NEWS ROUNDUP
Column: Preparing for Nature's Attack Environmentalists and their opponents have spent far too much time debating whether global warming is caused by humans, and whether the transition to cleaner energy sources will be good or bad for the economy. Whatever the causes, warming is a genuine risk. If the earth's temperatures continue to rise, we can expect to face melting glaciers and rising sea levels, warmer ocean temperatures and more intense hurricanes, more frequent droughts and other extreme weather. Is the government ready? No. Which is why we need a Global Warming Preparedness Act. Those of us who live in California have long prepared ourselves for "the big one." Many of us buy earthquake insurance, bolt our houses to their foundations and set aside emergency food and water. Local governments create evacuation plans with first responders and make sure emergency generators are in place. Schools have created plans to house families whose homes are damaged. But nothing like this exists nationally. Under a preparedness act, it would. The law would give the Federal Emergency Management Agency the task of coordinating a national global warming preparedness plan with other government agencies....
Ranchers encouraged by grazing regs New grazing regulations could improve grazing management and help sustain ranching on public lands, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the Public Lands Council (PLC). The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published the final regulations in today’s Federal Register. While still reviewing the details of these regulations, rancher groups agree the BLM has taken a positive step toward balancing land management concerns with sustainable resource development. The final regulations take effect 60 days following publication. “We have worked for years to communicate to the Administration about the challenges our ranchers face,” says Jeff Eisenberg, director of federal lands for NCBA and executive director of PLC. “The regulations issued today are proof positive that the BLM is listening to these concerns and wants a regulatory system that works, but also helps enhance the business climate for our nation’s ranchers.”....
Water supply is on the rocks, and that's OK The snow that covers Oregon's highest mountains is only the most visible part of the storage system that supplies water to streams and rivers flowing from the Cascades. The very rock that makes up the peaks soaks up rain and melting snow into an underground basin the size of Great Salt Lake. The water from deep under the ground surfaces through springs five, 10, sometimes even 50 years later. Each basin in Oregon depends on these water supplies to different degrees. About 28 percent of the North Santiam River system comes from this High Cascade region. By comparison, 6 percent of the South Santiam River system is classified as High Cascades, according to research by scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Station, a part of the U.S. Forest Service. "The number is significant because our work has demonstrated how the presence of these young volcanic rocks has a lot to do with where the rain goes when it falls and where the snow goes when it melts and the timing on which it re-emerges," said Gordon Grant, a research hydrologist. "And ultimately, it says something about the availability of water late into the summer."....
Lease sale proceeds Despite Gov. Dave Freudenthal's call for a halt to the process, the U.S. Forest Service is proceeding to offer nearly 20,000 acres on the Bridger-Teton National Forest for lease for oil and gas development at auction today. In a letter last week to federal land managers, Freudenthal said it would make sense to resolve pending protests of an energy lease sale last December of land within the Bridger-Teton before offering more of the forest lands for lease. Conservation groups, as well as outfitters and guides, protested December's lease sale, saying drilling on the Forest Service lands threatened to harm trout streams and other wildlife habitat in the Wyoming Range. Those appeals are still pending with the BLM, which handles energy leasing on both its own and Forest Service lands. Freudenthal last week wrote to Jack Troyer, regional forester with the U.S. Forest Service in Ogden, Utah, and Bob Bennett, Wyoming state director of the BLM. "All told, 44,000 acres have been slated for oil and gas leasing in the Bridger-Teton," Freudenthal wrote. "Such leasing has raised the ire of a varied range of groups and constituencies."....
Column: Troubled National Forest waters Our national forests. The very places we can always count on to have healthy stream flows. Right? Not necessarily. Protection of streams, wetlands and groundwater on national forests will be profoundly affected by quiet negotiations occurring today between the U.S. Forest Service and an under-the-radar state authority called the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission. So far the seemingly sensible concept of leaving water in stream for fish, recreation and public health — and to provide continuous flows for accommodating existing water-right holders downstream on private land — isn’t winning the day. The negotiations are arcane and mind-numbing, but the result could be far-reaching. It will ultimately settle whether the Forest Service has a legal right — and if so, how meaningful it will be — to protect streams from future development under Montana’s “first in time, first in right” water use law. A Forest Service and commission accord could settle for perpetuity who has priority say in the future of all water on national forests in Montana — including in developed and undeveloped tracts, designated wilderness, and wild and scenic rivers. At stake is the protection of water for countless lakes, waterfalls, wetlands, critical fisheries and spectacular vistas. Curiously, the state’s negotiators on the commission appear reluctant to recognize any legal ability in the Forest Service to protect these public resources beyond a few paltry tools granted by (and revocable by) Congress. And they’re playing hardball, forcing the Forest Service to navigate technical and legal knotholes in order to justify the seemingly common sense conclusion that to be healthy the public’s streams, fisheries and natural areas need water....
Colorado ski development clears hurdle A hotly contested proposal for a major development near one of Colorado's most rustic ski areas cleared a key hurdle Monday when federal officials approved construction of two short roads across national forest to reach the site. The Village at Wolf Creek, proposed by Texas billionaire Billy Joe ''Red'' McCombs, could eventually include 222,100 square feet of commercial space and enough housing for up to 10,500 people. The surrounding Mineral County in the San Juan Mountains about 170 miles southwest of Denver has fewer than 1,000 full-time residents. ''We are relieved this process has come to this point,'' developer Bob Honts said. ''We thank the U.S. Forest Service for the opportunity to build the village with reasonable access.''....
Once foes, forest service and Nevada county back road deal After years of battling over a remote Nevada road and its effect on a threatened fish, the Forest Service and Elko County tried to persuade a federal judge Monday to ignore environmentalists' objections and ratify a settlement that grants the county a right of way to the route. U.S. District Judge David Hagen ruled in June 2003 that the compromise agreement was illegal because it violated several environmental laws. Hagen, who has since retired, stayed the deal pending an appeal by the county. On Monday, the county's lawyers began presenting evidence in a scheduled five-day hearing to try to have the agreement reinstated. Among other things, they argue the South Canyon Road near the Idaho border was built before the Humboldt National Forest was established in 1909 and should never have been considered a national forest road....
Regulators calculate higher bond for Troy Mine Regulators say the bond for eventual reclamation of a copper and silver mine in northwestern Montana is too small for the job, and should increase by about $2.5 million. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Forest Service want a bond of nearly $13 million for the Troy Mine, 15 miles from Troy. Inflation and fuel costs were among the considerations in calculating the new amount as part of a routine review conducted at five-year intervals, Warren McCullough of DEQ's Environmental Management Bureau said Monday. ''There were some areas that we did not agree with, but we are moving forward to increase the bond nonetheless,'' said Carson Rife, vice president at Revett Minerals Inc. in Spokane, Wash. The company's subsidiary, Genesis Inc., operates the Troy Mine on private and Forest Service land. In a March 22 letter to DEQ, Genesis disputed both the size of the increase and the process used to calculate it. McCullough and John McKay of the Kootenai National Forest staff said a response to the company is pending. The bond is a safety net for financing reclamation if Genesis were to stop mining, the required environmental work did not occur and government agencies stepped in. Operation of the mine is projected to span at least the next five years, mine manager Doug Miller said....
Feds to Do Own Spotted Owl Recovery Plan Citing federal budget cuts, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided it can't afford to pay an outside contractor to develop the long-overdue recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, so it will develop the blueprint for saving the threatened species from extinction on its own. "We had hoped to get a special funding allocation to handle a contractor who could help us with what will be a very labor intensive recovery planning process," said Fish and Wildlife spokesman David Patte. "It just didn't come to bear." The owl's dependence on old growth forests forced a dramatic cutback in logging on national forests in Washington, Oregon and Northern California in the 1990s. However, owl numbers continue to fall as the species confronts new threats with no clear way to stop any of them _ disease, wildfire and the barred owl, a cousin from eastern Canada that is pushing spotted owls from the best habitat. The decision to pursue a recovery plan, shelved before it was finished in 1992, is part of the settlement of a timber industry lawsuit demanding a new look at the federal lands set aside from logging as critical habitat for the bird....
A Weed, a Fly, a Mouse and a Chain of Unintended Consequences First came the knapweed. Then came the gall fly. And now the mice population is exploding — the mice that carry hantavirus. In a classic case of unintended ecological consequences, an attempt to control an unwanted plant has exacerbated a human health problem. Spotted knapweed, a European plant, is a tough, spindly scourge that has spread across hills and mountainsides across the West. In Montana alone, one of the worst-hit states, it covers more than four million acres. In the 1970's, biologists imported a native enemy of knapweed, the gall fly. The insect lays eggs inside the seed head, and the plant then forms a gall, or tumor, around the eggs. When the larva hatches, it eats the seeds. Dean Pearson, who works at the Rocky Mountain Research Station of the United States Forest Service, said the fly had not halted the spread of knapweed. In a report in Ecology Letters, however, Dr. Pearson reports that the introduced fly has changed the ecosystem's dynamics. The fly larvae provide an abundant food source for deer mice in the winter, above the snow. Instead of dying out, as is often the case in cold and snowy weather, the deer mice climb the stalk of the plant above the snow to the seed head. They can eat as many as 1,200 larvae a night, at a time when there is normally no other food. Mice numbers have tripled because of this food supply, said Dr. Pearson, and with them hantavirus, a viral infection is spread by urine and droppings. It is rare, but can cause a pneumonialike disease that can be fatal to humans....
Outdoor Industry Leaders Lobby for Roadless Land Nearly 50 companies specializing in outdoor recreation sent letters to the U.S. Forest Service on Friday requesting that roadless wildlands in America's national forests be protected from logging and other development. The companies, among them such industry leaders as Patagonia and The North Face, argued in the joint letter that their businesses depend on customer participation in a wide variety of outdoor activities and that any losses to America's roadless areas would "constrain our customers' activities and diminish our business opportunities." The outdoor recreation industry currently brings in $33 billion each year. "America's pristine roadless forests are public assets that provide our customers with incredible recreational opportunities," Patagonia's CEO Casey Sheahan said in a statement. "Without these wild backcountry lands, our business opportunities would be significantly restricted."....
Out of Bounds In the 100 years since concerted restoration efforts returned healthy numbers of bison to the plains of Wyoming, the animal has become as much a part of Yellowstone’s landscape as the geysers and sulfur springs that dot the terrain. But in recent decades, bison have been treated less like wild animals and more like livestock. By 1902, the number of bison in the Greater Yellowstone had dropped below 30, a far cry from the days when more than 30 million bison grazed on western lands. That year, Yellowstone officials brought back a few dozen members of the original herd that had been shipped out of the state years earlier. In the hundred years since, bison numbers have increased dramatically: Last summer, nearly 5,000 buffalo roamed throughout the park. But today that tally is now closer to 4,000. This winter the Park Service sent more than 900 bison to slaughter, ostensibly because of the risks the animals pose to cattle grazing on adjacent lands....
Sempra drops plans for Idaho coal-fired plant Sempra Energy said on Wednesday it was dropping plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Idaho in the face of strong opposition to the proposed $1 billion project. In a letter sent on Wednesday to Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and leaders of the state legislature, Michael Niggli, president of Sempra Generation, said the company would sell the development rights to the project. The plant would have been the first coal-fired generating station in the state. Idaho now gets most of its electricity from hydropower. A few hours after the letter was received, the Idaho Senate passed by a 30-to-5 vote and sent to the governor a bill calling for a two-year moratorium on coal-fired power plants. The Idaho House overwhelmingly passed the measure last week. The moratorium bill says "coal-fired power plants may have a significant negative impact upon the health, safety and welfare" of people, financial security of agricultural business, and the protection of natural resources....
Future of mountain cabins could be at risk Family traditions, rich in history, are celebrated every summer in the cabin villages on Mount Graham - but the future existence of the cabins is at risk. “We are doing an environmental study of the impact the cabins are having on issues such as the endangered red squirrel and with sacred, mountain grounds of the Apache Indians,” Recreation and Special Uses Program Manager Bill Lewis said. The Safford Ranger District of the Forest Service hosted an open house at the Arizona Room of the Manor House on Tuesday for cabin owners of Mount Graham to ask questions about the renewal process for permits. Summer homeowners spoke directly to several Forest Service officials at four separate stations. Many questions and concerns were expressed by families that have owned a cabin since as early as 1920....
Forest Service buys Blackfoot acreage The U.S. Forest Service has acquired nearly 11,300 acres bordering national forestlands in the Blackfoot watershed. The agency bought the land -- six separate parcels in Powell and Lewis and Clark counties -- from the Nature Conservancy last week using $10 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. The conservancy acquired the property in 2004 from the Seattle-based Plum Creek Timber Co. as part of the 88,000-acre Blackfoot Community Project. "This is great news for the Blackfoot because it puts in public ownership lands that local residents wanted to see continued public access on," said Hank Goetz, lands director for the Blackfoot Challenge, the landowner group leading the conservation effort....
Authorities want say in forest buy Lawrence County officials want to have input before the U.S. Forest Service buys more land in the county for the Wayne National Forest. The forest service has $800,000 that it wants to use to buy property in Washington Township that currently belongs to The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy has bought some 3,600 acres of property in the county for $2.8 million in the past few years. The proposed purchase would cover only about 1,000 acres or so, said Gloria Chrismer, Ironton district ranger at the Wayne. "I'm surprised by (the opposition)," Chrismer said last week. "I'm disappointed. We've been talking about this for several years." County Commissioner Jason Stephens said the federal government already owns more than 25 percent of the land in Lawrence County. Future purchases takes the land off tax rolls and decreases tax revenues to local schools and pulls the land off any list for possible development. "Local people should have some say" in future land purchases, Stephens said. The Lawrence County Board of Commissioners will be asking local legislators and Gov. Bob Taft about changing the law to give counties input on future land sales, he said....
Sedona jeep tours bring money and concerns They roar through the ravines and mesas of some of Arizona's most beautiful country, hundreds of tour jeeps carrying nearly 350,000 tourists annually. But the tours are becoming so popular that they are not only threatening the solitude of the high country but also the environment. "It's hard to believe that this area has been used for spiritual renewal, given all the din now," said Dianne Leibensperge, who lives in the upscale Broken Arrow neighborhood of Sedona, on the main thoroughfare to the vistas. She said the neighborhood has a carnival atmosphere and the jeeps have put hip-deep ruts in nearby roads. As the state's estimated $15 million-a-year jeep-tour industry pits residents against operators, Forest Service planners are caught in the middle, trying to balance environmental concerns with the rights of businesses in Sedona and beyond....
Forestry official: Make some noise Montana's wood products industry is nearing the tipping point - and could end up following in the footsteps of Southwestern states where lumber mills have virtually disappeared - if the logjam on public lands doesn't change. That message Friday from keynote speaker Jim Petersen started a two-day Montana Society of American Foresters conference titled “The Law and Forestry” at the Holiday Inn Parkside in Missoula. Petersen, of Bigfork, is director of the Evergreen Foundation, a nonprofit forestry research and educational organization. Between 1989 and 2004, 414 wood products plants closed in five Western states, he said. In Montana alone, 27 mills have shut their doors since 1989. Petersen said 48,501 forest industry jobs in the West were lost because of those closures. Many of the shutdowns were the result of a dwindling log supply from federal lands due to appeals and litigation....
Eye in the sky: Red-tailed Hawk favorite of falconers From heights where the large birds are barely distinguishable by the human eye, the red-tailed hawk, with eyesight eight times greater than a human's, can spot potential prey the size of a small mouse. Their fantastic hunting capabilities and ability to hover on warm air thermals makes birds of prey awe-inspiring to people. The Red-tailed Hawk, the most widespread of the Buteo family and a favorite of falconers, resides in the Southwest year-round, enjoying the mild winters and an abundance of prey. Armed with strong grasping feet and sharp talons ideal for perching and clutching, the hawk, as well as most raptors, capitalizes on various hunting techniques. Whether soaring or perched it is safe to say the powerful eyes of the hawk are constantly scanning the ground, Klinger said....
Wild About Wild Flowers John Thomas stands in a field at Wildseed Farms near Fredericksburg, Texas (pop. 8,911), and surveys the surrounding canvas of mixed wildflowers—black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, white daisies, red and orange California poppies, yellow coreopsis and pink buttercups. He knows that next spring the seeds from his farm will blanket the edges of highways across America. Today, Wildseed Farms is one of the most successful wildflower production farms in the nation, with 65 employees that include horticulturists and botanists. Eighty-eight varieties of seeds are collected on 200 scattered acres in the Texas Hill Country near Fredericksburg, and on another 1,000 acres in Eagle Lake, Texas (pop. 3,664), along the Gulf Coast. Last year, the farms harvested 50,000 pounds of bluebonnet seeds—70 percent of the world’s supply....
