FLE
States efforts to enforce immigration may be unconstitutional Lawmakers across the United States are passing local laws to get tough on illegal immigration, but legal experts say many of those laws will turn out to be unconstitutional. More than 550 bills relating to illegal immigration were introduced in statehouses this year, and at least 77 were enacted, according to a survey presented last week at the annual meetings of the National Conference of State Legislatures. But NCSL analyst Ann Morse told lawmakers that a 1986 federal law forbids states from enacting stricter criminal or civil penalties that those adopted by U.S. Congress. "The federal government decided it was too complicated for the states to enact their own competing laws on this," she said. So what about the laws passed this year? "I believe they'll be tested in court," she said....
The FBI’s continued technological incompetence is putting America at risk As The Washington Post reported on August 18, five years after 9/11 the FBI’s computer system is still not fixed. How can this be? It’s an ugly story of poor management, contractor abuse and an agency that cannot electronically connect the dots--even though nearly everyone agreed in 2001 that developing that ability should be among the top priorities for the United States. It’s as if after Pearl Harbor President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that ships and aircraft be built to fight the Japanese, only to discover that five years later the government had built none. The blame begins with Louis Freeh, who smugly headed the FBI for eight years under President Bill Clinton. Although he claims to have tried to upgrade the bureau’s computers in 1995, he failed miserably. In 2001, when any large business in the world that wanted to make money was long since fully automated-and when most American six-year olds could download Little League snapshots-the FBI remained in the horse-and-buggy era. Its rusty mainframes used text-only “green screens” and could not scan reports or transmit photographs. Agents had no PCs and were forced to share e-mail accounts. Because it took 12 steps to upload a single document, most agents gave up and did everything the old-fashioned way-on paper. Remember the period right after 9/11? I was hardly the only one writing about computers at the FBI. The new FBI director, Robert Mueller, insisted he was focused on the task at hand. He spent $170 million on a plan called “Trilogy” that was meant to solve the Bureau’s technology problems. From the start, it was a rip-off....
Police hit out at FBI over leaks Anti-terror police in Britain have made an angry request to their US counterparts asking them to stop leaking details of this month's suspected bomb plot over fears that it could jeopardise the chances of a successful prosecution and hamper the gathering of evidence. The British security services, MI5 and MI6, are understood to be dismayed that a number of sensitive details surrounding the alleged plot - including an FBI estimate that as many as 50 people were involved - were leaked to the media. FBI sources confirmed to The Observer that the bureau had been ordered to stop briefing at the request of the British authorities. 'The shutters have come down,' a bureau source said. 'We have been told not to discuss the case any more.' The request for silence by the British authorities is an early sign that those involved in the investigation have concerns at the way their evidence-gathering is proceeding....
Government Lawyers' Role in the War on Terror Inside the Bush White House, government lawyers have been instrumental in creating and justifying policies related to the detention and torture of alleged enemy combatants that are at odds with the Geneva Conventions - policies of exceptionalism that have gone hand-in-hand with a broader American unilateralism that has infuriated friends and foes alike. The blogosphere had offered some choice responses to Executive Branch lawyers' defense of the President's purported power, as commander-in-chief, to ignore congressional and international law limitations on the prosecution of the war on terror. These responses, taken together, amount to a fierce assault on the profession. As one prominent academic blogger, Professor Jack Balkin, responded to lawyerly justifications of torture and the like, "lawyers are whores" who will give intellectual cover to any position, no matter how wrong or unreasonable. It is important to evaluate such charges. But it is also exceedingly difficult. Executive branch justifications for overarching claims of presidential power invoke any number of relatively arcane theories of constitutional interpretation and statutory construction. It isn't easy to find the line between arguments that are merely unpersuasive, and ones that are so misguided that they (and the lawyers who advance them) merit our scorn. A recent series of articles in the Indiana Law Journal brings this issue into sharp focus. These articles take up the Administration's invocation of what scholars call the "constitutional avoidance" doctrine to justify a reservation of presidential power to torture or engage in warrantless wiretapping -- notwithstanding congressional statutes prohibit such activity. (That claimed reservation of power has been expressed not only in internal legal memos that have leaked, but also in Presidential signing statements regarding legislation such as the anti-torture legislation spearheaded by Senator McCain....)
