. It enacted a law based on the "Castle Doctrine" -- that one's home is one's castle. A person now is not legally required to be hunted down room by room by an intruder before the victim pulls the trigger. The law allows the victim to shoot back without fear of being prosecuted for being overzealous about protecting his life. And it prohibits criminals from suing their more aggressive victims. All their victims, actually. "Somebody should not be twice victimized, first by the assailant and then by the legal system trying to destroy his life," says Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, the largest organization representing gun owners after the NRA. But the Florida law does more. Car-jackers beware; now one's car is his mobile castle. And better still, if a victim is not in a home or car, now he legally can use deadly force. Sunshine State criminals without a death wish might want to consider career counseling. Or take Horace Greeley's advice to go west. But if they do, they had better hurry. Wyoming is the latest battleground. The NRA is lobbying there and in 11 other states to repeal duty-to-retreat laws....
Border drug smugglers threaten deputy's family
Likely drug gangsters have threatened the families of county sheriff's deputies in Texas who thwarted two recent smuggling operations at the U.S.-Mexico border. The San Antonio Express-News quotes Hudspeth County Chief Deputy Mike Doyal as saying three men inside a black and red Ford Bronco approached the wife of one of the deputies last Thursday and made a threat before driving across the Rio Grande into Mexico. As WorldNetDaily reported, in the last several days, there have been two incursions into the U.S. about 50 miles east of El Paso, Texas, by armed men thought to be Mexican troops. The incident on Jan. 23 involved Mexican military Humvees towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the Rio Grande. Thirty American agents were part of that standoff, including the sheriff's deputies. Speaking of last Thursday's threat to a deputy's wife, Doyal said, "They told her that her husband and the other officers needed to stay off the river down there." On Friday, a Hudspeth deputy in the Fort Hancock area received information a cartel was talking about putting together a "death squad" to target the deputies, Doyal told the Express-News. According to the report, the three deputies who were targeted were the same who witnessed the failed Jan. 23 incursion. On that day, Border Patrol agents called for backup after seeing that apparent Mexican army troops had several mounted machine guns on the ground more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border....
Texas boosts border watch
Gov. Rick Perry, declaring Thursday that Texans must combat escalating crime and drug violence along the Mexican border, announced "Operation Rio Grande" to ramp up law enforcement from El Paso to Brownsville. "There is a great concern that the drug trade is becoming more aggressive, but also terrorist organizations are seeking to exploit our porous border," Perry said, flanked by dozens of border-area sheriffs and deputies wearing cowboy hats and star-shaped badges. The governor also placed the State Operations Center on highest alert, meaning members of four state agencies will work around the clock supporting the new operation. The emergency status is typically reserved for natural disasters such as hurricanes. Perry declined to reveal the cost of Operation Rio Grande or how many extra law enforcement officers it deploys to the border. The new initiative follows his December announcement of $10 million in state aid for "Operation Linebacker," which lets local law enforcement provide greater support to U.S. border officers....
Border violence alarms Chertoff
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, concerned about rising border violence, said yesterday nearly $1 billion in next year's proposed $42.7 billion department budget will be used for new U.S. Border Patrol agents, upgraded electronic security measures, and more fences, roads, and detention beds. "There has been an over-100 percent increase in the last fiscal year in border violence aimed at our Border Patrol agents, and that ranges from gunshots fired across the border to rocks being thrown, sometimes flaming rocks, and let me tell you, rockings are serious," Mr. Chertoff said at a press conference in Washington. "We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior ... if they think they're going to back us down or chase us away, the answer to that is no. Our Border Patrol is properly trained. They have rules of engagement. They are entitled to defend themselves. They will defend themselves. We will support them in applying these rules of engagement," he said. Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar noted there had already been 192 assaults on his agents since the start of the new fiscal year in October. Mr. Chertoff said much of the border violence has been the result of increased enforcement efforts by the U.S. government, but that the department was committed to securing the nation's borders as part of the strategy that "involves not only apprehensions at the border, but detention, removal and more vigorous work site enforcement." The new budget calls for $458.9 million for 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, doubling the number of agents added to 3,000 since 2005. This represents a 42 percent increase in the agent work force since the September 11 attacks....