Conservation Planning Pilot Project Results Announced In California, as many as 140 customers signed up for conservation planning assistance during the recent Natural Resources Conservation Service's (NRCS) Conservation Planning Pilot Project, according to initial project results announced today by State Conservationist Lincoln E. Burton. California was one of nine states participating in the conservation planning sign-up, a pilot initiative that emphasized the importance of conservation planning to help farmers and ranchers be better prepared to apply for conservation programs and to comply with federal, state, tribal and local environmental regulations. Nine California field offices participated in the pilot project. Using a landowner self-assessment process, individuals who wanted technical assistance to develop a conservation plan applied at their local NRCS office during the specified sign-up periods that ranged from October 31 to December 30. All agricultural land was eligible for conservation planning technical assistance, including cropland, orchards, vineyards, pasture and range, woodland and farmsteads....
Strange love on the ranch Love comes in many types. Tough love, puppy love, love at first sight, love 'em and leave 'em, first crushes, infatuation. And, of course, the obsessive kind which can lead to restraining orders. It is the latter that has struck a midvalley couple. But no one is calling for a judge to intervene. In fact, said rancher Rory Cerise, most people who stop by think the peculiar relationship of Petunia and Chicken is cute. Chicken is actually an African flightless goose who, about six years ago, took a shining to Petunia, a retired saddle mare, on the Cerises' ranch near Emma. Chicken's name comes from his demeanor, Cerise said. But his cowardice might have saved his neck, which he sticks completely vertical as he bellows and hisses to protect his betrothed. Chicken, his brother and two ducks were orphaned one January morning at the foot of the ranch's driveway, Cerise said. Raccoons, and then dogs, got the ducks; Chicken's brother met his end March 12 under the heavy hooves of the ranch's cows. Now there's just Chicken. But he has also known the pain love can bring. Petunia has stepped on his webbed feet, broke his toes and made him lame, Cerise said. "She doesn't even know he's there," he said, which may be the worst misery of all. Chicken's love is undying, but it's costing him calories....
It's All Trew: A criminal or a saint? You never know On at 9 a.m. Feb. 4, 1931, two men entered the First State Bank of Alanreed, and demanded money, according to Fort Worth newspaper articles sent to me by T. Lindsay Baker. E. B. Hedrick, bank cashier, was forced at gunpoint to open the vault where the cash was taken. He was then ordered to lie on the bank floor until the thieves departed. Just as the robbers were leaving the bank, local blacksmith Jim Bryant entered for his daily free cup of coffee provided by the bank. The robbers ordered Jim to lie down on the floor. Jim was hard of hearing and didn't understand the order. When he didn't obey, one of the robbers shot him in the stomach. The robbers then left in one car, switched to another car and fled the scene....
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Monday, April 03, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Deals Turn Swaths of Timber Company Land Into Development-Free Areas Timber companies and conservation organizations have been working to arrange and announce a cascade of deals transferring large, unbroken swaths of forestland into the hands of government, nonprofit — or even commercial — groups that are committed to keeping them free from development. On Tuesday, the International Paper Company announced it would receive $300 million in a deal arranged by the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund for 217,000 acres in 10 states around the Southeast. The largest single tract, an unkempt 25,668-acre peninsula between the Pee Dee and Little Pee Dee Rivers in South Carolina, will ideally revert to the cypress and longleaf-pine forest that once covered these sandy flatlands. The company also said it had sold 69,000 acres of forestland in Wisconsin for $83 million to the Nature Conservancy. The third and largest deal is intended to preserve up to 400,000 acres of land near Moosehead Lake in central Maine. Financial and other details are still being worked out between the Plum Creek Timber Company, the Nature Conservancy and two regional conservation groups. But for all the good news, celebrated by all sides, a stubborn fact remains: The nearly one million acres that have been preserved in these deals over the past two years, including a 257,000-acre tract in the Adirondacks, represent barely 2 percent of timber company lands that are coming on the market in the East....
River May Flow Again, Full of Salmon Big rivers in the West are reliable sources of bad news. Dammed for electricity and drained for irrigation, they have pushed salmon into extinction, fishermen into bankruptcy and Indians into despair. This dismal pattern, though, may be ending on the Klamath, which straddles the Oregon-California border and has long been one of the nation's most thoroughly fouled-up rivers. Its woes include massive fish kills, blooms of poisonous algae, diabetic Indians, fuming irrigators, litigious environmentalists and aging dams that produce little power while squatting stolidly in the way of reviving the river. Two decisions last week -- one by a federal court in California, the other by the Bush administration -- raise the surprising possibility that the Klamath may overcome many of these troubles. For the first time in the nearly eight decades since the river was dammed, Indians and commercial fishermen, environmentalists and federal fish scientists agree that there are sound reasons to believe in the comeback of a river that once supported the third largest salmon runs on the West Coast....
A fighting chance for the Klamath These are times of both deep despair and unprecedented hope for California's $100 million salmon industry. Despair, because a federal agency is expected this week to recommend either canceling or severely curtailing the 2006 commercial and sport fishing seasons because of collapsing stocks on the Klamath River. Hope, because for the first time in years, genuine progress is being made on a long-term solution to the problem. Though the situation is mired in competing scientific theories, lawsuits and political skirmishing, the bottom line is fairly simple: There are plenty of Chinook salmon in the ocean now, but most of them originated in the Sacramento River. Salmon from the Klamath River, once a producer of millions of fish, are at all-time lows, compelling federal protections. Fewer than 30,000 Klamath Chinook salmon are expected to return to the river this year, well below the 35,000 fish biologists say are needed to sustain the runs. And because both populations mingle in the open sea, fishing for Sacramento River Chinook could imperil the Klamath salmon that remain. Though some biologists say part of the decline is due to poor marine conditions, most researchers say the main problem with the Klamath's salmon is the river itself. Over the years, it has become inhospitable to fish. Much of its water is diverted for agriculture, reducing flows critical to salmon....
EPA May Weaken Rule on Water Quality The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to allow higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic in the drinking water used by small rural communities, in response to complaints that they cannot afford to comply with recently imposed limits. The proposal would roll back a rule that went into effect earlier this year and make it permissible for water systems serving 10,000 or fewer residents to have three times the level of contaminants allowed under that regulation. About 50 million people live in communities that would be affected by the proposed change. In the case of arsenic, the most recent EPA data suggest as many as 10 million Americans are drinking water that does not meet the new federal standards. Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Water, said the agency was trying to satisfy Congress, which instructed EPA in 1996 to take into account that it costs small rural towns proportionately more to meet federal drinking water standards....
Desalination research could 'drought-proof' West Texas towns, businesses West Texas is awash in crude oil while water is a precious and perplexing commodity. In fact, in the 1930s, it's said a barrel of water sold for 10 times the amount of a barrel of crude oil. Water is perplexing because so many of the Permian Basin's oil wells produce water along with oil or natural gas, forcing operators to pay large sums to have it trucked away or otherwise disposed of. At the same time, West Texas communities are looking at ways to ensure plentiful supplies of water for their residents. David Burnett, director of technology at the Global Petroleum Research Institute at Texas A&M and his colleagues think they are nearing a solution to both problems, and their work has earned them the Hearst Energy Award for Technology. Burnett and his colleagues are focused on the desalination of the brackish brine water so plentiful in West Texas and are on the verge of developing a desalination unit small enough for small communities to afford or for a rancher to operate to ensure his livestock have plenty to drink during times of drought, all for about the cost of maintaining a swimming pool....
No beaver left behind: Settling a gnawing issue Every beaver a wanted beaver. That could be the motto of state Rep. Joel Kretz, an Okanogan County rancher who shepherded a beaver relocation bill to unanimous approval in the Legislature – only to see it brutally vetoed last week by Gov. Chris Gregoire. Yes, a beaver relocation bill. Kretz’s brainchild would have allowed Eastern Washington landowners who have longed for a beaver of their own to trap one in Western Washington and bring it back to a loving home. Like Kretz’s ranch. The freshman Republican owns 1,300 acres in Wauconda. His spread has cattle. It has horses. It has timber. What it doesn’t have is a beaver. No beaver to gnaw down the scenery, build dams or whack its tail on the water when the wolves come round. Kretz wanted one badly enough to talk 98 members of the House and 45 members of the Senate into letting him get one....
Endangered lynx set free Volunteers opened metal animal crates in a campground here, but at first nothing came out. Then, its footsteps soundless, a lynx sprinted from its nest of hay and vanished into the snowy Weminuche wilderness, its fur a perfect match for the winter-deadened landscape. Researchers released four Canada lynx on Saturday, another step in a reintroduction program started in 1999 and put into action seven years ago. Unbeknownst to the lynx freed Saturday, they are charged with repopulating a species considered endangered in Colorado and threatened in 47 other states. The Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) plans to release 218 Canada lynx to the San Juan Mountains by the end of April. While the reintroduction program cannot be classified as successful yet, researchers said there is definite progress. Lynx, brown and gray wild cats similar to bobcats, weigh between 18 and 44 pounds, and have tufted ears. Their broad paws -- a trademark feature -- act as natural snowshoes and help them move through the winter landscape. Trackers describe the cats as shy, elusive animals who enjoy living in dark timber....
Grizzly bear experts at odds The government's call to remove federal protections for grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park has sparked sharp debate among some of the country's leading bear experts, who are divided over whether the bear population has recovered enough. On one side, some experts believe delisting the bears now - without greater habitat protections or long- term funding commitments - would mean erasing gains made over the past 30 years and could once again leave the grizzlies in peril. Other experts, however, insist that recovery goals have been met and that it's time for the federal government to focus on lesser-known, struggling bear populations in the West. "The Endangered Species Act was set up to get to what we have now in Yellowstone, a recovered population, and not set up to immunize a species against any kind of threat somebody's imagination might think would happen in the future," said Sterling Miller, who's studied bears for three decades and is now a senior wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Federation in Missoula, Mont. How scientists working with the same data can reach such wildly different conclusions about the fate of the bears is partly a matter of specialty: Many of those who have taken sides are considered either conservation biologists or wildlife biologists - and tend to view the issue and science from those sometimes contrasting perspectives....
Sea Lions' Dining Habits Stump the Corps A particularly crafty sea lion is befuddling the Army Corps of Engineers. Sea lions have been camping out at the base of the Bonneville Dam and eating salmon trying to migrate up the Columbia River to spawn. Last year they ate some 3.5 percent of the migrating run when salmon numbers were down. This year's run begins in earnest this month, but it is off to a slow start. The Seattle Times reported that, as of Tuesday, about 200 of the chinook, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, had gone through the dam's fish passage, compared with an average of 3,085 for the date. Biologists are unsure why that is, but it makes the sea lions' take all the more important. One lion in particular, named C404 after a brand applied by a state and federal program, is in a class by himself. He has figured out how to get into fish ladders that help fish past the dam. The engineers have installed gates and tried huge firecrackers, rockets, rubber bullets and noises that sea lions do not like. Nothing has worked....
The Job No Americans Want Isn't Getting Any Easier The seven sheepherders were eating lunch in a trailer with no toilet, heat or water, its leaky roof held down by a rope. A lunch break, especially one together, was a rare event. But they were celebrating, sort of. Lambing season was ending. That's when the ewes give birth and the sheepherders who come to this country on three-year work visas put in their hardest 12- to 16-hour days, seven days a week. Still, the sheepherders were steeling themselves for spring. From late March until fall, sheepherding is almost unbearably lonely. Each herder is driven deep into pastures far from town or even a paved road. For weeks on end, he sees no one but the boss, and rarely does he have a cellphone or radio. In the list of jobs immigrants perform that no U.S. citizen wants, sheepherding must rank near the top. The 825 or so sheepherders who work the nation's sheep farms -- mostly in California, Texas and Wyoming -- are immigrants here on H-2A visas from Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Mexico, according to the Western Range Association, an industry group....
Beef trial under way in Aberdeen federal court A jury of four men and four women from northeast South Dakota will decide whether meat packers cost cattle producers as much as $42.79 million during the spring of 2001. The federal court case started with jury selection and opening arguments Friday in Aberdeen. Three cattlemen filed the suit two and a half years ago. It alleges that the nation's four largest meat packers knowingly took advantage of a U.S. Department of Agriculture error to lower the amounts paid to farmers and ranchers for their live cattle. All of the meat packers named in the case say they didn't know about the USDA error so it couldn't have impacted live cattle prices. That there was an error is not in dispute. Nor is the fact that it was not the fault of the packers. From April 2 to May 11, 2001, the USDA incorrectly reported the prices of what are called cutout averages for some beef. Cutout reports, which the USDA is in charge of issuing twice each market day, contain average prices of various cuts of meat. During the time frame in question, cutout averages for choice and select meat were too low because a lower quality of meat was used, in part, to figure them. The mistake was the result of an error in computer software provided by a federal government contractor....
No one survived crash in rugged terrain Commercial airline travel in the United States was relatively new when a Transcontinental Air Transport (T.A.T.) plane disappeared en route from Albuquerque to Winslow with three crew members and five passengers on board in early September 1929. A.B. McGaffey, a highly respected businessman from western Valencia County, was among the five missing passengers. Searchers combed the area on land and from the air. Even Charles Lindbergh joined the search, accompanied by his bride, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Although every rumor of a sighting was pursued, nothing had been found of the plane (with wing number 9649) or its passengers and crew for three long days. But then the searchers' luck suddenly seemed to have changed. On Friday, Sept. 6, search plane pilot D.W. Tomlinson delivered promising news after returning from a flight to an area about a hundred miles north of Winslow....
Relative recalls life of Texas gunslinger John King Fisher was killed during an ambush at the old Vaudeville Theater in San Antonio. He was a colorful guy. He wore colorful clothes — big sombreros and Mexican vests stitched with gold. He had colorful friends and colorful enemies. King Fisher wasn’t the target of the ambush. He was with Ben Thompson, the legendary marshal of Austin. Several years before the fateful performance, Thompson had killed the owner of the theater. Unfortunately for Thompson and Fisher, the new owner had been a friend of the old owner and knew how to carry a grudge. King Fisher died in 1884 after a full life. He was 29....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Dead cat sends bridge luncheon ladies to E.R. The scene at the emergency room was right out of "ER." But it was not a four-car pile up, a Metamucil overdose, or a hippopotamus attack, no. Six women, age 41 to 62, were admitted with food poisoning. The woman in charge, who had also been the hostess of the Women's Bridge Luncheon Party, had sent out invitations. She planned on serving a salmon mousse, vinaigrette salad, cold asparagus spears a la Miracle Whip, with Kit Kats and coffee for dessert. Lunch had gone well. All the guests had eaten their salmon mousse. The hostess had been worried since the salmon was farm raised, but it was three times cheaper....
Deals Turn Swaths of Timber Company Land Into Development-Free Areas Timber companies and conservation organizations have been working to arrange and announce a cascade of deals transferring large, unbroken swaths of forestland into the hands of government, nonprofit — or even commercial — groups that are committed to keeping them free from development. On Tuesday, the International Paper Company announced it would receive $300 million in a deal arranged by the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund for 217,000 acres in 10 states around the Southeast. The largest single tract, an unkempt 25,668-acre peninsula between the Pee Dee and Little Pee Dee Rivers in South Carolina, will ideally revert to the cypress and longleaf-pine forest that once covered these sandy flatlands. The company also said it had sold 69,000 acres of forestland in Wisconsin for $83 million to the Nature Conservancy. The third and largest deal is intended to preserve up to 400,000 acres of land near Moosehead Lake in central Maine. Financial and other details are still being worked out between the Plum Creek Timber Company, the Nature Conservancy and two regional conservation groups. But for all the good news, celebrated by all sides, a stubborn fact remains: The nearly one million acres that have been preserved in these deals over the past two years, including a 257,000-acre tract in the Adirondacks, represent barely 2 percent of timber company lands that are coming on the market in the East....
River May Flow Again, Full of Salmon Big rivers in the West are reliable sources of bad news. Dammed for electricity and drained for irrigation, they have pushed salmon into extinction, fishermen into bankruptcy and Indians into despair. This dismal pattern, though, may be ending on the Klamath, which straddles the Oregon-California border and has long been one of the nation's most thoroughly fouled-up rivers. Its woes include massive fish kills, blooms of poisonous algae, diabetic Indians, fuming irrigators, litigious environmentalists and aging dams that produce little power while squatting stolidly in the way of reviving the river. Two decisions last week -- one by a federal court in California, the other by the Bush administration -- raise the surprising possibility that the Klamath may overcome many of these troubles. For the first time in the nearly eight decades since the river was dammed, Indians and commercial fishermen, environmentalists and federal fish scientists agree that there are sound reasons to believe in the comeback of a river that once supported the third largest salmon runs on the West Coast....
A fighting chance for the Klamath These are times of both deep despair and unprecedented hope for California's $100 million salmon industry. Despair, because a federal agency is expected this week to recommend either canceling or severely curtailing the 2006 commercial and sport fishing seasons because of collapsing stocks on the Klamath River. Hope, because for the first time in years, genuine progress is being made on a long-term solution to the problem. Though the situation is mired in competing scientific theories, lawsuits and political skirmishing, the bottom line is fairly simple: There are plenty of Chinook salmon in the ocean now, but most of them originated in the Sacramento River. Salmon from the Klamath River, once a producer of millions of fish, are at all-time lows, compelling federal protections. Fewer than 30,000 Klamath Chinook salmon are expected to return to the river this year, well below the 35,000 fish biologists say are needed to sustain the runs. And because both populations mingle in the open sea, fishing for Sacramento River Chinook could imperil the Klamath salmon that remain. Though some biologists say part of the decline is due to poor marine conditions, most researchers say the main problem with the Klamath's salmon is the river itself. Over the years, it has become inhospitable to fish. Much of its water is diverted for agriculture, reducing flows critical to salmon....