Monday, August 21, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rancher gets help from BLM to ease impact of drilling A Heart Mountain landowner hopes guidelines recently adopted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and changes to Wyoming's split-estate laws, will help mitigate the impact of gas drilling on his property. "I came real close to walking away from the deal," Jim Dager said of his plan to purchase the 2,640-acre Bison Ranch on the south and west slopes of Heart Mountain. Before closing on the property in January, Dager learned of federal mineral rights on the land and plans by Windsor Energy to drill a gas well there. "Two things that encouraged me to go through with it were the new split-estate act and the best management practices that BLM has adopted," he said. Windsor will be required to drill multiple wells directionally from a single pad, maintain a single battery of tanks, use a closed-loop drilling system to avoid open pits, group truck traffic at set times and bury a planned pipeline....
Unhappy hunting grounds The fight to protect the Roan Plateau and Colorado’s roadless areas from energy development has strayed beyond the realm of environmentalists and traditional wilderness advocates. The “hook and bullet” crowd — hunters, anglers, outfitters and other sportsmen — are now claiming wildland protection as their territory, a development that’s being noticed by the energy industry and politicians all over Colorado and the West. The fate of the Roan Plateau and roadless areas on Battlement Mesa is a personal issue for outfitters such as lifelong Republican Jeff Mead, owner of Rifle-based Mamm Peaks Outfitters. Since gas rigs began drilling near Mead’s hunting grounds, he said he’s lost nearly $70,000 in business because gas development is driving away Battlement Mesa’s big game. More than 3,000 acres of natural gas leases within roadless land in the White River National Forest near the Mamm Peaks went on the auction block Aug. 10. Across the Colorado River on the Roan Plateau, dust, noise and a plethora of heavy trucks are a sign of the times. “A year ago, you didn’t see speed limit signs posted on top of the Roan,” said Clare Bastable of the Colorado Mountain Club....
Utah Couple Sues USDA Over Dead Dog A Fillmore couple has filed a tort claim with the U.S. Department of Agriculture after their dog was killed by a cyanide bomb used as part of the agency’s predator control program in western states. Sharyn and Tony Aguiar’s 2-year-old German shepherd, Max, was with Sharyn at the Millard County rock quarry in April, when he disappeared for just minutes and was found dead, a pink foamy substance emanating from his mouth. Sharyn Aguiar now wants the USDA to discontinues use of the meat-scented cyanide bombs, also known as M-44s. “At first I just wanted to go out and post a sign that says ‘Watch your dog on public land,’ “she said. “Now, I want more than a sign. I want this stuff banned.” The intended target of the USDA’s bombs are coyotes that have harassed or killed sheep grazing on public lands....
Underground water will be valuable commodity, some say On a balmy October evening three years ago, Diane Johnson was kicking a soccer ball around the front yard with her two little girls when a stranger rumbled up the driveway in a pickup. Her husband, Steve, who had been cooking supper on a grill, came around the corner to see who had arrived. To the Johnsons' surprise, the stranger, W. Scott Carlson of Brenham, had a check for more than $300 with their names on it. He wanted to lease some of the water beneath their 121/2 acres of Burleson County land. All they had to do was sign a lease and endorse the check, Carlson said, and the bonus money of $25 per acre would be theirs. They also would reap some of the profits when his company sold the water. He was among the first people in the state to bet that water shortages would make groundwater a profitable business — maybe even the next big thing after oil....
Report: Climate change to have significant impact on N.M. water It would likely get hotter and New Mexico's water supply would be significantly impacted over the next century if greenhouse gas emissions continue, according to a report by the state engineer's office. The report released Friday offers a detailed perspective for the state on the international scientific community's latest projections of climate change induced by greenhouse gases. There is widespread agreement among climate scientists that such gases are changing the Earth's climate, the Albuquerque Journal reported Saturday in a copyright story. The report, based on 18 climate simulations by scientists around the world, states New Mexico would likely have an increased risk of drought over the next century and mountain snowpacks in the southern half of the state could be nonexistent by the late 21st century. The findings suggest added pressure that must be considered in a state already grappling with dry conditions and a limited water supply, said Anne Watkins, special assistant to the state engineer and the report's lead author....