Patriot Act Compromise Clears Way for Senate Vote
Efforts to extend the USA Patriot Act cleared a major hurdle yesterday when the White House and key senators agreed to revisions that are virtually certain to secure Senate passage and likely to win House approval, congressional leaders said. The proposal would restrict federal agents' access to library records, one of the Patriot Act's most contentious provisions. A form of secret subpoena known as a National Security Letter could no longer be used to obtain records from libraries that function "in their traditional capacity, including providing basic Internet access," Sununu and others said in a statement. But libraries that are "Internet service providers" would remain subject to the letters, Durbin said. The Senate proposal would no longer require National Security Letter recipients to tell the FBI the identity of their lawyers. The compromise bill also addresses "Section 215 subpoenas," which are granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Recipients of such subpoenas originally were forbidden to tell anyone about the action. The proposed Senate measure would allow them to challenge the "gag order" after one year, rather than the 90-day wait in earlier legislation. Sununu said the administration insisted on the longer waiting period. "You now have a process to challenge the gag order," he said, defending the concession. "That didn't exist before." Sununu said he and his allies were disappointed that the compromise does not require agents to "show a connection to a suspected terrorist or spy" before obtaining a Section 215 subpoena. Instead, a FISA judge would have to agree that there are reasonable grounds to believe the items being sought are relevant to an investigation into terrorism....
US plans massive data sweep
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy. The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year. A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or "dataveillance," as some call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card issuers use data-mining to look for patterns of suspicious activity. What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events, according to a report summarizing a 2004 DHS conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage requirements alone are huge - enough to retain information about 1 quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If each entity were a penny, they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high - roughly double the height of the Empire State Building. But ADVISE and related DHS technologies aim to do much more, according to Joseph Kielman, manager of the TVTA portfolio....
Specter wants special court to supervise surveillance
A special federal court would be given power to supervise the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program under a bill being written by a key Senate Republican. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an interview Wednesday that he wants to "assert Congress' constitutional authority" while allowing the anti-terrorism program to continue under court supervision. Specter said he hopes to work with President Bush on the bill but is trying to build a bipartisan coalition to override a potential presidential veto. Bush and Specter haven't discussed the bill, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. On Monday, Specter held a Judiciary Committee hearing in which he and other senators told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales they had doubts about the program's legality. "We welcome ideas that they have," McClellan said. Specter said his proposal would empower the court established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to review the National Security Agency's domestic anti-terrorist surveillance every 45 days to ensure it does not go beyond limits described by the administration. Currently, Bush himself reviews the program and signs off on its continuation every 45 days....
Judge Gives U.S. Wiretap Response Deadline
A federal judge gave the government two months to respond to an Ohio trucker's request that his terrorism conviction be thrown out on grounds that the government illegally spied on him. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema cited "the potentially weighty issues raised in the defendant's motion" in an order Wednesday that set a 60-day timetable for the government to respond to Iyman Faris' arguments. Faris' challenge is among the first to seek evidence of warrantless electronic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, a practice that began after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Government officials have reportedly credited eavesdropping with uncovering terrorist plots, including one by Faris to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Critics say President Bush didn't have authority to order the wiretaps, but he has staunchly defended the practice. At his sentencing, prosecutors acknowledged that federal agents were led to Faris by a telephone call intercepted in another investigation....
Passenger Security Check Program Scrapped
An ambitious program to check every domestic airline passenger's name against government terrorist watch lists may not be immune from hackers, a congressional investigator said Thursday. And because of security concerns, the government is going back to the drawing board with the program called Secure Flight after spending nearly four years and $150 million on it, the Senate Commerce Committee was told. Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley did not say whether any security breaches had been discovered. An agency spokeswoman, Amy von Valter, told reporters, "We don't believe any passenger information has been compromised." Cathleen Berrick, the investigator for the Government Accountability Office, said in written testimony that "TSA may not have proper controls in place to protect sensitive information." Currently, airlines check the names of passengers against watch lists that the government gives them. Under Secure Flight the government would take over from the airlines the task of checking names against watch lists. According to the GAO testimony, Secure Flight was given formal authority to go live in September, but a government team found that the system software and hardware had 82 security vulnerabilities....