EPA May Weaken Rule on Water Quality The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to allow higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic in the drinking water used by small rural communities, in response to complaints that they cannot afford to comply with recently imposed limits. The proposal would roll back a rule that went into effect earlier this year and make it permissible for water systems serving 10,000 or fewer residents to have three times the level of contaminants allowed under that regulation. About 50 million people live in communities that would be affected by the proposed change. In the case of arsenic, the most recent EPA data suggest as many as 10 million Americans are drinking water that does not meet the new federal standards. Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Water, said the agency was trying to satisfy Congress, which instructed EPA in 1996 to take into account that it costs small rural towns proportionately more to meet federal drinking water standards....
Desalination research could 'drought-proof' West Texas towns, businesses West Texas is awash in crude oil while water is a precious and perplexing commodity. In fact, in the 1930s, it's said a barrel of water sold for 10 times the amount of a barrel of crude oil. Water is perplexing because so many of the Permian Basin's oil wells produce water along with oil or natural gas, forcing operators to pay large sums to have it trucked away or otherwise disposed of. At the same time, West Texas communities are looking at ways to ensure plentiful supplies of water for their residents. David Burnett, director of technology at the Global Petroleum Research Institute at Texas A&M and his colleagues think they are nearing a solution to both problems, and their work has earned them the Hearst Energy Award for Technology. Burnett and his colleagues are focused on the desalination of the brackish brine water so plentiful in West Texas and are on the verge of developing a desalination unit small enough for small communities to afford or for a rancher to operate to ensure his livestock have plenty to drink during times of drought, all for about the cost of maintaining a swimming pool....
No beaver left behind: Settling a gnawing issue Every beaver a wanted beaver. That could be the motto of state Rep. Joel Kretz, an Okanogan County rancher who shepherded a beaver relocation bill to unanimous approval in the Legislature – only to see it brutally vetoed last week by Gov. Chris Gregoire. Yes, a beaver relocation bill. Kretz’s brainchild would have allowed Eastern Washington landowners who have longed for a beaver of their own to trap one in Western Washington and bring it back to a loving home. Like Kretz’s ranch. The freshman Republican owns 1,300 acres in Wauconda. His spread has cattle. It has horses. It has timber. What it doesn’t have is a beaver. No beaver to gnaw down the scenery, build dams or whack its tail on the water when the wolves come round. Kretz wanted one badly enough to talk 98 members of the House and 45 members of the Senate into letting him get one....
Endangered lynx set free Volunteers opened metal animal crates in a campground here, but at first nothing came out. Then, its footsteps soundless, a lynx sprinted from its nest of hay and vanished into the snowy Weminuche wilderness, its fur a perfect match for the winter-deadened landscape. Researchers released four Canada lynx on Saturday, another step in a reintroduction program started in 1999 and put into action seven years ago. Unbeknownst to the lynx freed Saturday, they are charged with repopulating a species considered endangered in Colorado and threatened in 47 other states. The Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) plans to release 218 Canada lynx to the San Juan Mountains by the end of April. While the reintroduction program cannot be classified as successful yet, researchers said there is definite progress. Lynx, brown and gray wild cats similar to bobcats, weigh between 18 and 44 pounds, and have tufted ears. Their broad paws -- a trademark feature -- act as natural snowshoes and help them move through the winter landscape. Trackers describe the cats as shy, elusive animals who enjoy living in dark timber....
Grizzly bear experts at odds The government's call to remove federal protections for grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park has sparked sharp debate among some of the country's leading bear experts, who are divided over whether the bear population has recovered enough. On one side, some experts believe delisting the bears now - without greater habitat protections or long- term funding commitments - would mean erasing gains made over the past 30 years and could once again leave the grizzlies in peril. Other experts, however, insist that recovery goals have been met and that it's time for the federal government to focus on lesser-known, struggling bear populations in the West. "The Endangered Species Act was set up to get to what we have now in Yellowstone, a recovered population, and not set up to immunize a species against any kind of threat somebody's imagination might think would happen in the future," said Sterling Miller, who's studied bears for three decades and is now a senior wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Federation in Missoula, Mont. How scientists working with the same data can reach such wildly different conclusions about the fate of the bears is partly a matter of specialty: Many of those who have taken sides are considered either conservation biologists or wildlife biologists - and tend to view the issue and science from those sometimes contrasting perspectives....
Sea Lions' Dining Habits Stump the Corps A particularly crafty sea lion is befuddling the Army Corps of Engineers. Sea lions have been camping out at the base of the Bonneville Dam and eating salmon trying to migrate up the Columbia River to spawn. Last year they ate some 3.5 percent of the migrating run when salmon numbers were down. This year's run begins in earnest this month, but it is off to a slow start. The Seattle Times reported that, as of Tuesday, about 200 of the chinook, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, had gone through the dam's fish passage, compared with an average of 3,085 for the date. Biologists are unsure why that is, but it makes the sea lions' take all the more important. One lion in particular, named C404 after a brand applied by a state and federal program, is in a class by himself. He has figured out how to get into fish ladders that help fish past the dam. The engineers have installed gates and tried huge firecrackers, rockets, rubber bullets and noises that sea lions do not like. Nothing has worked....
The Job No Americans Want Isn't Getting Any Easier The seven sheepherders were eating lunch in a trailer with no toilet, heat or water, its leaky roof held down by a rope. A lunch break, especially one together, was a rare event. But they were celebrating, sort of. Lambing season was ending. That's when the ewes give birth and the sheepherders who come to this country on three-year work visas put in their hardest 12- to 16-hour days, seven days a week. Still, the sheepherders were steeling themselves for spring. From late March until fall, sheepherding is almost unbearably lonely. Each herder is driven deep into pastures far from town or even a paved road. For weeks on end, he sees no one but the boss, and rarely does he have a cellphone or radio. In the list of jobs immigrants perform that no U.S. citizen wants, sheepherding must rank near the top. The 825 or so sheepherders who work the nation's sheep farms -- mostly in California, Texas and Wyoming -- are immigrants here on H-2A visas from Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Mexico, according to the Western Range Association, an industry group....
Beef trial under way in Aberdeen federal court A jury of four men and four women from northeast South Dakota will decide whether meat packers cost cattle producers as much as $42.79 million during the spring of 2001. The federal court case started with jury selection and opening arguments Friday in Aberdeen. Three cattlemen filed the suit two and a half years ago. It alleges that the nation's four largest meat packers knowingly took advantage of a U.S. Department of Agriculture error to lower the amounts paid to farmers and ranchers for their live cattle. All of the meat packers named in the case say they didn't know about the USDA error so it couldn't have impacted live cattle prices. That there was an error is not in dispute. Nor is the fact that it was not the fault of the packers. From April 2 to May 11, 2001, the USDA incorrectly reported the prices of what are called cutout averages for some beef. Cutout reports, which the USDA is in charge of issuing twice each market day, contain average prices of various cuts of meat. During the time frame in question, cutout averages for choice and select meat were too low because a lower quality of meat was used, in part, to figure them. The mistake was the result of an error in computer software provided by a federal government contractor....
No one survived crash in rugged terrain Commercial airline travel in the United States was relatively new when a Transcontinental Air Transport (T.A.T.) plane disappeared en route from Albuquerque to Winslow with three crew members and five passengers on board in early September 1929. A.B. McGaffey, a highly respected businessman from western Valencia County, was among the five missing passengers. Searchers combed the area on land and from the air. Even Charles Lindbergh joined the search, accompanied by his bride, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Although every rumor of a sighting was pursued, nothing had been found of the plane (with wing number 9649) or its passengers and crew for three long days. But then the searchers' luck suddenly seemed to have changed. On Friday, Sept. 6, search plane pilot D.W. Tomlinson delivered promising news after returning from a flight to an area about a hundred miles north of Winslow....
Relative recalls life of Texas gunslinger John King Fisher was killed during an ambush at the old Vaudeville Theater in San Antonio. He was a colorful guy. He wore colorful clothes — big sombreros and Mexican vests stitched with gold. He had colorful friends and colorful enemies. King Fisher wasn’t the target of the ambush. He was with Ben Thompson, the legendary marshal of Austin. Several years before the fateful performance, Thompson had killed the owner of the theater. Unfortunately for Thompson and Fisher, the new owner had been a friend of the old owner and knew how to carry a grudge. King Fisher died in 1884 after a full life. He was 29....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Dead cat sends bridge luncheon ladies to E.R. The scene at the emergency room was right out of "ER." But it was not a four-car pile up, a Metamucil overdose, or a hippopotamus attack, no. Six women, age 41 to 62, were admitted with food poisoning. The woman in charge, who had also been the hostess of the Women's Bridge Luncheon Party, had sent out invitations. She planned on serving a salmon mousse, vinaigrette salad, cold asparagus spears a la Miracle Whip, with Kit Kats and coffee for dessert. Lunch had gone well. All the guests had eaten their salmon mousse. The hostess had been worried since the salmon was farm raised, but it was three times cheaper....
FLE
Federal Prosecutor, Agent Indicted in Detroit
A former federal prosecutor and a State Department security officer were indicted yesterday on charges that they lied during a bungled terrorism trial in Detroit and then sought to cover up their deceptions once the case began to fall apart. Former assistant U.S. attorney Richard G. Convertino, 45, and State Department special agent Harry R. Smith III, 49, were charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the 2003 prosecution, according to an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Detroit. The charges mark the latest embarrassment for the government in a case that was once hailed by former attorney general John D. Ashcroft as one of the most important terrorism prosecutions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It disintegrated after a federal judge ordered an investigation of Convertino's conduct. Legal experts said yesterday that an indictment of a prosecutor for improper conduct in a federal courtroom is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented, in modern times. "The charge is essentially that he prosecuted too aggressively and crossed the line," said Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics. "This is simply astonishing."....
Ex-Prosecutor in Terror Inquiry Is Indicted
A grand jury charged Wednesday that a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who led one of the Justice Department's biggest terrorism investigations concealed critical evidence in an effort to bolster the government's theory that a group of local Muslim men were plotting an attack. The former prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, and a State Department employee who served as a chief government witness were each indicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The grand jury charged that they had conspired to conceal evidence about photographs of a military hospital in Jordan that was the supposed target of a terrorist plot by the Detroit defendants. Mr. Convertino, once a rising star at the Justice Department who fell out of favor with supervisors in Washington, denied that he had ever withheld evidence, and he pledged that he would be vindicated. "These charges are clearly vindictive and retaliatory, and it's an effort to discredit and smear someone who tried to expose the government's mismanagement of the war on terrorism," he said in a telephone interview. "I can't recall a case like this in recent memory where you have not only the collapse of the prosecution's entire case, but now the prosecutor himself indicted," said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, who has written on terrorism prosecutions....
Ex-F.B.I. Agent Accused of Role in Four Organized Crime Killings
A former F.B.I. agent was accused in an indictment today of "acting in concert" with members of organized crime in the murder of four people during the 1980's and early 1990's, according to District Attorney Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn. "This is the most stunning example of official corruption I have ever seen," Mr. Hynes said in a statement. He said a federal agent whose job is to protect lives instead assisted in murder. The retired agent, R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, is charged with providing the gangster Gregory Scarpa Sr. with information that led to the killings. Mr. DeVecchio, who retired in 1996, was the leader of the F.B.I. team that investigated the Colombo crime family and developed ties to Mr. Scarpa, a captain in the Colombo family, in investigating mob activities. Mr. DeVecchio was to be released on $1 million bail after arraignment this afternoon. The bail was to be $100,000 cash with the remainder guaranteed by five former F.B.I. agents, who were among the 45 retired agents that gathered in the courtroom to express support for Mr. DeVecchio. New information provided by Mr. Scarpa's longtime companion, Linda Schiro, led to the indictments, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing nature of the investigation....
The Letter of the Law
In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases." FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal, the two officials said, and pushed back hard against it. "Mueller was personally very concerned," one official says, "not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised by warrantless physical searches." FBI spokesman John Miller said none of the FBI's senior staff are aware of any such discussions and added that the bureau has not conducted "physical searches of any location without consent or a judicial order." In December, the New York Times disclosed the NSA's warrantless electronic surveillance program, resulting in an angry reaction from President Bush. It has not previously been disclosed, however, that administration lawyers had cited the same legal authority to justify warrantless physical searches. But in a little-noticed white paper submitted by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Congress on January 19 justifying the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers made a tacit case that President Bush also has the inherent authority to order such physical searches. In order to fulfill his duties as commander in chief, the 42-page white paper says, "a consistent understanding has developed that the president has inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance within the United States for foreign intelligence purposes." The memo cites congressional testimony of Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in 1994 stating that the Justice Department "believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."....
Court Appears Wary of Terror War Tribunals
The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing Tuesday to the Bush administration's claim that the president has the power on his own to create and control special military tribunals to punish foreigners he deems to be war criminals. Five of the eight justices hearing the case commented that the laws of war and the Geneva Convention set basic rules of fairness for trying alleged war criminals. And they questioned whether the president was free to ignore those basic rules — as well as the rules of American military law. The justices' skepticism suggested a second setback might be looming for the administration's legal strategy in the fight against terrorism. Two years ago, the high court said war — even a new kind of war on terrorism — did not give the president a "blank check" to make new legal rules for capturing and holding prisoners. The case heard Tuesday concerned the rules for punishing these prisoners. But the tenor of the argument suggested the court would again reject President Bush's claim of unilateral power to try and punish alleged Al Qaeda conspirators....
Justices Hint That They'll Rule on Challenge Filed by Detainee
As the justices of the Supreme Court took their seats Tuesday morning to hear Osama bin Laden's former driver challenge the Bush administration's plan to try him before a military commission, one question — perhaps the most important one — was how protective the justices would be of their jurisdiction to decide the case. The answer emerged gradually, but by the end of the tightly packed 90-minute argument, it was fairly clear: highly protective. At least five justices — Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens — appeared ready to reject the administration's argument that the Detainee Treatment Act, passed and signed into law after the court accepted the case in November, had stripped the court of jurisdiction. It was less certain by the end of the argument how the court would then go on to resolve the merits of the case, a multipronged attack on the validity of the military commissions themselves and on their procedures. Lawyers for the former driver, a Yemeni named Salim Ahmed Hamdan who is charged with conspiracy, also argue that he cannot properly be tried before any military commission for that crime because conspiracy is not recognized as a war crime. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement was on the defensive throughout his argument. His stolid refusal to concede that any of the government's positions, on the jurisdictional as well as ultimate questions of the case, might present even theoretical problems provoked the normally soft-spoken Justice Souter into an outburst of anger....
Bill Would Speed Challenge to Surveillance
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, introduced a bill Wednesday that would put lawsuits challenging the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program on a fast track to the Supreme Court. With Congress and the Bush administration at odds over the legality of eavesdropping on Americans without court warrants, the legislation could produce a timely ruling by the court on the program's constitutionality, Mr. Schumer said. "We have a system of checks and balances," he said, "and, in this case, when the stakes are so high, the Supreme Court should be the ultimate check." The bill would permit lawsuits by scholars, journalists and others who assert that they have refrained from calls or e-mail messages to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries because of "a reasonable fear" of N.S.A. eavesdropping. Such suits would be heard by a panel of three federal judges, whose decision could be appealed immediately to the Supreme Court.
The roots of the current debate over presidential power
The recent conflict over President Bush’s domestic surveillance program reflects one of the oldest recurring divisions in American politics, dating all the way to the 1790s. Bush’s Democratic critics have taken a stance that traces back to the Jeffersonian (or Democratic) Republicans, arguing that the U.S. government is rather flexibly bound, but still bound, by the values and rules embedded in our founding documents and, as such, is a government whose power is essentially limited. The Bush administration and its modern (anti-Democratic) Republican defenders have staked out a position that traces back to Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, reasoning from the inherent nature of government and the overwhelming fearsomeness of the challenges the United States faces that the powers of its government must be essentially unlimited. The GOP-Federalist position applies especially to times of foreign crisis, a state that Federalists saw as virtually perpetual in the early Republic and the Republicans have likewise been warning about ever since the outbreak of the cold war in 1946. This recurring argument has often turned on the question of whether the norms and procedures of democracy and republicanism are adequate to national survival in a dangerous world of terrorists, Commies, and Frenchmen. Federalists and modern Republicans alike have often indicated their belief, expressed with varying degrees of regret, that the methods of democratic, accountable, transparent government are not strong enough to meet these challenges. Jeffersonian Republicans and modern Democrats, in turn, have tended to respond that they are....