A win-win solution Steve Hilde dreams of the time when ranchers have more time and hunters enjoy more access, and he has an idea how to achieve both. Hilde, a Loveland resident who spends his work day as a business development manager for technology giant Hewlett Packard, figures there’s no reason why Colorado can’t mimic other popular public-access on private-land programs available elsewhere, such as Montana’s Block Management and the Access Yes programs of Wyoming and Idaho. Although Hilde talks about the possibilities in terms more familiar with business managers than everyday hunters, tossing around comments about growth strategy, marketing shares, and price elasticity, he brings what might be a past-due new look at today’s big-game hunting situation. His concept is quite simple. Get public hunters on isolated or landlocked parcels of public land or on private land in exchange for helping ranchers do their core business easier and more cost effectively. Hilde’s proposal, which already is garnering immense support from sportsmen around the state, would pay ranchers to open their lands at a cost well within the reach of the average hunter....
Owyhee bill has degree of support Some environmental groups weren't happy with a provision of a proposed new 807-square-mile wilderness in the Owyhee Mountains that gives ranchers $15 million in cash and federal land, but they say the deal is worth the sacrifice. "We felt the appraisal process deviates too much from standard procedure," Craig Gehrke, of the Wilderness Society in Boise, told the Idaho Statesman. "However, from our perspective, the benefits of this package are enormous and we cannot afford to miss this opportunity." The bill being sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, is the second federal land-use measure in Idaho to be put before this session of Congress. It joins a House-passed measure sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, that would create a separate 492-square-mile wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds Mountains in central Idaho. Under the Owyhee deal in southwest Idaho, for $7 million in cash or land exchanges, 15 ranchers would sell four square miles of land outright, sell scenic easements on 2.5 square miles, and sell eight miles of right of way to preserve or open up access to the Owyhee canyon lands. They'd also get $8 million in exchange for reducing or eliminate grazing on protected land....
Desert Fires' Damage Will Last April Sall stood in the charred remnants of a Joshua tree forest, bark peeling off melted black limbs. Above her, ridges once thick with 1,000-year-old piñon and juniper pines were scorched bedrock and stumps. More than 90% of the surrounding Pipes Canyon Preserve was consumed in last month's Sawtooth blaze. It was one of half a dozen fast-moving fires this summer that burned 65,000 acres of the Mojave Desert, fueling debate over whether the desert is burning more frequently and explosively as a result of invasive weeds, smog, development and climate change. "It's heartbreaking to see," said Sall, a biologist who manages the preserve and whose grandmother homesteaded the land a century ago. "We'll never see those piñon or juniper trees again in our lifetimes, nor will our children, nor will their grandchildren. It's a bitter pill…. This land isn't meant to burn." Many scientists agree, saying the recent blazes offer fresh evidence that deserts across the Southwest are undergoing a profound shift, as ancient native pine, shrubs and cactuses give way to young, highly flammable weeds and grasses....
Editorial: Something needs to give, when it comes to wolves and the state of Montana’s ability to manage them. That’s not how it was supposed to be. The wolf management plan that was adopted by Fish, Wildlife and Parks was pitched to the public as a path toward more responsive and flexible wolf management. From one part of the state to another, from one pack to the next, the state was supposed to be far more responsive than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been with its limited team of wolf managers based in Helena. The state was supposed to have the ability to manage packs that have excessive impacts on big-game populations. Livestock owners, in fact, were supposed to have the ability themselves to respond to problem wolves. So how can it be that some of the critics in Ennis were pining for the old days when the Fish and Wildlife Service responded to conflicts?....
Winds of change The thing about West Texas that you can't ignore, that you can never forget, is the wind. On that big, flat stretch of land dotted with scrubby mesquite trees, the wind sweeps through effortlessly, unimpeded. It rakes across acres of ranchland, over cattle and rocks and red dirt, over nearly dry stock tanks and abandoned oil pump jacks. Always, always it whips at your face or pushes at your back. It fills your ears with a high-pitched, wavering whistle. There's always another gust on the way. And that wind brings a lot of things with it. Tumbleweeds, maybe, that scuttle along highways and prairies. Or dirt, picked up and carried through the air, turning the sky red, choking the atmosphere with dust and sand. These days, though, the wind is blowing something else across West Texas: change. Giant turbines are going up by the hundreds, planted all over the prairie to harness that wind and turn it into clean, renewable energy....