Overkill: The Latest Trend in Policing
On Jan. 24, a SWAT team in Fairfax shot and killed Salvatore J. Culosi Jr., an optometrist who was under investigation for gambling. According to a Jan. 26 front-page story in The Post, Culosi had emerged from his home to meet an undercover officer when a police tactical unit swarmed around him. An officer's gun discharged, killing the suspect. Culosi, police said, was unarmed and had displayed no threatening behavior. It's unlikely that the officer who shot Culosi did so intentionally. But it's also unlikely that the investigation into this shooting will address why police sent a military-style unit to arrest an optometrist under investigation for a nonviolent crime and why the officers had their guns drawn when approaching a man with no history of violence. This isn't the first time a SWAT team in Virginia has killed someone while serving a gambling warrant. In 1998 a team in Virginia Beach conducted a 3 a.m. raid at a private club believed to be involved in organized gambling. Security guard Edward C. Reed was sitting in a parked car outside the club, which had been robbed a few months earlier. As the black-clad police team raided, a few officers confronted Reed, who had fallen asleep. Reid awoke and, probably startled by the sight of armed men outside his car, reached for his gun. The SWAT team shot and killed him. Reed's last words were, "Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book." During the past 15 years, The Post and other media outlets have reported on the unsettling "militarization" of police departments across the country. Armed with free surplus military gear from the Pentagon, SWAT teams have multiplied at a furious pace. Tactics once reserved for rare, volatile situations such as hostage takings, bank robberies and terrorist incidents increasingly are being used for routine police work. Eastern Kentucky University's Peter Kraska -- a widely cited expert on police militarization -- estimates that SWAT teams are called out about 40,000 times a year in the United States; in the 1980s, that figure was 3,000 times a year. Most "call-outs" were to serve warrants on nonviolent drug offenders....
First duty is to yourself
The law says you must act like a coward. In your own home. Even when your life is threatened. Many states have criminal-friendly "duty to retreat" laws. A victim in his house is mandated to retreat from an attacker until he is cornered. Only then is the prey allowed to use lethal force on the predator. Prosecutors in those states have been known to victimize the victim (such as charging him with manslaughter) who prefers to fire back rather than to back off. The National Rifle Association has been trying to end the insanity state by state. Florida came to its senses last year. It enacted a law based on the "Castle Doctrine" -- that one's home is one's castle. A person now is not legally required to be hunted down room by room by an intruder before the victim pulls the trigger. The law allows the victim to shoot back without fear of being prosecuted for being overzealous about protecting his life. And it prohibits criminals from suing their more aggressive victims. All their victims, actually. "Somebody should not be twice victimized, first by the assailant and then by the legal system trying to destroy his life," says Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, the largest organization representing gun owners after the NRA. But the Florida law does more. Car-jackers beware; now one's car is his mobile castle. And better still, if a victim is not in a home or car, now he legally can use deadly force. Sunshine State criminals without a death wish might want to consider career counseling. Or take Horace Greeley's advice to go west. But if they do, they had better hurry. Wyoming is the latest battleground. The NRA is lobbying there and in 11 other states to repeal duty-to-retreat laws....
Thursday, February 09, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Illegal discharge ignites criticism State regulators are investigating what they believe to be a rogue attempt to hide an illegal water discharge by a coal-bed methane operator in the Powder River Basin. A suspicious rancher in the Spotted Creek area recently discovered what appeared to be an underground water pipeline deliberately directed into a roadway culvert, hidden well out of view of passersby. "It's a serious situation. It appears somebody was trying to hide the fact that they had a discharge that was not permitted," said John Wagner, administrator of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Water Quality Division. Wagner said DEQ is seeking legal action against Lance Oil & Gas Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Gas Resources. Krista Johnson, a spokeswoman for Western Gas, said the company has launched its own investigation into the incident. It's not the first time Lance Oil & Gas has broken the rules. The company was assessed $72,000 in penalties in 2004 and 2005 for six illegal discharges in the coal-bed methane fields, according to DEQ records....
University says it complied with terms of grant for logging study A federal agency restored funding Wednesday for a study that has provided hard evidence for conservationists opposing the Bush administration's policy of logging after wildfires. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's decision to lift its suspension of the final year of a three-year grant came after Oregon State University said it had complied with provisions that barred it from using any grant money to lobby Congress and required its researchers to inform a BLM scientist about plans to publish in a journal. "Both sides have agreed to work together to continue the long productive relationship gathering science and data on the ground," said BLM spokesman Chris Strebig. In a letter to BLM, OSU noted that the editor in chief of Science magazine had acknowledged his staff included the reference to "informing the debate" over a salvage logging bill pending in Congress in supplemental material posted online, not the actual article, even after the researchers had told them to remove it. The Bush administration has backed the bill. Moreover, Peggy S. Lowry, institutional authorizing official at OSU, wrote that the two lead researchers had shown a PowerPoint presentation of their findings to the BLM scientist overseeing their work and explained that they were submitting it for publication....