Federal Prosecutor, Agent Indicted in Detroit
A former federal prosecutor and a State Department security officer were indicted yesterday on charges that they lied during a bungled terrorism trial in Detroit and then sought to cover up their deceptions once the case began to fall apart. Former assistant U.S. attorney Richard G. Convertino, 45, and State Department special agent Harry R. Smith III, 49, were charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the 2003 prosecution, according to an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Detroit. The charges mark the latest embarrassment for the government in a case that was once hailed by former attorney general John D. Ashcroft as one of the most important terrorism prosecutions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It disintegrated after a federal judge ordered an investigation of Convertino's conduct. Legal experts said yesterday that an indictment of a prosecutor for improper conduct in a federal courtroom is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented, in modern times. "The charge is essentially that he prosecuted too aggressively and crossed the line," said Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics. "This is simply astonishing."....
Ex-Prosecutor in Terror Inquiry Is Indicted
A grand jury charged Wednesday that a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who led one of the Justice Department's biggest terrorism investigations concealed critical evidence in an effort to bolster the government's theory that a group of local Muslim men were plotting an attack. The former prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, and a State Department employee who served as a chief government witness were each indicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The grand jury charged that they had conspired to conceal evidence about photographs of a military hospital in Jordan that was the supposed target of a terrorist plot by the Detroit defendants. Mr. Convertino, once a rising star at the Justice Department who fell out of favor with supervisors in Washington, denied that he had ever withheld evidence, and he pledged that he would be vindicated. "These charges are clearly vindictive and retaliatory, and it's an effort to discredit and smear someone who tried to expose the government's mismanagement of the war on terrorism," he said in a telephone interview. "I can't recall a case like this in recent memory where you have not only the collapse of the prosecution's entire case, but now the prosecutor himself indicted," said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, who has written on terrorism prosecutions....
Ex-F.B.I. Agent Accused of Role in Four Organized Crime Killings
A former F.B.I. agent was accused in an indictment today of "acting in concert" with members of organized crime in the murder of four people during the 1980's and early 1990's, according to District Attorney Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn. "This is the most stunning example of official corruption I have ever seen," Mr. Hynes said in a statement. He said a federal agent whose job is to protect lives instead assisted in murder. The retired agent, R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, is charged with providing the gangster Gregory Scarpa Sr. with information that led to the killings. Mr. DeVecchio, who retired in 1996, was the leader of the F.B.I. team that investigated the Colombo crime family and developed ties to Mr. Scarpa, a captain in the Colombo family, in investigating mob activities. Mr. DeVecchio was to be released on $1 million bail after arraignment this afternoon. The bail was to be $100,000 cash with the remainder guaranteed by five former F.B.I. agents, who were among the 45 retired agents that gathered in the courtroom to express support for Mr. DeVecchio. New information provided by Mr. Scarpa's longtime companion, Linda Schiro, led to the indictments, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing nature of the investigation....
The Letter of the Law
In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases." FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal, the two officials said, and pushed back hard against it. "Mueller was personally very concerned," one official says, "not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised by warrantless physical searches." FBI spokesman John Miller said none of the FBI's senior staff are aware of any such discussions and added that the bureau has not conducted "physical searches of any location without consent or a judicial order." In December, the New York Times disclosed the NSA's warrantless electronic surveillance program, resulting in an angry reaction from President Bush. It has not previously been disclosed, however, that administration lawyers had cited the same legal authority to justify warrantless physical searches. But in a little-noticed white paper submitted by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Congress on January 19 justifying the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers made a tacit case that President Bush also has the inherent authority to order such physical searches. In order to fulfill his duties as commander in chief, the 42-page white paper says, "a consistent understanding has developed that the president has inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance within the United States for foreign intelligence purposes." The memo cites congressional testimony of Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in 1994 stating that the Justice Department "believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."....
Court Appears Wary of Terror War Tribunals
The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing Tuesday to the Bush administration's claim that the president has the power on his own to create and control special military tribunals to punish foreigners he deems to be war criminals. Five of the eight justices hearing the case commented that the laws of war and the Geneva Convention set basic rules of fairness for trying alleged war criminals. And they questioned whether the president was free to ignore those basic rules — as well as the rules of American military law. The justices' skepticism suggested a second setback might be looming for the administration's legal strategy in the fight against terrorism. Two years ago, the high court said war — even a new kind of war on terrorism — did not give the president a "blank check" to make new legal rules for capturing and holding prisoners. The case heard Tuesday concerned the rules for punishing these prisoners. But the tenor of the argument suggested the court would again reject President Bush's claim of unilateral power to try and punish alleged Al Qaeda conspirators....
Justices Hint That They'll Rule on Challenge Filed by Detainee
As the justices of the Supreme Court took their seats Tuesday morning to hear Osama bin Laden's former driver challenge the Bush administration's plan to try him before a military commission, one question — perhaps the most important one — was how protective the justices would be of their jurisdiction to decide the case. The answer emerged gradually, but by the end of the tightly packed 90-minute argument, it was fairly clear: highly protective. At least five justices — Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens — appeared ready to reject the administration's argument that the Detainee Treatment Act, passed and signed into law after the court accepted the case in November, had stripped the court of jurisdiction. It was less certain by the end of the argument how the court would then go on to resolve the merits of the case, a multipronged attack on the validity of the military commissions themselves and on their procedures. Lawyers for the former driver, a Yemeni named Salim Ahmed Hamdan who is charged with conspiracy, also argue that he cannot properly be tried before any military commission for that crime because conspiracy is not recognized as a war crime. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement was on the defensive throughout his argument. His stolid refusal to concede that any of the government's positions, on the jurisdictional as well as ultimate questions of the case, might present even theoretical problems provoked the normally soft-spoken Justice Souter into an outburst of anger....
Bill Would Speed Challenge to Surveillance
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, introduced a bill Wednesday that would put lawsuits challenging the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program on a fast track to the Supreme Court. With Congress and the Bush administration at odds over the legality of eavesdropping on Americans without court warrants, the legislation could produce a timely ruling by the court on the program's constitutionality, Mr. Schumer said. "We have a system of checks and balances," he said, "and, in this case, when the stakes are so high, the Supreme Court should be the ultimate check." The bill would permit lawsuits by scholars, journalists and others who assert that they have refrained from calls or e-mail messages to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries because of "a reasonable fear" of N.S.A. eavesdropping. Such suits would be heard by a panel of three federal judges, whose decision could be appealed immediately to the Supreme Court.
The roots of the current debate over presidential power
The recent conflict over President Bush’s domestic surveillance program reflects one of the oldest recurring divisions in American politics, dating all the way to the 1790s. Bush’s Democratic critics have taken a stance that traces back to the Jeffersonian (or Democratic) Republicans, arguing that the U.S. government is rather flexibly bound, but still bound, by the values and rules embedded in our founding documents and, as such, is a government whose power is essentially limited. The Bush administration and its modern (anti-Democratic) Republican defenders have staked out a position that traces back to Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, reasoning from the inherent nature of government and the overwhelming fearsomeness of the challenges the United States faces that the powers of its government must be essentially unlimited. The GOP-Federalist position applies especially to times of foreign crisis, a state that Federalists saw as virtually perpetual in the early Republic and the Republicans have likewise been warning about ever since the outbreak of the cold war in 1946. This recurring argument has often turned on the question of whether the norms and procedures of democracy and republicanism are adequate to national survival in a dangerous world of terrorists, Commies, and Frenchmen. Federalists and modern Republicans alike have often indicated their belief, expressed with varying degrees of regret, that the methods of democratic, accountable, transparent government are not strong enough to meet these challenges. Jeffersonian Republicans and modern Democrats, in turn, have tended to respond that they are....
Sunday, April 02, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
As the antenna turned
By Julie Carter
There are a couple generations still around who remember when life was simple.
You know -- the litany of basics kids today hate to hear us talk about because they have no clue what we are talking about.
One of those things is the TV antenna. You will remember that it never stayed pointed in the right direction to get a clear picture -- if ever you got a clear picture. I grew up thinking it "snowed" on the Ponderosa every Sunday night.
A recent discussion about the things individuals once braved in regards to the television antenna invoked memories of those simpler times.
Urban dwellers learned the fine art of rabbit ear adjustment including additional enhancements such as tin foil strategically placed.
Other adjustments could have included an additional wire run from the "ear" to a window screen or metal window frame. Was tin foil really tin or did we just call it that? And when did it become aluminum?
In rural areas, reception required an exterior antenna and usually the higher off the ground it was, the better the reception.
It often was several hundred miles to the nearest point of origin for the signal that brought one channel and a few favorite shows in black and white.
The common denominator for those antennas of old was the pipe it was mounted to in order to reach such heights and the fact it required regular adjustment by turning to bring it into signal alignment.
As a kid at home, one of four, the drill for us was to climb a ladder, shinny up a roof corner gutter and turn the antenna mounted on the peak of sharply angled tin roof. Someone had to stand at the back door and relay the status of the effort. "That's good!" or "Turn it a little more. No, no, go back a little. You passed it." And I might add we all lived to tell about it and not one of us ever fell off the roof.
In the aforementioned discussion, the use of channel-lock pliers or a pipe wrench for implementing the turn was a common practice. Many made claim to a luxury version of the rooftop set up with the antenna placed in a pipe set in the ground and accessed through a nearby window, avoiding the rooftop climbing adventure.
Inclement weather was a given when it was time to turn the antenna. Wind was the usual culprit to instigate the need but often with the wind came rain, hail, snow and even lightning. All of which put a challenge to the job and a bit of living dangerously.
Then came the really deluxe method of antenna alignment -- the motorized turner that operated from a box on the top of the television. Even that had its own personality with the ever consistent "ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause" as the antenna ker-thunked into position.
Today's youth are masters of the remote control that manages hundreds of channels on cable or satellite. Not only do they remain clueless about the character building efforts of antenna management, they have no idea about the curious wonders of the "sign-off."
You remember, the one where, as children, we stared at a screen with a target looking emblem accompanied by a piercing ringing sound and wondered what would happen next.
Yes,Virginia, there was a time when television was not available 24/7.
© Julie Carter 2006
As the antenna turned
By Julie Carter
There are a couple generations still around who remember when life was simple.
You know -- the litany of basics kids today hate to hear us talk about because they have no clue what we are talking about.
One of those things is the TV antenna. You will remember that it never stayed pointed in the right direction to get a clear picture -- if ever you got a clear picture. I grew up thinking it "snowed" on the Ponderosa every Sunday night.
A recent discussion about the things individuals once braved in regards to the television antenna invoked memories of those simpler times.
Urban dwellers learned the fine art of rabbit ear adjustment including additional enhancements such as tin foil strategically placed.
Other adjustments could have included an additional wire run from the "ear" to a window screen or metal window frame. Was tin foil really tin or did we just call it that? And when did it become aluminum?
In rural areas, reception required an exterior antenna and usually the higher off the ground it was, the better the reception.
It often was several hundred miles to the nearest point of origin for the signal that brought one channel and a few favorite shows in black and white.
The common denominator for those antennas of old was the pipe it was mounted to in order to reach such heights and the fact it required regular adjustment by turning to bring it into signal alignment.
As a kid at home, one of four, the drill for us was to climb a ladder, shinny up a roof corner gutter and turn the antenna mounted on the peak of sharply angled tin roof. Someone had to stand at the back door and relay the status of the effort. "That's good!" or "Turn it a little more. No, no, go back a little. You passed it." And I might add we all lived to tell about it and not one of us ever fell off the roof.
In the aforementioned discussion, the use of channel-lock pliers or a pipe wrench for implementing the turn was a common practice. Many made claim to a luxury version of the rooftop set up with the antenna placed in a pipe set in the ground and accessed through a nearby window, avoiding the rooftop climbing adventure.
Inclement weather was a given when it was time to turn the antenna. Wind was the usual culprit to instigate the need but often with the wind came rain, hail, snow and even lightning. All of which put a challenge to the job and a bit of living dangerously.
Then came the really deluxe method of antenna alignment -- the motorized turner that operated from a box on the top of the television. Even that had its own personality with the ever consistent "ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause" as the antenna ker-thunked into position.
Today's youth are masters of the remote control that manages hundreds of channels on cable or satellite. Not only do they remain clueless about the character building efforts of antenna management, they have no idea about the curious wonders of the "sign-off."
You remember, the one where, as children, we stared at a screen with a target looking emblem accompanied by a piercing ringing sound and wondered what would happen next.
Yes,Virginia, there was a time when television was not available 24/7.
© Julie Carter 2006
OPINION/COMMENTARY
MANAGING “ROADLESS” FOREST LANDS AS WILDERNESS IS ILLEGAL
The U.S. Forest Service may not manage federal land as wilderness unless Congress has designated that land as wilderness, a Colorado task force was advised today by a public interest law firm with years of experience regarding federal land management and the nation’s public land laws. Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has made numerous appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, filed comments with the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force. In 2004, Colorado enacted legislation creating the task force to advise Colorado’s governor how 4.4 million acres of inventoried “roadless” acres of Forest Service lands in Colorado should be managed. “In 1964, Congress adopted the Wilderness Act, pursuant to which it designated areas of federal land as wilderness; this is the only manner in which such a classification may be attached to federal land,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “In addition, Congress reasserted its constitutional authority over federal lands and put a clock on when, if ever, federal lands might be designated as wilderness. That clock has run, which requires that lands not designated by Congress as wilderness be managed as non-wilderness and open to all of the American people.” In 1924, the Forest Service established the first de facto wilderness area; by 1964, it had created 88 de facto wilderness areas totaling 15 million acres. In 1964, Congress dealt legislatively with the issue of wilderness: creating wilderness areas, reserving for itself the designation of wilderness areas, and setting a deadline for the study of potential new wilderness areas....
'Deadline' for Senate ESA rewrite likely to pass without action
Senators working to rewrite the Endangered Species Act appear to be backing away from a previously scheduled deadline to introduce a bill this week, though a spokesman for a key negotiator said the senators still hope to produce a compromise measure soon. Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) had previously set a deadline for the end of March to move a bill through committee. Meeting that deadline now looks less likely, if not impossible, with no bill yet on the table and no hearings scheduled on the issue for this week. Inhofe, ranking member Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) have said they would like to work together to produce consensus ESA legislation. And discussions between staff members from both sides of the aisle are continuing, EPW Committee spokesman Bill Holbrook said yesterday. "We anticipate having a bipartisan bill soon," he said. Lobbyists following the issue said they expect to see legislation in April, possibly next week. Congress only has two weeks to work with before returning to their districts April 10 for the two-week spring recess. Analysts following the issue said parties are still having trouble with the "big ticket" issues, most importantly how to protect habitat for listed species....
FEDS MUST DELIST PREBLE’S MEADOW JUMPING MOUSE
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was advised today by a Colorado public interest law firm that it must remove the Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse (PMJM) from protection under the Endangered Species Act. In comments filed with the agency, Mountain States Legal Foundation noted that official documents prove that the PMJM is not a morphologically, genetically, or ecologically distinct subspecies of meadow jumping mouse, nor is the PMJM a distinct population segment of meadow jumping mouse. The comments follow a February 2006 decision by the FWS to reopen comments for proposed delisting of the PMJM as a result of an unpublished report in January 2006 arguing that the PMJM must be listed. At the time, the FWS was due to rule on delisting, thus ending a process that began with a January 2005 announcement by Secretary Norton following the filing a federal lawsuit challenging the listing of the PMJM. "Even if the agency does what the law requires, it is eight years too late for landowners and governments along the Front Range of Wyoming and Colorado who suffered distress at the hands of federal bureaucrats," said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “Experts long knew that the listing of the mouse is the epitome of junk science."....
Green Gold and Cargo Cults
The biggest environmental meeting of the year will run until the end of March in Curitiba, Brazil. If you ever wondered why efforts in the UN to protect the environment rarely succeed, all the reasons are on display. It is a case study for the Harvard Business Review. The meeting is described by code - "COP8MOP3". Like a message from Big Brother it is everywhere in Curitiba. It dominates the main conference room and is on the sides of buses and every branch in the city of the HSBC Bank, the conference sponsor. The environmental cognoscenti will instantly know the code means this is the eighth meeting of the members of the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) -- MOP8, joined with the third meeting of the parties to the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention -- COP3. So what is the meeting for? The Convention on Biodiversity enjoins the world to protect Biodiversity. It was never clear what that meant, leading the US Congress to warn the Administration -- any administration -- not to join it. That was sound advice. The main business at this conference is not to protect biodiversity, but to endorse a return to the sort of economic philosophy that has impoverished many nations. Explaining this is a difficult message. Maybe that is why the UN officials have used code to define the meeting....
Senate Shuts Out Dissent on Greenhouse Gas Limits
Next week’s scheduled Senate hearing on mandatory greenhouse gas emissions limits misses a valuable opportunity to present a representative view of the debate on the topic. Instead of soliciting testimony from a range of views, Energy & Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Ranking Member Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) have stacked the witness list with alarmist environmental activist groups and opportunistic corporations trying to profit from the artificial scarcity that would be imposed by caps on carbon emissions. “Not only have Senators Domenici and Bingaman refused to include reasonable input from skeptics of an emissions trading scheme, they seem to have forgotten to include a representative from the one corporation which most enthusiastically embraced emissions credits – Enron,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred L. Smith, Jr. “Many of Enron’s former employees would no doubt have been happy to remind the committee of the company’s strong lobbying for carbon caps and emissions trading and their plans to profit massively under such a system.” An emissions trading program of the kind envisioned by Domenici and Bingaman would amount to an undeclared tax on energy, raising costs to consumers and disadvantaging energy-intensive industry to the profit of a handful of well-positioned corporations....
UTAH FAMILY ADDS TWO COUNTS TO FEDERAL BOMBING SITE CASE
A Utah family, which for decades has urged the United States to fulfill its contractual and moral obligations to the family by cleaning up family property the United States used as a bombing and weapons testing site, today added two more counts in the family’s lawsuit against the United States in Utah federal district court. The lawsuit, filed by F. Douglas Cannon, Margaret Louise Cannon, and Allan Cannon, contends that the failure of the United States to reclaim some 1,417 acres of land that the Cannon family owns just south of the Army Dugway Proving Grounds in Tooele County in west central Utah violates the federal Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The Cannon family’s grandfather signed a contract with the Army under which the land was to be reclaimed. “It is clear that the United States, by failing to do what it committed by contract to do, violated federal administrative procedure law as well as an environmental law adopted to protect the public from hazardous wastes,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the family. “The United States agreed to restore the property to ‘as good as condition’ as it was in at the time of the contract, which the United States failed to do. Today we added two federal charges created by that failure.” In May 1945, during World War II, the U.S. Army entered into a contract with Jesse Fox Cannon to survey and to perform exploratory and construction work in a section of Mr. Cannon’s property. Instead, the Army began “Project Sphinx” in which, contrary to the contract, it bombed the entire property and used incendiary weapons such as butane, gasoline, and napalm, chemical munitions such as phosgene and mustard agent, and some defoliants....
Easing the natural-gas crunch
High gasoline prices have grabbed headlines over the past year, but the bigger story is natural gas. The rise in natural-gas prices has been considerably greater and imposes serious burdens on consumers and industries that use natural gas. Yet domestic gas production has been flat, largely due to legal and political constraints on drilling. Throughout the 1990s, natural gas was cheap and plentiful, and policymakers became complacent about its future. Yielding to opposition from environmentalists as well as legislators from Florida and a few other coastal states, the federal government placed strict limits on new exploration and drilling, especially in offshore areas. At the same time, tough Clean Air Act regulations raised the cost of generating coal-fired electricity, making natural gas an attractive alternative for utilities. As a result, most power plants built since 1990 have been natural gas-fired, further straining supplies. Plus, consumer demand for natural gas was rising, as were the needs of gas-dependent industries such as chemical and fertilizer production. With supplies limited and demand growing, price hikes were inevitable. Natural gas stayed around $2 per thousand cubic feet throughout the 1990s but has shot up since, averaging $9 per thousand cubic feet in 2005. If the price of gasoline had risen that much in percentage terms, it would exceed $5 per gallon....
Big Government’s New Pet Project If your cat is planning to have kittens, you better take a number. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hatched the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The NAIS comes in response to fears of mad cow disease and bioterrorism, even though there are at most three instances of mad cow disease in U.S. history and no documented instances of animals being used for bioterrorism. This program, which began on a voluntary basis in 2004, becomes mandatory this year for 25 percent of premises where animals are kept. Eventually, all premises will be required to register their animals with the government or face criminal penalties, including a fine of $1,000 per day. Every animal on the premises must be given a radio-frequency identification tag (RFID). States can choose to administer the program themselves. Each state can determine the definition of a “premise.” Texas and most other states will likely exclude private pets, but persons who raise or transfer animals will be covered. Accordingly, if a litter of kittens is born and the owner wishes to sell or give them away, the owner must register his premises and tag the kittens with a 15-digit electronic identification device. While large agribusiness operations may have the wherewithal to implement this scheme, small farmers throughout the nation are bracing for an unbearable regulatory burden. Even high school 4-H or FFA programs will have to comply with this mandate, although the Commission is considering an amendment to allow them to register each project rather than every animal. The red tape associated with the NAIS does not end after a premises owner registers his premises and tags and registers his animals. Rather, the burden continues as the owner must report, within 24 hours, any missing animal, any missing tag, the sale of an animal, the death of an animal, the slaughter of an animal, the purchase of an animal, the movement of an animal off the farm or homestead, or the movement of an animal onto the farm or homestead....
Equal Rights for Animals?
Believe it or not, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals may have finally gone too far. The group, which decries the killing of chickens but apparently has no stand on the partial-birth abortion of human beings, has decided to suspend its latest animal rights campaign—just a few weeks after kicking off its national tour. The exhibit went by the bizarre title, “Are Animals the New Slaves?” It compared the lynching of black Americans to the killing of animals for food. Twelve panels showed such images as noosed black men hanging from trees, juxtaposed with shots of slaughtered cows. But, even though PETA now appears to be pulling back, the damage has already been done. The exhibit appeared in 17 cities before PETA decided to put the campaign on hold. PETA spokesperson Dawn Carr told the Associated Press, “We’re not continuing right now while we evaluate. We’re reviewing feedback we’ve received—most of it overwhelmingly positive and some of it quite negative.” I’d really like the chance to see those individuals who offered the positive feedback. Were they on two legs or four? PETA has certainly had some shenanigans to its credit in the past, but this latest stunt truly crosses the line. In New Haven, Connecticut, the situation surrounding the exhibit became so volatile that police had to be called in. This has to be insensitivity at its highest....
Animal-rights groups hide violent subculture
Given the animated debate over the use of live animals in medical education ("Wisconsin medical school's dog research draws scrutiny," March 12), it is worthwhile, I feel, to take a close look at the practice's chief antagonists: the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM. The misnamed "physicians committee" is a PETA-affiliated animal-rights group whose membership includes fewer than 4 percent physicians. Dr. John Pippin is an exception, a doctor who openly associates with PCRM. Most mainstream physicians understand how radical the group really is, including Pippin's former employer. In 2004, the world-renowned Cooper Clinic terminated Pippin, its then-chief cardiovascular specialist, because the clinic learned he was moonlighting for the animal-rights fringe. Earlier in 2004, Newsweek reported that PCRM's president, psychiatrist Neal Barnard, had "co-signed letters on PCRM letterhead with the leader of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal-rights group the Department of Justice calls a 'domestic terrorist threat."' That same leader, Kevin Kjonaas, who co-signed the letters with Barnard, was convicted earlier this month in federal court on domestic terrorism charges related to an animal-rights campaign....
MANAGING “ROADLESS” FOREST LANDS AS WILDERNESS IS ILLEGAL
The U.S. Forest Service may not manage federal land as wilderness unless Congress has designated that land as wilderness, a Colorado task force was advised today by a public interest law firm with years of experience regarding federal land management and the nation’s public land laws. Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has made numerous appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, filed comments with the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force. In 2004, Colorado enacted legislation creating the task force to advise Colorado’s governor how 4.4 million acres of inventoried “roadless” acres of Forest Service lands in Colorado should be managed. “In 1964, Congress adopted the Wilderness Act, pursuant to which it designated areas of federal land as wilderness; this is the only manner in which such a classification may be attached to federal land,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “In addition, Congress reasserted its constitutional authority over federal lands and put a clock on when, if ever, federal lands might be designated as wilderness. That clock has run, which requires that lands not designated by Congress as wilderness be managed as non-wilderness and open to all of the American people.” In 1924, the Forest Service established the first de facto wilderness area; by 1964, it had created 88 de facto wilderness areas totaling 15 million acres. In 1964, Congress dealt legislatively with the issue of wilderness: creating wilderness areas, reserving for itself the designation of wilderness areas, and setting a deadline for the study of potential new wilderness areas....
'Deadline' for Senate ESA rewrite likely to pass without action
Senators working to rewrite the Endangered Species Act appear to be backing away from a previously scheduled deadline to introduce a bill this week, though a spokesman for a key negotiator said the senators still hope to produce a compromise measure soon. Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) had previously set a deadline for the end of March to move a bill through committee. Meeting that deadline now looks less likely, if not impossible, with no bill yet on the table and no hearings scheduled on the issue for this week. Inhofe, ranking member Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) have said they would like to work together to produce consensus ESA legislation. And discussions between staff members from both sides of the aisle are continuing, EPW Committee spokesman Bill Holbrook said yesterday. "We anticipate having a bipartisan bill soon," he said. Lobbyists following the issue said they expect to see legislation in April, possibly next week. Congress only has two weeks to work with before returning to their districts April 10 for the two-week spring recess. Analysts following the issue said parties are still having trouble with the "big ticket" issues, most importantly how to protect habitat for listed species....
FEDS MUST DELIST PREBLE’S MEADOW JUMPING MOUSE
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was advised today by a Colorado public interest law firm that it must remove the Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse (PMJM) from protection under the Endangered Species Act. In comments filed with the agency, Mountain States Legal Foundation noted that official documents prove that the PMJM is not a morphologically, genetically, or ecologically distinct subspecies of meadow jumping mouse, nor is the PMJM a distinct population segment of meadow jumping mouse. The comments follow a February 2006 decision by the FWS to reopen comments for proposed delisting of the PMJM as a result of an unpublished report in January 2006 arguing that the PMJM must be listed. At the time, the FWS was due to rule on delisting, thus ending a process that began with a January 2005 announcement by Secretary Norton following the filing a federal lawsuit challenging the listing of the PMJM. "Even if the agency does what the law requires, it is eight years too late for landowners and governments along the Front Range of Wyoming and Colorado who suffered distress at the hands of federal bureaucrats," said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “Experts long knew that the listing of the mouse is the epitome of junk science."....
Green Gold and Cargo Cults
The biggest environmental meeting of the year will run until the end of March in Curitiba, Brazil. If you ever wondered why efforts in the UN to protect the environment rarely succeed, all the reasons are on display. It is a case study for the Harvard Business Review. The meeting is described by code - "COP8MOP3". Like a message from Big Brother it is everywhere in Curitiba. It dominates the main conference room and is on the sides of buses and every branch in the city of the HSBC Bank, the conference sponsor. The environmental cognoscenti will instantly know the code means this is the eighth meeting of the members of the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) -- MOP8, joined with the third meeting of the parties to the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention -- COP3. So what is the meeting for? The Convention on Biodiversity enjoins the world to protect Biodiversity. It was never clear what that meant, leading the US Congress to warn the Administration -- any administration -- not to join it. That was sound advice. The main business at this conference is not to protect biodiversity, but to endorse a return to the sort of economic philosophy that has impoverished many nations. Explaining this is a difficult message. Maybe that is why the UN officials have used code to define the meeting....
Senate Shuts Out Dissent on Greenhouse Gas Limits
Next week’s scheduled Senate hearing on mandatory greenhouse gas emissions limits misses a valuable opportunity to present a representative view of the debate on the topic. Instead of soliciting testimony from a range of views, Energy & Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Ranking Member Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) have stacked the witness list with alarmist environmental activist groups and opportunistic corporations trying to profit from the artificial scarcity that would be imposed by caps on carbon emissions. “Not only have Senators Domenici and Bingaman refused to include reasonable input from skeptics of an emissions trading scheme, they seem to have forgotten to include a representative from the one corporation which most enthusiastically embraced emissions credits – Enron,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred L. Smith, Jr. “Many of Enron’s former employees would no doubt have been happy to remind the committee of the company’s strong lobbying for carbon caps and emissions trading and their plans to profit massively under such a system.” An emissions trading program of the kind envisioned by Domenici and Bingaman would amount to an undeclared tax on energy, raising costs to consumers and disadvantaging energy-intensive industry to the profit of a handful of well-positioned corporations....
UTAH FAMILY ADDS TWO COUNTS TO FEDERAL BOMBING SITE CASE
A Utah family, which for decades has urged the United States to fulfill its contractual and moral obligations to the family by cleaning up family property the United States used as a bombing and weapons testing site, today added two more counts in the family’s lawsuit against the United States in Utah federal district court. The lawsuit, filed by F. Douglas Cannon, Margaret Louise Cannon, and Allan Cannon, contends that the failure of the United States to reclaim some 1,417 acres of land that the Cannon family owns just south of the Army Dugway Proving Grounds in Tooele County in west central Utah violates the federal Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The Cannon family’s grandfather signed a contract with the Army under which the land was to be reclaimed. “It is clear that the United States, by failing to do what it committed by contract to do, violated federal administrative procedure law as well as an environmental law adopted to protect the public from hazardous wastes,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the family. “The United States agreed to restore the property to ‘as good as condition’ as it was in at the time of the contract, which the United States failed to do. Today we added two federal charges created by that failure.” In May 1945, during World War II, the U.S. Army entered into a contract with Jesse Fox Cannon to survey and to perform exploratory and construction work in a section of Mr. Cannon’s property. Instead, the Army began “Project Sphinx” in which, contrary to the contract, it bombed the entire property and used incendiary weapons such as butane, gasoline, and napalm, chemical munitions such as phosgene and mustard agent, and some defoliants....
Easing the natural-gas crunch
High gasoline prices have grabbed headlines over the past year, but the bigger story is natural gas. The rise in natural-gas prices has been considerably greater and imposes serious burdens on consumers and industries that use natural gas. Yet domestic gas production has been flat, largely due to legal and political constraints on drilling. Throughout the 1990s, natural gas was cheap and plentiful, and policymakers became complacent about its future. Yielding to opposition from environmentalists as well as legislators from Florida and a few other coastal states, the federal government placed strict limits on new exploration and drilling, especially in offshore areas. At the same time, tough Clean Air Act regulations raised the cost of generating coal-fired electricity, making natural gas an attractive alternative for utilities. As a result, most power plants built since 1990 have been natural gas-fired, further straining supplies. Plus, consumer demand for natural gas was rising, as were the needs of gas-dependent industries such as chemical and fertilizer production. With supplies limited and demand growing, price hikes were inevitable. Natural gas stayed around $2 per thousand cubic feet throughout the 1990s but has shot up since, averaging $9 per thousand cubic feet in 2005. If the price of gasoline had risen that much in percentage terms, it would exceed $5 per gallon....
Big Government’s New Pet Project If your cat is planning to have kittens, you better take a number. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hatched the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The NAIS comes in response to fears of mad cow disease and bioterrorism, even though there are at most three instances of mad cow disease in U.S. history and no documented instances of animals being used for bioterrorism. This program, which began on a voluntary basis in 2004, becomes mandatory this year for 25 percent of premises where animals are kept. Eventually, all premises will be required to register their animals with the government or face criminal penalties, including a fine of $1,000 per day. Every animal on the premises must be given a radio-frequency identification tag (RFID). States can choose to administer the program themselves. Each state can determine the definition of a “premise.” Texas and most other states will likely exclude private pets, but persons who raise or transfer animals will be covered. Accordingly, if a litter of kittens is born and the owner wishes to sell or give them away, the owner must register his premises and tag the kittens with a 15-digit electronic identification device. While large agribusiness operations may have the wherewithal to implement this scheme, small farmers throughout the nation are bracing for an unbearable regulatory burden. Even high school 4-H or FFA programs will have to comply with this mandate, although the Commission is considering an amendment to allow them to register each project rather than every animal. The red tape associated with the NAIS does not end after a premises owner registers his premises and tags and registers his animals. Rather, the burden continues as the owner must report, within 24 hours, any missing animal, any missing tag, the sale of an animal, the death of an animal, the slaughter of an animal, the purchase of an animal, the movement of an animal off the farm or homestead, or the movement of an animal onto the farm or homestead....
Equal Rights for Animals?
Believe it or not, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals may have finally gone too far. The group, which decries the killing of chickens but apparently has no stand on the partial-birth abortion of human beings, has decided to suspend its latest animal rights campaign—just a few weeks after kicking off its national tour. The exhibit went by the bizarre title, “Are Animals the New Slaves?” It compared the lynching of black Americans to the killing of animals for food. Twelve panels showed such images as noosed black men hanging from trees, juxtaposed with shots of slaughtered cows. But, even though PETA now appears to be pulling back, the damage has already been done. The exhibit appeared in 17 cities before PETA decided to put the campaign on hold. PETA spokesperson Dawn Carr told the Associated Press, “We’re not continuing right now while we evaluate. We’re reviewing feedback we’ve received—most of it overwhelmingly positive and some of it quite negative.” I’d really like the chance to see those individuals who offered the positive feedback. Were they on two legs or four? PETA has certainly had some shenanigans to its credit in the past, but this latest stunt truly crosses the line. In New Haven, Connecticut, the situation surrounding the exhibit became so volatile that police had to be called in. This has to be insensitivity at its highest....
Animal-rights groups hide violent subculture
Given the animated debate over the use of live animals in medical education ("Wisconsin medical school's dog research draws scrutiny," March 12), it is worthwhile, I feel, to take a close look at the practice's chief antagonists: the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM. The misnamed "physicians committee" is a PETA-affiliated animal-rights group whose membership includes fewer than 4 percent physicians. Dr. John Pippin is an exception, a doctor who openly associates with PCRM. Most mainstream physicians understand how radical the group really is, including Pippin's former employer. In 2004, the world-renowned Cooper Clinic terminated Pippin, its then-chief cardiovascular specialist, because the clinic learned he was moonlighting for the animal-rights fringe. Earlier in 2004, Newsweek reported that PCRM's president, psychiatrist Neal Barnard, had "co-signed letters on PCRM letterhead with the leader of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal-rights group the Department of Justice calls a 'domestic terrorist threat."' That same leader, Kevin Kjonaas, who co-signed the letters with Barnard, was convicted earlier this month in federal court on domestic terrorism charges related to an animal-rights campaign....