U.S. Will Cover O.C. Wildfire Cost As a stubborn wildfire continued to burn across the canyon lands in northeast Orange County on Wednesday, the U.S. Forest Service said it would cover all firefighting costs because it accidentally started the blaze. The fire, which has changed direction several times since it broke out before dawn Monday, grew Wednesday to about 8,635 acres. More than 2,000 firefighters were working to bring it under control. The forest service apologized for letting a small, controlled burn spark a blaze that threatened homes, forcing the evacuation of 2,100 homes in Anaheim Hills and the city of Orange. Residents were allowed to return late Tuesday. The cost of battling what's called the Sierra fire, named after the peak where it started, exceeds $2.25 million so far, officials said. The fire was 35% contained by Wednesday evening. Full containment is not expected before the weekend....
Key Challenges for Science Identified by the USGS to Support Western Water Management Ensuring stable water supplies has grown more complex as the challenges facing water managers continue to mount, especially in the West. Informed decisions of water users and public officials will be necessary to ensure sufficient freshwater resources in the future to support a growing population and economy. The USGS has released a report that examines Western water availability, the modern role for science, and the value of monitoring and research to ensure an adequate water supply for the Nation’s future. According to USGS scientist and coauthor of the report, Mark T. Anderson, "Effective water management in the West is challenged by increasing and often competing needs among various water users: agricultural use and consumption by cities, maintaining water reservoirs and ensuring in-stream flows for aquatic ecosystems, industrial and energy production, and recreation. Scientific information becomes a crucial factor for resource managers to support their decision-making." Such factors as a demographic shift, climate variability (including the potential for severe sustained droughts), climate change, water-rights issues, depletion of ground water in storage, introduction of new storage and water use technologies, and protection of endangered species, add to a growing complexity for water management. Several of the key scientific challenges are examined in this report, including the determination of sustainable ground-water use and the physical habitat needs of ecosystems and individual endangered species....Go here to view the report.
Winnemucca Ranch developers plan thousands of homes Saying they will spare the meadows, developers of the Winnemucca Ranch plan to build up to 8,700 homes in the hills overlooking the green fields and nearby ponds. "We're trying to do things the right way," spokesman Jim Bauserman, representing Reno developers Stan Jaksick and Randy Venturacci, said. In March, they bought the 8,687-acre ranch 30 miles north of Reno that is proposed for annexation. Up to 50 percent of the land would be left as natural areas, including 1,400 acres of meadows used for pasture and wildlife corridors, Venturacci said. The project hinges on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approving a land exchange. The developers would gain Winnemucca Valley and Upper Dry Valley for their project on 8,687 acres....
Critics alarmed: The area along the Green and San Rafael is popular with rafters and tourists A stretch of the Green River popular among rafting enthusiasts and touted by the state's travel Web site for its scenic and peaceful qualities could now also be sought out by energy companies for exploration. The state Bureau of Land Management office has announced that a Feb. 21 oil and gas lease sale will include parcels in and around the Green and San Rafael rivers between Green River and Moab. Included are three parcels encompassing 3,700 acres along the Green River in Labyrinth Canyon, long a popular spot among river runners. The sale also takes in about 100,000 acres around the San Rafael River and in the San Rafael Desert, at least parts of which have been identified as potential wilderness areas. Local river outfitters are also opposing the lease sale, arguing that it will not only spoil the solitude of the area, but harm their businesses. "We use the canyon corridor in the course of our regular business for canoeing, camping and hiking. The wilderness qualities of the corridor and the side canyons are essential to our business," Theresa Butler, co-owner of the Red River Canoe Co., said in a letter to the BLM protesting the lease sale. "Oil and gas development in these parcels would be in direct conflict with our business."....
Proposed guidelines changes on cultural sites in works Proposed changes in guidelines governing how the federal government and the state assess potential effects of oil and gas development and other activities on historic and cultural sites in Wyoming has raised concerns from a group that advocates protecting such sites. Lesley Wischmann, co-founder of the Alliance for Historic Wyoming, said Wednesday that her organization worries the proposal would give the Bureau of Land Management too much authority over deciding what cultural sites would be protected. But Judyth Reed, BLM historic preservation coordinator in Wyoming, maintains the proposed changes do nothing to increase the BLM's authority and are aimed simply at helping the agency and the state streamline the process. In states where it manages a large amount of federal land, the BLM consults with states on cultural resources found on federal land, such as historical buildings and burial grounds, and whether they warrant protections from development and other projects....