Friday, March 31, 2006
SPLIT ESTATE
Please find below and attached a sample set of comments on the BLM Split Estate Issue. Given the poor attendance of landowers and users at the Listening Session in Albquerque, it is IMPERATIVE that LOTS of written comments go in.
If you have personal experience with impacts of the oil and gas industry on the surface estate, please include them. The more personal you can make the comments, the better off we will be thanks.
The comment deadline is tomorrow, April 1, 2006.
Thanks!
March 31, 3006
Mr. Jim Perry, Environmental Scientist
Fluid Minerals Group
Bureau of Land Management
1620 L Street NW, Room 501
Washington DC, 20036 email: splitestate@blm.gov
RE: Review of policies, regulations & laws directing leasing and development of federally managed oil and natural gas under privately owned surface lands
Dear Mr. Perry:
Landowners in the West should not and cannot bear the uncompensated costs of affordable fluid energy for our entire nation. As Americans continue to pay ever-increasing prices at the gas pump, it seems that the fluid energy industry that is making literally billions upon billions of dollars should be ready, willing and able to do their share in protecting private property rights and conservation of our nation’s natural resources that reside on the surface. Given that the industry is unwilling to do so, it is incumbent upon the government and its’ regulatory agencies to provide the structure necessary.
As members of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association (NMCGA), we fully support the detailed comments that the Association has submitted. We want to be sure that the following items are addressed as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) addresses the need to balance fluid energy production with private property rights and natural resource conservation:
The Mining Act must be amended to reflect appreciation of the surface estate over public minerals
Changes need to be made in Onshore Order #1
The BLM must exercise its’ regulatory authority to ensure that:
the best technologies are used to create the least amount of surface damage, even if they are not the least expensive options,
surface use agreements are required
bonding is adequate for the damage anticipated
reclamation is accomplished
Thank you for your consideration. We understand the need for a secure domestic energy supply and fully support responsible energy development. As rural citizens, we are perhaps more dependent upon fluid energy than our urban counter parts for livelihood. It is essential that the BLM find a way to protect surface values, property rights and the water so precious to the West, while permitting responsible oil and gas development.
Sincerely,
Caren Cowan
Executive Director
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
Albuquerque, New Mexico
505.247.0584 phone
505.842.1766 fax
Please find below and attached a sample set of comments on the BLM Split Estate Issue. Given the poor attendance of landowers and users at the Listening Session in Albquerque, it is IMPERATIVE that LOTS of written comments go in.
If you have personal experience with impacts of the oil and gas industry on the surface estate, please include them. The more personal you can make the comments, the better off we will be thanks.
The comment deadline is tomorrow, April 1, 2006.
Thanks!
March 31, 3006
Mr. Jim Perry, Environmental Scientist
Fluid Minerals Group
Bureau of Land Management
1620 L Street NW, Room 501
Washington DC, 20036 email: splitestate@blm.gov
RE: Review of policies, regulations & laws directing leasing and development of federally managed oil and natural gas under privately owned surface lands
Dear Mr. Perry:
Landowners in the West should not and cannot bear the uncompensated costs of affordable fluid energy for our entire nation. As Americans continue to pay ever-increasing prices at the gas pump, it seems that the fluid energy industry that is making literally billions upon billions of dollars should be ready, willing and able to do their share in protecting private property rights and conservation of our nation’s natural resources that reside on the surface. Given that the industry is unwilling to do so, it is incumbent upon the government and its’ regulatory agencies to provide the structure necessary.
As members of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association (NMCGA), we fully support the detailed comments that the Association has submitted. We want to be sure that the following items are addressed as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) addresses the need to balance fluid energy production with private property rights and natural resource conservation:
The Mining Act must be amended to reflect appreciation of the surface estate over public minerals
Changes need to be made in Onshore Order #1
The BLM must exercise its’ regulatory authority to ensure that:
the best technologies are used to create the least amount of surface damage, even if they are not the least expensive options,
surface use agreements are required
bonding is adequate for the damage anticipated
reclamation is accomplished
Thank you for your consideration. We understand the need for a secure domestic energy supply and fully support responsible energy development. As rural citizens, we are perhaps more dependent upon fluid energy than our urban counter parts for livelihood. It is essential that the BLM find a way to protect surface values, property rights and the water so precious to the West, while permitting responsible oil and gas development.
Sincerely,
Caren Cowan
Executive Director
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
Albuquerque, New Mexico
505.247.0584 phone
505.842.1766 fax
NEWS ROUNDUP
Creature Feeds Conspiracies, Controversy, Part II In Eastern Montana, permits had been issued and a plan formed to take care of a wandering creature, wolf or not, that had killed 36 sheep and injured some 71 more. But the level of frustration in the prairie communities continued to build, further feeding a divide between two cultures -- one rooted to the land the animal was wandering, and the other filled with regulations designed to protect the animal. Some of the first questions about how to deal with the stock-killer concerned the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Among the least popular of the federal government's many, many unpopular endeavors in the region, the CM Russell's one million acres (including the vast acreage of the surface of Fort Peck Reservoir) has been a flash point since it was set aside as a "game range" in 1936, following the general exodus of human population from the region in the wake of the Dust Bowl years. Among the extremely hardy agricultural people who did not leave, who stayed on, year after year, building larger and larger holdings in order to survive, there is ongoing suspicion that the Refuge, which has been the site of prairie dog town recovery (an idea that disgusts many ranchers who have battled the rodents for decades) is also the secret site of wolf re-introductions. Such secret re-introductions, it is theorized, will have the conspiratorial effect of bringing down even more federal regulations on ranching operations and have the wolves killing stock that will help to ease ranchers into the financial abyss. That event will force the sale of private property and begin the creation of the Big Open, or the even more despised notion of the Buffalo Commons, a huge, unpeopled, wildlife reserve, running through the parts of the Great Plains states that have suffered big declines in agriculture and population since the 1920's....
Desert water more precious than gold Water has been called "the essential element" and nowhere was and still is that more true than Tooele County. When you think of the water resources of Tooele County, you may say as Sir Richard Burton did in 1860 "Water, Water, everywhere and not a drop to drink." Millions and millions of gallons of water cover vast tracts of the county in Great Salt Lake and out in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Unfortunately, this water is useless except for the heavy metals, salt and brine shrimp extracted from it in mass quantities each year. This is not the complete story of water in the county, however, as there are several significant sources, several of which remain untapped. It was said back in the Old West that the only thing more valuable than gold was water. If you were a cattle rancher or a farmer, your spread could only grow as far as your water resources and the conditions of the range would allow. Water has been utilized by the people of the county in many interesting ways since the first settlers eked out their first season at the mouth of Settlement Canyon. The first obvious use was for culinary purposes and the second was irrigation. But after that, the pioneers put the water resources of the county to work in all kinds of interesting ways. Saw mills were constructed on Settlement Canyon Creek and near the Benson Grist Mill in the early 1850s. The power of water was utilized to mill the lumber that built the early settlers' homes, churches, barns and other buildings. Water power was also used to grind the wheat into flour that was brought to the mill....
Rancher lifestyle endures In Rush Valley father Johnson and his family continue a lifestyle generations old & growing hay and raising cattle. Johnson, 64, says to him the lifestyle is priceless & worth far more than any profit he could make through selling his water rights. As suburbanization encroaches culturally and physically, the Johnsons could make a a bundle to sell out. The water used to grow just one acre of alfalfa can serve as many as five suburban homes. Darrell's father Orson is in his 80s. Father and son & one at the age of retirement and one well past it & drive their tractor together around the farm, work and talk. Sons and grandsons work on the farm and help out. Family members have sometimes worked jobs in town in order to make ends meet. Johnson combined his passion with practical necessity for about ten years when he worked for a bank in Salt Lake loaning money to ranchers. He was willing to do what was needed to preserve the rural lifestyle they love. Another generation down Darrell sees future ranchers. "I've got a 4-year old grandson helping me all morning and you can bet he's going to want to stay out here and do this," Johnson said. "This little guy knows as much about cows as I do. It's a good life....
Irrigators wrestle with water ruling Klamath Reclamation Project irrigators huddled Tuesday to decide their next step after a federal judge required accelerated implementation of a Klamath River management plan. U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong's decision Monday put the river's water allocation plan into effect immediately rather than over the next five years. If flows drop to levels that threaten coho salmon, water could be withheld from irrigators. Most local irrigators agree that's not likely to happen this summer because of the significant snowpack in the mountains. As of Monday, the Klamath Basin's snowpack was 163 percent of average - compared with one-third of average a year ago. Oregon has the West's best overall snowpack with 136 percent of average. Despite that, the president of Klamath Water Users Association expressed frustration with the scope of Armstrong's ruling. Steve Kandra said the Klamath Project is only a small part of the Klamath River system, but was hit with accelerated phases of river management because that's all the judge could legally affect....
National director says agency improving work relationship with oil and gas industry The national director for the Bureau of Land Management told oil and gas producers in Eddy County Thursday that the agency's goal is to work smarter, more efficiently and cooperatively with the oil and gas industry. She said that the Carlsbad Field Office is one of several pilot offices in the Western states that will be implementing the new initiatives, which have a goal of decreasing processing times for applications for oil and gas drilling and inspections of oil and gas wells. The pilot offices have three years to demonstrate their effectiveness. At the end of the third year, the BLM will have to report to Congress, said Alan Kesterke, who heads the BLM national energy policy liaison Energy Act implementation team. Dale Hall, national director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who accompanied Clarke from Washington, said pilot offices like Carlsbad BLM office are the key to doing business in a new way. He said part of the pilot office program is to staff the local BLM office with a biologist from Fish and Wildlife and another person from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. In essence, it will be a one-stop office for the oil and gas industry. The Local BLM office is also in the process of hiring 23 more people....
Manmade Ponds Help Preserve Wetlands More people building ponds for golf courses and subdivisions or to retain stormwater and wastewater helped create the nation's first net gain in wetlands in a half-century of government record-keeping. About 5 percent of the contiguous United States, or almost 108 million acres, was covered with wetlands as of 2004, the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service reported Thursday. It found a net gain of 191,800 acres of wetlands since the last report in 1997. Bush administration officials cast the report as evidence that the nation has turned a corner on years of wetlands losses. State wetland managers and advocacy groups for hunting, recreation and environmental causes all called the report misleading. The Fish and Wildlife Service reported a gain of 715,300 acres of shallow-water wetlands - mainly artificial varieties of ponds - which offset a continued loss of 523,500 acres of marshes, swamps, and other more traditional and natural wetlands that are the so-called nurseries of life....
Hearing opens on water plan for Nevada lobbyist-developer Nevada's state engineer opens hearings Tuesday on contested plans for water that lobbyist-turned-developer Harvey Whittemore needs for a huge project, 60 miles north of Las Vegas, that eventually could include 50,000 homes and 10 golf courses. State Engineer Hugh Ricci has scheduled three days for a review of applications by Lincoln County and the Vidler Water Co. to pump 14,000 acre-feet of water a year from Kane Valley to supply the big Coyote Springs development. Whittemore says he already has water rights available for the first 5,000 homes. The additional water would allow for continued growth of the development, which could include condominiums and hotels in addition to individual homes. Vidler attorney Steve Hartman said the firm would be comfortable if Ricci approves 5,000 acre-feet and then orders a prolonged test to see if there are any adverse effects on the 28-mile-long Kane Valley. The plan has generated protests from the federal government, which claims the pumping would harm the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and threaten some endangered species, including a small fish known as the Moapa dace and the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a small bird....
Column: Gale's Greatest Hits Five years ago, the Interior Department, which oversees one-quarter of the nation's land, 9,000 employees and nine federal agencies, appeared to have turned a corner. Outgoing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt had just pulled off a remarkable conservation offensive, getting his boss, Bill Clinton, to create and expand more than a dozen national monuments in the West. The monuments capped the Babbitt team's many efforts, from trying to reform the 1872 Mining Law to implementing habitat protection plans for imperiled species living in the path of growth. So thoroughly had Babbitt pushed conservation that when Gale Norton, a former attorney general from Colorado, took over the reins in 2001, several pundits predicted that she would have a difficult time dismantling a "reborn" Interior Department. But that's not how things worked out....
Staying down on the farm Over the past quarter-century, Arizona farmers and ranchers have sold an average of 1,320 acres a day. Houses and shops have replaced almost one-third of the state's farmland. But as more farmers sell their land to developers, a handful of die-hards are turning to agritourism, also known as agritainment, to preserve their farms and their way of life. "We are losing our farmers, our locally grown food and the knowledge of how fertile this region was before the houses came," said Katie Decker, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Agriculture, which charts the state's ongoing loss of farmland. Agritourism, which combines agriculture and tourism by providing the public with a farming experience, also gives farmers who want to keep plowing a way to fight off developers....
Johanns releases farm program wish list March is among thousands who have given wish lists to the Agriculture Department as it prepares for an overhaul of farm programs next year. Many talked in person to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns during a nationwide series of forums. On Wednesday, Johanns issued an exhaustive summary of the comments, more than 4,000 in all. Comments and summaries are available on the department's Web site, http://www.usda.gov. The department did not say which issues were most talked about. But a Washington-based group, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, reviewed transcripts of the forums earlier this year and said that 40 percent of those who spoke mentioned conservation. Next comes a series of analysis papers on different issues. Johanns said he will decide what to ask Congress for later, likely early next year....
We’re Thinking About Tomorrow Susie Morales lives west of Nogales in a remote canyon crisscrossed by smuggling trails. From her kitchen door, she can look out and sees burreros — drug mules — backpacking marijuana into the country. They're close enough to wink at her. Her house has been broken into many times, and she had to protect it — it looks like a fort, with security doors, window bars, and an expensive alarm system. At suppertime, when her husband is outside talking to passing illegals, she keeps a rifle on the table while she cooks. As maddening as that insecurity is, what bothers Susie most is that she can no longer live the way she was raised. For generations on this border, residents have shown generosity and kindness to passersby. But rampant drug-running and illegal immigration have driven a stake through the heart of that way of life. The invasion has brutalized border country, and for Susie, who is fifth generation, that means making the heart-breaking decision to stop offering food and water to illegals. They come in hordes now, and the danger has grown too great. "I can't describe how upsetting it is to have to change who I am," says Susie. "Why, after 50 years, should I have to face this moral conflict?" In Cochise County, rancher John Ladd fights to keep what he owns. With 10 1/2 miles of land abutting the Mexican line, he watches the border war every day through his living room window. In the early 2000s, the Border Patrol averaged 350 arrests every 24 hours on his property, including 700 in a single night....
Creature Feeds Conspiracies, Controversy, Part II In Eastern Montana, permits had been issued and a plan formed to take care of a wandering creature, wolf or not, that had killed 36 sheep and injured some 71 more. But the level of frustration in the prairie communities continued to build, further feeding a divide between two cultures -- one rooted to the land the animal was wandering, and the other filled with regulations designed to protect the animal. Some of the first questions about how to deal with the stock-killer concerned the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Among the least popular of the federal government's many, many unpopular endeavors in the region, the CM Russell's one million acres (including the vast acreage of the surface of Fort Peck Reservoir) has been a flash point since it was set aside as a "game range" in 1936, following the general exodus of human population from the region in the wake of the Dust Bowl years. Among the extremely hardy agricultural people who did not leave, who stayed on, year after year, building larger and larger holdings in order to survive, there is ongoing suspicion that the Refuge, which has been the site of prairie dog town recovery (an idea that disgusts many ranchers who have battled the rodents for decades) is also the secret site of wolf re-introductions. Such secret re-introductions, it is theorized, will have the conspiratorial effect of bringing down even more federal regulations on ranching operations and have the wolves killing stock that will help to ease ranchers into the financial abyss. That event will force the sale of private property and begin the creation of the Big Open, or the even more despised notion of the Buffalo Commons, a huge, unpeopled, wildlife reserve, running through the parts of the Great Plains states that have suffered big declines in agriculture and population since the 1920's....
Desert water more precious than gold Water has been called "the essential element" and nowhere was and still is that more true than Tooele County. When you think of the water resources of Tooele County, you may say as Sir Richard Burton did in 1860 "Water, Water, everywhere and not a drop to drink." Millions and millions of gallons of water cover vast tracts of the county in Great Salt Lake and out in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Unfortunately, this water is useless except for the heavy metals, salt and brine shrimp extracted from it in mass quantities each year. This is not the complete story of water in the county, however, as there are several significant sources, several of which remain untapped. It was said back in the Old West that the only thing more valuable than gold was water. If you were a cattle rancher or a farmer, your spread could only grow as far as your water resources and the conditions of the range would allow. Water has been utilized by the people of the county in many interesting ways since the first settlers eked out their first season at the mouth of Settlement Canyon. The first obvious use was for culinary purposes and the second was irrigation. But after that, the pioneers put the water resources of the county to work in all kinds of interesting ways. Saw mills were constructed on Settlement Canyon Creek and near the Benson Grist Mill in the early 1850s. The power of water was utilized to mill the lumber that built the early settlers' homes, churches, barns and other buildings. Water power was also used to grind the wheat into flour that was brought to the mill....