Gibbons urged change in BLM mine oversight before manager fired Rep. Jim Gibbons urged the Bureau of Land Management to shift oversight of a contaminated mine the month before the agency fired its site manager, according to documents submitted Wednesday at a whistleblower hearing. Bob Abbey, ex-BLM director for the state of Nevada, testified at the administrative hearing that Gibbons' request to transfer responsibility for the former Anaconda copper mine from its Carson City field office to BLM state headquarters in Reno had nothing to do with Abbey's decision to fire Earle Dixon in October 2004. Dixon, who had been BLM's site manager in charge of leading its cleanup efforts, accuses the agency of retaliating against him for speaking out about the dangers of uranium, arsenic and other toxic materials at the mine near Yerington, 65 miles southeast of Reno. Abbey transferred lead oversight of the mine to Reno headquarters shortly after Dixon's firing, but he said that Gibbons' request had "little bearing" on that decision....
Off-road scramble on tap Off-road motorcycle enthusiasts from throughout the country will be zooming through washes and along old Jeep trails Saturday during the Holy Joe Hare Scramble. The national event along an 11-mile course near Mammoth is expected to attract 220 riders, said Adam Johnston, president of the nonprofit Arizona Motorcycle Riders Association, which puts on eight races a year in the state, including the Holy Joe. As part of the motorcycle association's agreement with the Bureau of Land Management, volunteers will repair any damage the race causes on the pre-existing trails along the course. Before and after races, volunteers also clean up trash left by other outdoorsmen....
Park County, feds cooperate on wolves With wolf numbers on the rise in Park County, and state and federal officials unable to agree on a plan to manage them, one little-known federal program continues to work at mitigating their impact. Field agents from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services program met with Park County commissioners this week and reported on their efforts to manage conflicts between ranchers and wolves. A report of recent Wildlife Services activities in the region listed 17 wolves killed since Nov. 1 as a result of livestock depredation problems. That number, covering a period of just more than three months, appears to indicate a steep increase from the 13 wolves killed for depredation countywide, and 37 killed statewide, in the previous fiscal year ending in September. Wildlife Services agents declined to comment on the specifics of the apparent increase, citing pending litigation over wolf management issues among local, state and federal governments. But the increase may be due in part to a 25 percent increase in Park County's overall wolf population....
Cattle kills by wolves cost ranchers $20,000 Twenty domestic animals, primarily cattle, valued at a total of $20,000 were confirmed killed by wolves in Park County last year. Craig Acres, eastern district supervisor for Wildlife Services, told the county commissioners Tuesday the predation took place between Oct. 1, 2004, and late September 2005. He added that the confirmed kills varied from the reported animal deaths and values, which came to 40 animals valued at roughly $40,000. Confirmed wolf kills result in reimbursement to producers. He cautioned people not to draw conclusions about the confirmed numbers, because unconfirmed kills are often those in which the livestock is discovered too late to actually identify, by tracks, tooth marks or other means, the actual cause of death....
FWS expands Idaho habitat for endangered sturgeon The federal government Wednesday set aside more critical habitat in the Idaho Panhandle for the Kootenai River white sturgeon, an endangered wild fish that has not successfully reproduced in more than 30 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added another 6.9 miles of the Kootenai River in Boundary County on the Canadian border to the 11.2 miles that were protected in 2001 for the largest freshwater fish in North America. The designation means federal and state agencies must consult with the service before undertaking projects that might affect the habitat. The additional habitat will result in an estimated $370 million to $790 million loss to farmers, hydropower operators and other river-dependent industries over the next 20 years, according to a draft economic analysis done by a Washington-state firm under contract to the service....
New Ammo Regs Help Combat Lead Poisoning In Waterfowl No one knows exactly how many waterfowl, wading birds and other kinds of avians have died accidentally from lead poisoning linked to hunters' ammunition loads, but over the years the toll has been substantial, experts say. Doomed birds have perished from lead exposure but not as a result of being struck by gunshot. Rather, they succumb from ingesting beebees that gather on the bottoms of ponds, lakes, marshes and in the fields where sportsmen and women hunt. Now the Fish and Wildlife Service is breaking new ground in the campaign against lead poisoning by working with ammo manufacturers to make the stuff in shotgun and bullet shells easier on avians that accidentally swallow the errant shot. The federal agency, which oversees waterfowl management in the U.S. and has strongly advocated for wetlands protection, announced that hunters will have four new shot types, all non lead, to put in their guns. "The Service's approval of these four shot types demonstrates our determination to make it easier for waterfowl hunters to comply with the restrictions on lead shot. Hunters now have a wider choice of shot types and this will continue to lessen the exposure of waterfowl to lead," said Service Director H. Dale Hall in a press release....
Water-use lawsuit nears settlement An 18-year-old court battle over how much San Joaquin River water should flow from a dam to bring back the salmon that once lived there could be nearing an end as environmental activists, farm representatives and federal water officials close in on an agreement. A hearing on the case was postponed Tuesday for 30 days after the parties filed a document telling Sacramento U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton they hoped to settle within the next month. "The goal is to be expeditious and try to wrap it up as quick as we can," said Cole Upton, chairman of Friant Water Users Authority, which delivers river water to about 15,000 farmers and is a defendant. Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first governor to weigh in on the dispute, increasing the pressure on the Department of the Interior to join Friant and the Natural Resources Defense Council in a three-part settlement....
U.S. Proposes Energy Leasing in Eastern Gulf The government is proposing to open a large area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas leasing despite strong opposition from Florida officials. The Interior Department's leasing proposal, released Wednesday, would encompass more than two-thirds of an area known as Lease 181, while continuing to ban oil and gas development in waters within 100 miles of the Florida coast. President Bush in 2001 assured Florida officials, including Gov. Jeb Bush, his brother, that the Lease 181 area would be protected through this year. The new proposal, expected to become final early next year, would cover the 2007-12 leasing period. Separately, the department expressed continued interest in possibly opening waters off Virginia to gas drilling. Congress would have to come up with an arrangement whereby the state would seek permission to develop the offshore area....
Illegal discharge ignites criticism State regulators are investigating what they believe to be a rogue attempt to hide an illegal water discharge by a coal-bed methane operator in the Powder River Basin. A suspicious rancher in the Spotted Creek area recently discovered what appeared to be an underground water pipeline deliberately directed into a roadway culvert, hidden well out of view of passersby. "It's a serious situation. It appears somebody was trying to hide the fact that they had a discharge that was not permitted," said John Wagner, administrator of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Water Quality Division. Wagner said DEQ is seeking legal action against Lance Oil & Gas Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Gas Resources. Krista Johnson, a spokeswoman for Western Gas, said the company has launched its own investigation into the incident. It's not the first time Lance Oil & Gas has broken the rules. The company was assessed $72,000 in penalties in 2004 and 2005 for six illegal discharges in the coal-bed methane fields, according to DEQ records....
University says it complied with terms of grant for logging study A federal agency restored funding Wednesday for a study that has provided hard evidence for conservationists opposing the Bush administration's policy of logging after wildfires. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's decision to lift its suspension of the final year of a three-year grant came after Oregon State University said it had complied with provisions that barred it from using any grant money to lobby Congress and required its researchers to inform a BLM scientist about plans to publish in a journal. "Both sides have agreed to work together to continue the long productive relationship gathering science and data on the ground," said BLM spokesman Chris Strebig. In a letter to BLM, OSU noted that the editor in chief of Science magazine had acknowledged his staff included the reference to "informing the debate" over a salvage logging bill pending in Congress in supplemental material posted online, not the actual article, even after the researchers had told them to remove it. The Bush administration has backed the bill. Moreover, Peggy S. Lowry, institutional authorizing official at OSU, wrote that the two lead researchers had shown a PowerPoint presentation of their findings to the BLM scientist overseeing their work and explained that they were submitting it for publication....
U.S. Will Cover O.C. Wildfire Cost As a stubborn wildfire continued to burn across the canyon lands in northeast Orange County on Wednesday, the U.S. Forest Service said it would cover all firefighting costs because it accidentally started the blaze. The fire, which has changed direction several times since it broke out before dawn Monday, grew Wednesday to about 8,635 acres. More than 2,000 firefighters were working to bring it under control. The forest service apologized for letting a small, controlled burn spark a blaze that threatened homes, forcing the evacuation of 2,100 homes in Anaheim Hills and the city of Orange. Residents were allowed to return late Tuesday. The cost of battling what's called the Sierra fire, named after the peak where it started, exceeds $2.25 million so far, officials said. The fire was 35% contained by Wednesday evening. Full containment is not expected before the weekend....
Key Challenges for Science Identified by the USGS to Support Western Water Management Ensuring stable water supplies has grown more complex as the challenges facing water managers continue to mount, especially in the West. Informed decisions of water users and public officials will be necessary to ensure sufficient freshwater resources in the future to support a growing population and economy. The USGS has released a report that examines Western water availability, the modern role for science, and the value of monitoring and research to ensure an adequate water supply for the Nation’s future. According to USGS scientist and coauthor of the report, Mark T. Anderson, "Effective water management in the West is challenged by increasing and often competing needs among various water users: agricultural use and consumption by cities, maintaining water reservoirs and ensuring in-stream flows for aquatic ecosystems, industrial and energy production, and recreation. Scientific information becomes a crucial factor for resource managers to support their decision-making." Such factors as a demographic shift, climate variability (including the potential for severe sustained droughts), climate change, water-rights issues, depletion of ground water in storage, introduction of new storage and water use technologies, and protection of endangered species, add to a growing complexity for water management. Several of the key scientific challenges are examined in this report, including the determination of sustainable ground-water use and the physical habitat needs of ecosystems and individual endangered species....Go here to view the report.