Rancher lifestyle endures In Rush Valley father Johnson and his family continue a lifestyle generations old & growing hay and raising cattle. Johnson, 64, says to him the lifestyle is priceless & worth far more than any profit he could make through selling his water rights. As suburbanization encroaches culturally and physically, the Johnsons could make a a bundle to sell out. The water used to grow just one acre of alfalfa can serve as many as five suburban homes. Darrell's father Orson is in his 80s. Father and son & one at the age of retirement and one well past it & drive their tractor together around the farm, work and talk. Sons and grandsons work on the farm and help out. Family members have sometimes worked jobs in town in order to make ends meet. Johnson combined his passion with practical necessity for about ten years when he worked for a bank in Salt Lake loaning money to ranchers. He was willing to do what was needed to preserve the rural lifestyle they love. Another generation down Darrell sees future ranchers. "I've got a 4-year old grandson helping me all morning and you can bet he's going to want to stay out here and do this," Johnson said. "This little guy knows as much about cows as I do. It's a good life....
Irrigators wrestle with water ruling Klamath Reclamation Project irrigators huddled Tuesday to decide their next step after a federal judge required accelerated implementation of a Klamath River management plan. U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong's decision Monday put the river's water allocation plan into effect immediately rather than over the next five years. If flows drop to levels that threaten coho salmon, water could be withheld from irrigators. Most local irrigators agree that's not likely to happen this summer because of the significant snowpack in the mountains. As of Monday, the Klamath Basin's snowpack was 163 percent of average - compared with one-third of average a year ago. Oregon has the West's best overall snowpack with 136 percent of average. Despite that, the president of Klamath Water Users Association expressed frustration with the scope of Armstrong's ruling. Steve Kandra said the Klamath Project is only a small part of the Klamath River system, but was hit with accelerated phases of river management because that's all the judge could legally affect....
National director says agency improving work relationship with oil and gas industry The national director for the Bureau of Land Management told oil and gas producers in Eddy County Thursday that the agency's goal is to work smarter, more efficiently and cooperatively with the oil and gas industry. She said that the Carlsbad Field Office is one of several pilot offices in the Western states that will be implementing the new initiatives, which have a goal of decreasing processing times for applications for oil and gas drilling and inspections of oil and gas wells. The pilot offices have three years to demonstrate their effectiveness. At the end of the third year, the BLM will have to report to Congress, said Alan Kesterke, who heads the BLM national energy policy liaison Energy Act implementation team. Dale Hall, national director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who accompanied Clarke from Washington, said pilot offices like Carlsbad BLM office are the key to doing business in a new way. He said part of the pilot office program is to staff the local BLM office with a biologist from Fish and Wildlife and another person from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. In essence, it will be a one-stop office for the oil and gas industry. The Local BLM office is also in the process of hiring 23 more people....
Manmade Ponds Help Preserve Wetlands More people building ponds for golf courses and subdivisions or to retain stormwater and wastewater helped create the nation's first net gain in wetlands in a half-century of government record-keeping. About 5 percent of the contiguous United States, or almost 108 million acres, was covered with wetlands as of 2004, the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service reported Thursday. It found a net gain of 191,800 acres of wetlands since the last report in 1997. Bush administration officials cast the report as evidence that the nation has turned a corner on years of wetlands losses. State wetland managers and advocacy groups for hunting, recreation and environmental causes all called the report misleading. The Fish and Wildlife Service reported a gain of 715,300 acres of shallow-water wetlands - mainly artificial varieties of ponds - which offset a continued loss of 523,500 acres of marshes, swamps, and other more traditional and natural wetlands that are the so-called nurseries of life....
Hearing opens on water plan for Nevada lobbyist-developer Nevada's state engineer opens hearings Tuesday on contested plans for water that lobbyist-turned-developer Harvey Whittemore needs for a huge project, 60 miles north of Las Vegas, that eventually could include 50,000 homes and 10 golf courses. State Engineer Hugh Ricci has scheduled three days for a review of applications by Lincoln County and the Vidler Water Co. to pump 14,000 acre-feet of water a year from Kane Valley to supply the big Coyote Springs development. Whittemore says he already has water rights available for the first 5,000 homes. The additional water would allow for continued growth of the development, which could include condominiums and hotels in addition to individual homes. Vidler attorney Steve Hartman said the firm would be comfortable if Ricci approves 5,000 acre-feet and then orders a prolonged test to see if there are any adverse effects on the 28-mile-long Kane Valley. The plan has generated protests from the federal government, which claims the pumping would harm the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and threaten some endangered species, including a small fish known as the Moapa dace and the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a small bird....
Column: Gale's Greatest Hits Five years ago, the Interior Department, which oversees one-quarter of the nation's land, 9,000 employees and nine federal agencies, appeared to have turned a corner. Outgoing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt had just pulled off a remarkable conservation offensive, getting his boss, Bill Clinton, to create and expand more than a dozen national monuments in the West. The monuments capped the Babbitt team's many efforts, from trying to reform the 1872 Mining Law to implementing habitat protection plans for imperiled species living in the path of growth. So thoroughly had Babbitt pushed conservation that when Gale Norton, a former attorney general from Colorado, took over the reins in 2001, several pundits predicted that she would have a difficult time dismantling a "reborn" Interior Department. But that's not how things worked out....
Staying down on the farm Over the past quarter-century, Arizona farmers and ranchers have sold an average of 1,320 acres a day. Houses and shops have replaced almost one-third of the state's farmland. But as more farmers sell their land to developers, a handful of die-hards are turning to agritourism, also known as agritainment, to preserve their farms and their way of life. "We are losing our farmers, our locally grown food and the knowledge of how fertile this region was before the houses came," said Katie Decker, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Agriculture, which charts the state's ongoing loss of farmland. Agritourism, which combines agriculture and tourism by providing the public with a farming experience, also gives farmers who want to keep plowing a way to fight off developers....
Johanns releases farm program wish list March is among thousands who have given wish lists to the Agriculture Department as it prepares for an overhaul of farm programs next year. Many talked in person to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns during a nationwide series of forums. On Wednesday, Johanns issued an exhaustive summary of the comments, more than 4,000 in all. Comments and summaries are available on the department's Web site, http://www.usda.gov. The department did not say which issues were most talked about. But a Washington-based group, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, reviewed transcripts of the forums earlier this year and said that 40 percent of those who spoke mentioned conservation. Next comes a series of analysis papers on different issues. Johanns said he will decide what to ask Congress for later, likely early next year....
We’re Thinking About Tomorrow Susie Morales lives west of Nogales in a remote canyon crisscrossed by smuggling trails. From her kitchen door, she can look out and sees burreros — drug mules — backpacking marijuana into the country. They're close enough to wink at her. Her house has been broken into many times, and she had to protect it — it looks like a fort, with security doors, window bars, and an expensive alarm system. At suppertime, when her husband is outside talking to passing illegals, she keeps a rifle on the table while she cooks. As maddening as that insecurity is, what bothers Susie most is that she can no longer live the way she was raised. For generations on this border, residents have shown generosity and kindness to passersby. But rampant drug-running and illegal immigration have driven a stake through the heart of that way of life. The invasion has brutalized border country, and for Susie, who is fifth generation, that means making the heart-breaking decision to stop offering food and water to illegals. They come in hordes now, and the danger has grown too great. "I can't describe how upsetting it is to have to change who I am," says Susie. "Why, after 50 years, should I have to face this moral conflict?" In Cochise County, rancher John Ladd fights to keep what he owns. With 10 1/2 miles of land abutting the Mexican line, he watches the border war every day through his living room window. In the early 2000s, the Border Patrol averaged 350 arrests every 24 hours on his property, including 700 in a single night....
Thursday, March 30, 2006
First Commercially Cloned Mare Born
Scientists and veterinarians today (March 30) announced the birth of the first commercially cloned mare, created from the cells of champion cutting horse Royal Blue Boon. The filly, Royal Blue Boon Too, was carried to term by a recipient mare and was born on Feb. 19 at Royal Vista Southwest Farms in Purcell, Okla. Royal Blue Boon Too is one of several cloned foals that have been born in 2006--cloned foals have been born at Texas A&M University this spring. The first equine clones were born in 2003; mules in Idaho came first, followed by a filly in Italy. In 2005, the first commercially cloned horse was born, created from the genetic material of a champion endurance gelding. Registered Quarter Horse Royal Blue Boon is the all-time leading producer of cutting horses in the world. She earned $381,764 in her career, and her progeny have earned more than $2.5 million. The mare is 26 years old--long past her performance and breeding career--so her owner made the decision to have the mare cloned so that her genetic material could be preserved. Two companies, ViaGen and Encore Genetics, partnered on the project, and have continued to offer the opportunity to commercially clone horses. To produce a clone, a veterinarian takes a small tissue biopsy from the donor horse. He ships the cells to Viagen, whose scientists grow the cells in culture before performing nuclear transfer, where they take DNA from the donor cells and insert it into enucleated eggs (eggs from which the genetic material has been removed). The resulting embryos are grown in an incubator for several days, then a veterinarian places the embryos into recipient females as he would with any embryo transfer. Polejaeva assures that even though 26-year-old cells were used in Royal Blue Boon's cloning procedure, the genetic age of the clone is that of a foal. "During the cloning process, the age of the cell is reset, and therefore the life span of the animal will be the same as the genetic potential of that animal," she said....
First Two Commercially Cloned U.S. Horses Thriving
Livestock cloning company ViaGen, Inc. is partnering with equine marketing firm Encore Genetics to create the first commercial horse cloning operation in the country. Today the companies launched the new entity with announcements about the births of two famous horse clones and news of other pregnancies. The legendary cutting horse Royal Blue Boon, a registered American Quarter Horse, became the first mare to be commercially cloned when a foal was born to a recipient mare on Royal Vista Southwest farms in Purcell, Okla., on Feb. 19, 2006. The foal was born healthy and continues to thrive on the farm where she was born. She was joined soon after by a clone of the mare Tap O Lena, born at the same farm on March 9, 2006. Two clones of the famous mare Bet Yer Blue Boons are expected to be born any day. Including the foals announced today, seven clones of famous horses will be born this year. Many other pregnant ViaGen/Encore mares are due next year. The companies have also gene banked over 75 champion horses from multiple breeds and disciplines. "From the time I transferred the embryo into the recipient mare, these pregnancies were normal in every way and the births followed suit," said Dr. Jim Bailey, DVM and manager of Royal Vista Southwest, a breeding technology center in the heart of Oklahoma horse country. "The resulting foals were born normally and immediately stood to nurse. They bonded well with the recipient mares and continue to grow and play in the sun."....
Co. Produces Clones From Cutting Horses
A company that offers horse owners exact duplicates of their animals says it has successfully cloned two top-earning horses. ViaGen Inc. announced Thursday that two mares had delivered clones of top cutting horses, which are trained to help separate individual animals from cattle herds. The foals, born at a ranch near Purcell, were doing well, according to the Austin, Texas-based company. The first cloned horse was born in 2003 in Italy. In 2005, Texas A&M University created the first cloned horse in the United States. Elaine Hall of Weatherford, Texas, owns one of the horses that was cloned and said the foal is the image of its mother. "I can already see so many similarities from the original horse, a certain look about the eyes," she said....
Cloned horses latest move for controversial field
The company that cloned the first horse to be sold commercially said on Thursday it plans to market 22 similar animals before 2008, marking another step forward for the controversial technology. ViaGen Inc., based in Austin, Texas, said the mare was born on February 19 in Oklahoma, and predicted it would one day produce 100 cloned horses a year, each fetching about $150,000. The company‘s announcement comes three years after the first cloned horse was created by Italian scientists in 2003. A cloned calf can sell for as much as $82,000, compared to an average calf that costs less than $1,000. Even cloned horses carry a lofty price tag and The Jockey Club, which monitors thoroughbreds, does not allow cloned animals to race....
Thanks to Ol' Tick for the tip on this story.
Scientists and veterinarians today (March 30) announced the birth of the first commercially cloned mare, created from the cells of champion cutting horse Royal Blue Boon. The filly, Royal Blue Boon Too, was carried to term by a recipient mare and was born on Feb. 19 at Royal Vista Southwest Farms in Purcell, Okla. Royal Blue Boon Too is one of several cloned foals that have been born in 2006--cloned foals have been born at Texas A&M University this spring. The first equine clones were born in 2003; mules in Idaho came first, followed by a filly in Italy. In 2005, the first commercially cloned horse was born, created from the genetic material of a champion endurance gelding. Registered Quarter Horse Royal Blue Boon is the all-time leading producer of cutting horses in the world. She earned $381,764 in her career, and her progeny have earned more than $2.5 million. The mare is 26 years old--long past her performance and breeding career--so her owner made the decision to have the mare cloned so that her genetic material could be preserved. Two companies, ViaGen and Encore Genetics, partnered on the project, and have continued to offer the opportunity to commercially clone horses. To produce a clone, a veterinarian takes a small tissue biopsy from the donor horse. He ships the cells to Viagen, whose scientists grow the cells in culture before performing nuclear transfer, where they take DNA from the donor cells and insert it into enucleated eggs (eggs from which the genetic material has been removed). The resulting embryos are grown in an incubator for several days, then a veterinarian places the embryos into recipient females as he would with any embryo transfer. Polejaeva assures that even though 26-year-old cells were used in Royal Blue Boon's cloning procedure, the genetic age of the clone is that of a foal. "During the cloning process, the age of the cell is reset, and therefore the life span of the animal will be the same as the genetic potential of that animal," she said....
First Two Commercially Cloned U.S. Horses Thriving
Livestock cloning company ViaGen, Inc. is partnering with equine marketing firm Encore Genetics to create the first commercial horse cloning operation in the country. Today the companies launched the new entity with announcements about the births of two famous horse clones and news of other pregnancies. The legendary cutting horse Royal Blue Boon, a registered American Quarter Horse, became the first mare to be commercially cloned when a foal was born to a recipient mare on Royal Vista Southwest farms in Purcell, Okla., on Feb. 19, 2006. The foal was born healthy and continues to thrive on the farm where she was born. She was joined soon after by a clone of the mare Tap O Lena, born at the same farm on March 9, 2006. Two clones of the famous mare Bet Yer Blue Boons are expected to be born any day. Including the foals announced today, seven clones of famous horses will be born this year. Many other pregnant ViaGen/Encore mares are due next year. The companies have also gene banked over 75 champion horses from multiple breeds and disciplines. "From the time I transferred the embryo into the recipient mare, these pregnancies were normal in every way and the births followed suit," said Dr. Jim Bailey, DVM and manager of Royal Vista Southwest, a breeding technology center in the heart of Oklahoma horse country. "The resulting foals were born normally and immediately stood to nurse. They bonded well with the recipient mares and continue to grow and play in the sun."....
Co. Produces Clones From Cutting Horses
A company that offers horse owners exact duplicates of their animals says it has successfully cloned two top-earning horses. ViaGen Inc. announced Thursday that two mares had delivered clones of top cutting horses, which are trained to help separate individual animals from cattle herds. The foals, born at a ranch near Purcell, were doing well, according to the Austin, Texas-based company. The first cloned horse was born in 2003 in Italy. In 2005, Texas A&M University created the first cloned horse in the United States. Elaine Hall of Weatherford, Texas, owns one of the horses that was cloned and said the foal is the image of its mother. "I can already see so many similarities from the original horse, a certain look about the eyes," she said....
Cloned horses latest move for controversial field
The company that cloned the first horse to be sold commercially said on Thursday it plans to market 22 similar animals before 2008, marking another step forward for the controversial technology. ViaGen Inc., based in Austin, Texas, said the mare was born on February 19 in Oklahoma, and predicted it would one day produce 100 cloned horses a year, each fetching about $150,000. The company‘s announcement comes three years after the first cloned horse was created by Italian scientists in 2003. A cloned calf can sell for as much as $82,000, compared to an average calf that costs less than $1,000. Even cloned horses carry a lofty price tag and The Jockey Club, which monitors thoroughbreds, does not allow cloned animals to race....
Thanks to Ol' Tick for the tip on this story.
NEWS ROUNDUP
A Montana Wolf Mystery & the Fury it Breeds The creature, whatever it is, came out of Montana's own McCone County, wandering from the rough breaks of Timber Creek, just south of the Big Dry Arm of Fort Peck Reservoir, and the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Where it had wandered before that, Canada or North Dakota, nobody knows. Since December, it has struck six herds of sheep belonging to stockmen in McCone and Garfield Counties, killing 36 ewes, and injuring 71, many of which will succumb to their wounds. It leaves a track like a small wolf, or a dog, or a wolf-hybrid, but its killing habits are inefficient, nothing like the surgical lethality of a wolf taking meat from a herd of domestic sheep. Coyotes, those that survive here in the gauntlet of traps and aerial gunnery and cyanide "getters," kill a lot of sheep every year, but nothing like this. This creature is a traveler, and it is not always alone, though its companion leaves a smaller track still, adding to the mystery. Where it has stopped to kill, over an area of more than a hundred square miles, it has created a fury, one that is not entirely directed at the creature itself (the stockmen here know full well how to handle that problem) but at the federal and state governments, at complex regulations imposed to protect an animal that they despise, and at a far-away society that seems to have lost all respect for them and their constant struggle to remain self-reliant, solvent, and on the land....