Winnemucca Ranch developers plan thousands of homes Saying they will spare the meadows, developers of the Winnemucca Ranch plan to build up to 8,700 homes in the hills overlooking the green fields and nearby ponds. "We're trying to do things the right way," spokesman Jim Bauserman, representing Reno developers Stan Jaksick and Randy Venturacci, said. In March, they bought the 8,687-acre ranch 30 miles north of Reno that is proposed for annexation. Up to 50 percent of the land would be left as natural areas, including 1,400 acres of meadows used for pasture and wildlife corridors, Venturacci said. The project hinges on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approving a land exchange. The developers would gain Winnemucca Valley and Upper Dry Valley for their project on 8,687 acres....
Critics alarmed: The area along the Green and San Rafael is popular with rafters and tourists A stretch of the Green River popular among rafting enthusiasts and touted by the state's travel Web site for its scenic and peaceful qualities could now also be sought out by energy companies for exploration. The state Bureau of Land Management office has announced that a Feb. 21 oil and gas lease sale will include parcels in and around the Green and San Rafael rivers between Green River and Moab. Included are three parcels encompassing 3,700 acres along the Green River in Labyrinth Canyon, long a popular spot among river runners. The sale also takes in about 100,000 acres around the San Rafael River and in the San Rafael Desert, at least parts of which have been identified as potential wilderness areas. Local river outfitters are also opposing the lease sale, arguing that it will not only spoil the solitude of the area, but harm their businesses. "We use the canyon corridor in the course of our regular business for canoeing, camping and hiking. The wilderness qualities of the corridor and the side canyons are essential to our business," Theresa Butler, co-owner of the Red River Canoe Co., said in a letter to the BLM protesting the lease sale. "Oil and gas development in these parcels would be in direct conflict with our business."....
Proposed guidelines changes on cultural sites in works Proposed changes in guidelines governing how the federal government and the state assess potential effects of oil and gas development and other activities on historic and cultural sites in Wyoming has raised concerns from a group that advocates protecting such sites. Lesley Wischmann, co-founder of the Alliance for Historic Wyoming, said Wednesday that her organization worries the proposal would give the Bureau of Land Management too much authority over deciding what cultural sites would be protected. But Judyth Reed, BLM historic preservation coordinator in Wyoming, maintains the proposed changes do nothing to increase the BLM's authority and are aimed simply at helping the agency and the state streamline the process. In states where it manages a large amount of federal land, the BLM consults with states on cultural resources found on federal land, such as historical buildings and burial grounds, and whether they warrant protections from development and other projects....
Gibbons urged change in BLM mine oversight before manager fired Rep. Jim Gibbons urged the Bureau of Land Management to shift oversight of a contaminated mine the month before the agency fired its site manager, according to documents submitted Wednesday at a whistleblower hearing. Bob Abbey, ex-BLM director for the state of Nevada, testified at the administrative hearing that Gibbons' request to transfer responsibility for the former Anaconda copper mine from its Carson City field office to BLM state headquarters in Reno had nothing to do with Abbey's decision to fire Earle Dixon in October 2004. Dixon, who had been BLM's site manager in charge of leading its cleanup efforts, accuses the agency of retaliating against him for speaking out about the dangers of uranium, arsenic and other toxic materials at the mine near Yerington, 65 miles southeast of Reno. Abbey transferred lead oversight of the mine to Reno headquarters shortly after Dixon's firing, but he said that Gibbons' request had "little bearing" on that decision....
Off-road scramble on tap Off-road motorcycle enthusiasts from throughout the country will be zooming through washes and along old Jeep trails Saturday during the Holy Joe Hare Scramble. The national event along an 11-mile course near Mammoth is expected to attract 220 riders, said Adam Johnston, president of the nonprofit Arizona Motorcycle Riders Association, which puts on eight races a year in the state, including the Holy Joe. As part of the motorcycle association's agreement with the Bureau of Land Management, volunteers will repair any damage the race causes on the pre-existing trails along the course. Before and after races, volunteers also clean up trash left by other outdoorsmen....