Judge faults Bush call to ease logging restrictions A Bush administration decision to ease logging restrictions under the Northwest Forest Plan was arbitrary and should be invalidated, a federal judge has found. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler made the recommendation this week in a report to U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, who will consider it and make a final ruling. The Bush administration dropped wording from the forest plan in March 2004 that required certain projects to be evaluated for how they would affect their watershed before they could be approved. Theiler said officials were required to give a rational basis for the wording change and explain why the change would not harm protected salmon, but didn't. The change at issue concerned a section of the plan called the Aquatic Conservation Strategy, and it is one of several ways the Bush administration has eased logging requirements in the Northwest. A federal judge in Seattle has already struck down the administration's decision to stop requiring agencies to look for endangered species before logging or mining, and several states are suing over its move to open roadless national forest lands to mining, logging, road-building and other development....
C-130s stage at Kirtland AFB to answer the firefighting call The rancher fearing for his livestock or the people living in developed areas along the boundary of a fire probably don't realize the massive effort and the number of personnel supporting the C-130 they see dropping salvation from the sky, but cooperation among military members and civilians can save acres and lives when wildfires occur. Two military C-130s equipped with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System arrived on Kirtland late March 16 and were placed on standby at the air tanker base operated by the Cibola National Forest. MAFFS is a modular unit designed to be inserted into a C-130 to drop up to 2,700 gallons of fire retardant or water. If a fire escalates to the point where they're needed, they can be loaded and ready to fly in about two hours, said ANG Lt. Col. Rick Gibson, MAFFS liaison for the ANG....
Officials to review k-rat habitat The diminutive furry creature that has held up some development and mining in communities along the Santa Ana River and other streams will get another look from wildlife officials to see how much land it needs to survive. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will examine whether the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat really needs 33,295 acres in San Bernardino and Riverside counties to survive and recover. In a settlement to a lawsuit reached last week, the service has agreed to re-examine the "critical habitat" designations for five species, including the kangaroo rat and the Quino checkerspot butterfly in Riverside and San Diego counties. The deal concluded Friday does not require any changes to the designations; it only requires the service to do a more rigorous analysis of the economic effects of the critical habitat designation and any new research related to where the creature may live. "Most likely this will result in more limited habitat designations," said M. Reed Hopper, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights group that brought the suit against the Fish and Wildlife Service....
U.S. Acts to Help Wild Salmon in Klamath River Federal wildlife agencies demanded Wednesday that the Klamath River's imperiled wild salmon be given a way to pass four towering hydroelectric dams that for nearly a century have blocked the waterway's upper spawning grounds. The owner of the dams, PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore., could face a costly decision: Should it spend up to $175 million to erect very long fish ladders, or should it abandon the dams and undertake the nation's largest removal project? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other federal wildlife agencies presented their demands in response to PacifiCorp's application to renew its operating license for the dams. The structures — combined with diversions for irrigation, polluted runoff from ranching, logging and other factors — have caused Klamath fish populations to plummet. Salmon runs have fallen so low in the last three years that federal regulators next week will decide whether to recommend that the annual fishing season be canceled. PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire financial guru Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has in recent years agreed to demolish three other hydroelectric dams, including a 150-foot-tall concrete structure on the White Salmon River in southwest Washington....
Joint efforts revive species once nearly gone Two Wyoming species, the Wyoming toad and the black-footed ferret, are on their way back from the brink of extinction, thanks largely to captive breeding programs that have helped boost populations. People involved in the recovery efforts say the Endangered Species Act -- and the often-maligned monitoring and regulation that go with it -- is responsible for identifying problems with those species and helping scientists with their recovery. "I think if it hadn't been for the ESA, the Wyoming toad would probably be gone today," said Jeff Ettling, curator of amphibians and reptiles for the St. Louis Zoo, where the Wyoming toad has been a favorite of schoolchildren for more than a decade. "If they hadn't brought that last remnant population from Wyoming, we would just be reading about Wyoming toads now."....Nice, objective article by the AP. Surely they are not trying to influence legislation pending in Congress.
For Their Eyes Only It's tough to be a Texas blind salamander. Not only are you ugly, slithery, and totally blind, but you are also endangered. As rapid urbanization degrades the salamander's underwater habitat – primarily caves southwest of Austin, near San Marcos – many individuals venture out of their increasingly murky homes in search of food and cleaner water. All too frequently, however, only death and digestion await. Unused to full-light environments, the blind salamanders are quickly snatched up by predators; and even if they manage to hide from voracious hunters, the sunlight fries their delicate vestigial eye-spots. All that could change thanks to a new program by Texas Wildlife & Parks. The program, called Operation SHADE (Salamanders Helped by Awesome and Dramatic Eyewear) is an ambitious effort to fit the entire known population of Texas blind salamanders with designer-made dark lenses over their eye-spots. TWP believes the devices, called Amphibi-Lens, will help the creatures survive and thrive in strange, new environments. "The Amphibi-Lens will help the salamanders go incognito," said TWP spokesman Rusty McNeil. "Behind the large, dark, stylish frames, their customary predators will be unable to recognize them, and therefore will leave them alone."....Not quite April Fool's Day, but this has to be a joke. Go check out the picture.
More help for steelhead Federal officials Wednesday proposed to extend the protections of the Endangered Species Act to the Puget Sound region's stocks of steelhead, one of the most sought-after game fish in North America. The law already can be used to restrict building and drinking-water withdrawals to protect chinook salmon. In addition to extending those limits farther up into Puget Sound-area watersheds, the plan could curtail or even end fishing for the fabled steelhead around here. One of the Puget Sound area's most battered runs of steelhead spawns in the Cedar River, a source of Seattle's drinking water. Although some think the additional protections proposed Wednesday could spell trouble for that drinking-water supply, city officials say they could help the steelhead without reducing Seattleites' water supplies....
Groups sue agency over falcon habitat A coalition of environmentalists has sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, alleging the agency ignored the group's petition to designate critical habitat for the endangered northern aplomado falcon in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Forest Guardians, the Chihuahuan Desert Conservation Alliance and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed their complaint Monday in federal court in Santa Fe, saying they filed the petition in September 2002 and that federal law requires the agency to act within a year. The coalition asked a federal judge to declare that Fish and Wildlife violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to make a determination on critical habitat and to order the agency to make a decision. Vicki Fox, a spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife in Albuquerque, said Tuesday the agency does not comment on litigation. However, in similar cases elsewhere the agency has maintained that a lack of money and the number of petitions allows it to respond only to cases backed by a court order....
New Study Challenges Claims That States are Better Than Feds Recovering Endangered Species The federal endangered species program is as good as or better at removing species from legal protection as a result of recovery efforts than similar programs operated by states, finds a new study by World Wildlife Fund. Congress is considering dramatic changes to the act. The principle champions for changing the act have long argued that the federal law is a failure since few species protected by the statute have recovered to a point where they have been removed from legal protection, or "delisted." "This study shows that just passing the buck to the states isn't likely to solve the endangered species problem," said Ginette Hemley, vice president for species conservation at World Wildlife Fund. "Restoring endangered species is difficult no matter who's doing it. There are no quick fixes, and weakening the Endangered Species Act certainly isn't one of them." Hemley added that both state and federal endangered species conservation agencies are improving the status of endangered species and that critics have underestimated the difficulty of the task and oversimplified the job of evaluating progress....
Cattlemen focus on the border The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association ended its annual convention Wednesday determined to see a two-pronged approach to immigration reform and nervous about the impacts of the ongoing drought. Matt Brockman, the association's executive vice president, said the 13,600-member organization supports measures that increase border security, but also endorses an effective temporary worker program that addresses the ranching industry's labor needs. The association, which held a four-day annual convention in San Antonio this week, passed a resolution reaffirming support of the temporary guest worker program that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has proposed. It would require workers in the country illegally to return to their home countries, obtain required documentation and establish legal work status that allows them to return to the U.S....
A Montana Wolf Mystery & the Fury it Breeds The creature, whatever it is, came out of Montana's own McCone County, wandering from the rough breaks of Timber Creek, just south of the Big Dry Arm of Fort Peck Reservoir, and the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Where it had wandered before that, Canada or North Dakota, nobody knows. Since December, it has struck six herds of sheep belonging to stockmen in McCone and Garfield Counties, killing 36 ewes, and injuring 71, many of which will succumb to their wounds. It leaves a track like a small wolf, or a dog, or a wolf-hybrid, but its killing habits are inefficient, nothing like the surgical lethality of a wolf taking meat from a herd of domestic sheep. Coyotes, those that survive here in the gauntlet of traps and aerial gunnery and cyanide "getters," kill a lot of sheep every year, but nothing like this. This creature is a traveler, and it is not always alone, though its companion leaves a smaller track still, adding to the mystery. Where it has stopped to kill, over an area of more than a hundred square miles, it has created a fury, one that is not entirely directed at the creature itself (the stockmen here know full well how to handle that problem) but at the federal and state governments, at complex regulations imposed to protect an animal that they despise, and at a far-away society that seems to have lost all respect for them and their constant struggle to remain self-reliant, solvent, and on the land....
Judge faults Bush call to ease logging restrictions A Bush administration decision to ease logging restrictions under the Northwest Forest Plan was arbitrary and should be invalidated, a federal judge has found. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler made the recommendation this week in a report to U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, who will consider it and make a final ruling. The Bush administration dropped wording from the forest plan in March 2004 that required certain projects to be evaluated for how they would affect their watershed before they could be approved. Theiler said officials were required to give a rational basis for the wording change and explain why the change would not harm protected salmon, but didn't. The change at issue concerned a section of the plan called the Aquatic Conservation Strategy, and it is one of several ways the Bush administration has eased logging requirements in the Northwest. A federal judge in Seattle has already struck down the administration's decision to stop requiring agencies to look for endangered species before logging or mining, and several states are suing over its move to open roadless national forest lands to mining, logging, road-building and other development....
C-130s stage at Kirtland AFB to answer the firefighting call The rancher fearing for his livestock or the people living in developed areas along the boundary of a fire probably don't realize the massive effort and the number of personnel supporting the C-130 they see dropping salvation from the sky, but cooperation among military members and civilians can save acres and lives when wildfires occur. Two military C-130s equipped with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System arrived on Kirtland late March 16 and were placed on standby at the air tanker base operated by the Cibola National Forest. MAFFS is a modular unit designed to be inserted into a C-130 to drop up to 2,700 gallons of fire retardant or water. If a fire escalates to the point where they're needed, they can be loaded and ready to fly in about two hours, said ANG Lt. Col. Rick Gibson, MAFFS liaison for the ANG....
Officials to review k-rat habitat The diminutive furry creature that has held up some development and mining in communities along the Santa Ana River and other streams will get another look from wildlife officials to see how much land it needs to survive. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will examine whether the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat really needs 33,295 acres in San Bernardino and Riverside counties to survive and recover. In a settlement to a lawsuit reached last week, the service has agreed to re-examine the "critical habitat" designations for five species, including the kangaroo rat and the Quino checkerspot butterfly in Riverside and San Diego counties. The deal concluded Friday does not require any changes to the designations; it only requires the service to do a more rigorous analysis of the economic effects of the critical habitat designation and any new research related to where the creature may live. "Most likely this will result in more limited habitat designations," said M. Reed Hopper, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights group that brought the suit against the Fish and Wildlife Service....
U.S. Acts to Help Wild Salmon in Klamath River Federal wildlife agencies demanded Wednesday that the Klamath River's imperiled wild salmon be given a way to pass four towering hydroelectric dams that for nearly a century have blocked the waterway's upper spawning grounds. The owner of the dams, PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore., could face a costly decision: Should it spend up to $175 million to erect very long fish ladders, or should it abandon the dams and undertake the nation's largest removal project? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other federal wildlife agencies presented their demands in response to PacifiCorp's application to renew its operating license for the dams. The structures — combined with diversions for irrigation, polluted runoff from ranching, logging and other factors — have caused Klamath fish populations to plummet. Salmon runs have fallen so low in the last three years that federal regulators next week will decide whether to recommend that the annual fishing season be canceled. PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire financial guru Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has in recent years agreed to demolish three other hydroelectric dams, including a 150-foot-tall concrete structure on the White Salmon River in southwest Washington....
Joint efforts revive species once nearly gone Two Wyoming species, the Wyoming toad and the black-footed ferret, are on their way back from the brink of extinction, thanks largely to captive breeding programs that have helped boost populations. People involved in the recovery efforts say the Endangered Species Act -- and the often-maligned monitoring and regulation that go with it -- is responsible for identifying problems with those species and helping scientists with their recovery. "I think if it hadn't been for the ESA, the Wyoming toad would probably be gone today," said Jeff Ettling, curator of amphibians and reptiles for the St. Louis Zoo, where the Wyoming toad has been a favorite of schoolchildren for more than a decade. "If they hadn't brought that last remnant population from Wyoming, we would just be reading about Wyoming toads now."....Nice, objective article by the AP. Surely they are not trying to influence legislation pending in Congress.
For Their Eyes Only It's tough to be a Texas blind salamander. Not only are you ugly, slithery, and totally blind, but you are also endangered. As rapid urbanization degrades the salamander's underwater habitat – primarily caves southwest of Austin, near San Marcos – many individuals venture out of their increasingly murky homes in search of food and cleaner water. All too frequently, however, only death and digestion await. Unused to full-light environments, the blind salamanders are quickly snatched up by predators; and even if they manage to hide from voracious hunters, the sunlight fries their delicate vestigial eye-spots. All that could change thanks to a new program by Texas Wildlife & Parks. The program, called Operation SHADE (Salamanders Helped by Awesome and Dramatic Eyewear) is an ambitious effort to fit the entire known population of Texas blind salamanders with designer-made dark lenses over their eye-spots. TWP believes the devices, called Amphibi-Lens, will help the creatures survive and thrive in strange, new environments. "The Amphibi-Lens will help the salamanders go incognito," said TWP spokesman Rusty McNeil. "Behind the large, dark, stylish frames, their customary predators will be unable to recognize them, and therefore will leave them alone."....Not quite April Fool's Day, but this has to be a joke. Go check out the picture.
More help for steelhead Federal officials Wednesday proposed to extend the protections of the Endangered Species Act to the Puget Sound region's stocks of steelhead, one of the most sought-after game fish in North America. The law already can be used to restrict building and drinking-water withdrawals to protect chinook salmon. In addition to extending those limits farther up into Puget Sound-area watersheds, the plan could curtail or even end fishing for the fabled steelhead around here. One of the Puget Sound area's most battered runs of steelhead spawns in the Cedar River, a source of Seattle's drinking water. Although some think the additional protections proposed Wednesday could spell trouble for that drinking-water supply, city officials say they could help the steelhead without reducing Seattleites' water supplies....
Groups sue agency over falcon habitat A coalition of environmentalists has sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, alleging the agency ignored the group's petition to designate critical habitat for the endangered northern aplomado falcon in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Forest Guardians, the Chihuahuan Desert Conservation Alliance and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed their complaint Monday in federal court in Santa Fe, saying they filed the petition in September 2002 and that federal law requires the agency to act within a year. The coalition asked a federal judge to declare that Fish and Wildlife violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to make a determination on critical habitat and to order the agency to make a decision. Vicki Fox, a spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife in Albuquerque, said Tuesday the agency does not comment on litigation. However, in similar cases elsewhere the agency has maintained that a lack of money and the number of petitions allows it to respond only to cases backed by a court order....
New Study Challenges Claims That States are Better Than Feds Recovering Endangered Species The federal endangered species program is as good as or better at removing species from legal protection as a result of recovery efforts than similar programs operated by states, finds a new study by World Wildlife Fund. Congress is considering dramatic changes to the act. The principle champions for changing the act have long argued that the federal law is a failure since few species protected by the statute have recovered to a point where they have been removed from legal protection, or "delisted." "This study shows that just passing the buck to the states isn't likely to solve the endangered species problem," said Ginette Hemley, vice president for species conservation at World Wildlife Fund. "Restoring endangered species is difficult no matter who's doing it. There are no quick fixes, and weakening the Endangered Species Act certainly isn't one of them." Hemley added that both state and federal endangered species conservation agencies are improving the status of endangered species and that critics have underestimated the difficulty of the task and oversimplified the job of evaluating progress....
Cattlemen focus on the border The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association ended its annual convention Wednesday determined to see a two-pronged approach to immigration reform and nervous about the impacts of the ongoing drought. Matt Brockman, the association's executive vice president, said the 13,600-member organization supports measures that increase border security, but also endorses an effective temporary worker program that addresses the ranching industry's labor needs. The association, which held a four-day annual convention in San Antonio this week, passed a resolution reaffirming support of the temporary guest worker program that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has proposed. It would require workers in the country illegally to return to their home countries, obtain required documentation and establish legal work status that allows them to return to the U.S....
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