Park County, feds cooperate on wolves With wolf numbers on the rise in Park County, and state and federal officials unable to agree on a plan to manage them, one little-known federal program continues to work at mitigating their impact. Field agents from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services program met with Park County commissioners this week and reported on their efforts to manage conflicts between ranchers and wolves. A report of recent Wildlife Services activities in the region listed 17 wolves killed since Nov. 1 as a result of livestock depredation problems. That number, covering a period of just more than three months, appears to indicate a steep increase from the 13 wolves killed for depredation countywide, and 37 killed statewide, in the previous fiscal year ending in September. Wildlife Services agents declined to comment on the specifics of the apparent increase, citing pending litigation over wolf management issues among local, state and federal governments. But the increase may be due in part to a 25 percent increase in Park County's overall wolf population....
Cattle kills by wolves cost ranchers $20,000 Twenty domestic animals, primarily cattle, valued at a total of $20,000 were confirmed killed by wolves in Park County last year. Craig Acres, eastern district supervisor for Wildlife Services, told the county commissioners Tuesday the predation took place between Oct. 1, 2004, and late September 2005. He added that the confirmed kills varied from the reported animal deaths and values, which came to 40 animals valued at roughly $40,000. Confirmed wolf kills result in reimbursement to producers. He cautioned people not to draw conclusions about the confirmed numbers, because unconfirmed kills are often those in which the livestock is discovered too late to actually identify, by tracks, tooth marks or other means, the actual cause of death....
FWS expands Idaho habitat for endangered sturgeon The federal government Wednesday set aside more critical habitat in the Idaho Panhandle for the Kootenai River white sturgeon, an endangered wild fish that has not successfully reproduced in more than 30 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added another 6.9 miles of the Kootenai River in Boundary County on the Canadian border to the 11.2 miles that were protected in 2001 for the largest freshwater fish in North America. The designation means federal and state agencies must consult with the service before undertaking projects that might affect the habitat. The additional habitat will result in an estimated $370 million to $790 million loss to farmers, hydropower operators and other river-dependent industries over the next 20 years, according to a draft economic analysis done by a Washington-state firm under contract to the service....
New Ammo Regs Help Combat Lead Poisoning In Waterfowl No one knows exactly how many waterfowl, wading birds and other kinds of avians have died accidentally from lead poisoning linked to hunters' ammunition loads, but over the years the toll has been substantial, experts say. Doomed birds have perished from lead exposure but not as a result of being struck by gunshot. Rather, they succumb from ingesting beebees that gather on the bottoms of ponds, lakes, marshes and in the fields where sportsmen and women hunt. Now the Fish and Wildlife Service is breaking new ground in the campaign against lead poisoning by working with ammo manufacturers to make the stuff in shotgun and bullet shells easier on avians that accidentally swallow the errant shot. The federal agency, which oversees waterfowl management in the U.S. and has strongly advocated for wetlands protection, announced that hunters will have four new shot types, all non lead, to put in their guns. "The Service's approval of these four shot types demonstrates our determination to make it easier for waterfowl hunters to comply with the restrictions on lead shot. Hunters now have a wider choice of shot types and this will continue to lessen the exposure of waterfowl to lead," said Service Director H. Dale Hall in a press release....
Water-use lawsuit nears settlement An 18-year-old court battle over how much San Joaquin River water should flow from a dam to bring back the salmon that once lived there could be nearing an end as environmental activists, farm representatives and federal water officials close in on an agreement. A hearing on the case was postponed Tuesday for 30 days after the parties filed a document telling Sacramento U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton they hoped to settle within the next month. "The goal is to be expeditious and try to wrap it up as quick as we can," said Cole Upton, chairman of Friant Water Users Authority, which delivers river water to about 15,000 farmers and is a defendant. Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first governor to weigh in on the dispute, increasing the pressure on the Department of the Interior to join Friant and the Natural Resources Defense Council in a three-part settlement....
U.S. Proposes Energy Leasing in Eastern Gulf The government is proposing to open a large area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas leasing despite strong opposition from Florida officials. The Interior Department's leasing proposal, released Wednesday, would encompass more than two-thirds of an area known as Lease 181, while continuing to ban oil and gas development in waters within 100 miles of the Florida coast. President Bush in 2001 assured Florida officials, including Gov. Jeb Bush, his brother, that the Lease 181 area would be protected through this year. The new proposal, expected to become final early next year, would cover the 2007-12 leasing period. Separately, the department expressed continued interest in possibly opening waters off Virginia to gas drilling. Congress would have to come up with an arrangement whereby the state would seek permission to develop the offshore area....
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