Settlement Will Provide Water for Parched River The lower stretch of the San Joaquin filled with runoff and farm drain water so tainted that it came to be known as the "lower colon of California." Now, thanks to a settlement in a tortured, nearly two-decade-long court fight, the San Joaquin is about to get some of its water back. The agreement, in the final stages of approval, is designed to resurrect the salmon run and return year-round flows to the river for the first time since Harry Truman was president. "The San Joaquin was just killed," said Harrison "Hap" Dunning, a UC Davis emeritus law professor and authority on water law. "It's a monumental restoration." It has not come easily. Kole Upton is a 63-year-old Chowchilla grower with a sharp sense of humor, an engineering degree from Stanford, and 1,200 acres of cotton, corn, almonds and wheat that would wither without water from the San Joaquin. He has been one of the leaders in years of off-and-on settlement negotiations involving growers, environmentalists and the federal government, which operates the dam....
Historic use bumps into property rights Above the San Geronimo Valley, a shimmering pastoral getaway in western Marin County, there is a fire road with panoramic views of the rolling, golden countryside. It has been used by hikers and horseback riders for the better part of a century and, in more recent times, by cyclists. The trail, known as the Dickson Ridge or Barnabe Mountain fire road, depending on where you are on it, is a crucial link in a continuous public path to the Pacific Ocean. But the seemingly peaceful trail is now at the center of a furious battle over public access, pitting trail users and county officials against a couple whose property includes a quarter-mile section of the fire road. The couple, David Mease and Catherine Salah, bought the property in 1999 intending to build a winery and their dream house. They didn't particularly like the idea of horses and humans tromping through their private Shangri-la....
Pests infest forests A bumper crop of bugs is chewing through Montana's forests. The bugs, primarily bark beetles and spruce budworms, leave behind patches of damaged trees that have a red and orange hue. But the outbreaks are part of a natural cycle in the forest, according to entomologists. However, that natural process is resulting in a growing number of dead trees, which is raising concerns. The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the U.S. Forest Service collaborate on an annual inventory of "pest" issues in Montana forests. The most recent report, released earlier this month for 2005, shows bark beetle activity on the rise. Throughout the Northern Rockies, overgrown forests stressed by drought are increasingly crawling with beetles. Mild winters also mean more suitable conditions for the insects. Another startling trend over the past several years is how many trees are dying because of the infestations....
Family is leaving Forest Service land A family ordered to vacate U.S. Forest land it claims to have occupied since at least 1912 must be off the property in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest by the end of the month. Dave Stratton calls it "sad," but the Forest Service successfully argued in court that the Strattons do not own the land and an application to homestead the land in 1912 or 1913 was rejected because it was Forest Service land. The family has never paid rent or property taxes. Stratton and his 82-year-old mother, Vady, spent Thursday packing and dismantling their house. "It's a real tough time, but we're a proud family," Dave Stratton said. "We will pick up and move and it will be a new chapter in the family's history." Dave Stratton and his daughter are purchasing a house in Butte, and Vady hopes to get into senior housing in town. The Forest Service filed a lawsuit seeking to evict the Strattons in 2003 after the family rejected a land swap in which they would purchase another parcel of land for the Forest Service and keep the land they occupied....
Fur back in business and in trouble In a drab conference room in a nondescript Renton warehouse last spring, an auctioneer took a podium beneath huge photos of supermodels in mink coats and fur lingerie. He turned on his microphone and began soliciting bids. Before him, dozens of men and women buzzed in a babel of foreign languages — Russian and Italian, Chinese and Korean. But their common language was hanging on racks in the room next door: some 1.7 million shimmering pelts of farm-raised mink, and hundreds of thousands of wild beaver, raccoon, weasel and fox. This is the American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States, where $100 million in business is transacted in a few days. Much as they have for more than a century, merchants from all over the world come to Western Washington to pick over silky skins of North American mammals on behalf of garment manufacturers who will produce next year's lines of boots, hats, gloves, scarves, blankets and coats. After a few rough decades, fur is back....
An extreme drought is taking a heavy toll on Texas ranchers The drought was everywhere at this week's cattle auction. It was in the rows of trailers that swamped the parking lot like a super Wal-Mart. It was in the protruding ribs of skinny cows being sold after months of too little to eat. It was on the tongue of every rancher who'd lost his bet with Mother Nature and was forced to sell long before his cows were ready — at a hefty loss. And despite his joking demeanor, it was in the worried blue eyes of Bodey Langford, 55, who was at his third auction this week, selling off the last of his calves so he can afford to keep feeding their mothers. "Every week, they keep talking about a chance of rain and you hold on and it doesn't rain. Sooner or later you just got to throw in the towel," said Langford, of the nearby Central Texas town of Fentress. "It's emotionally pretty tough. My wife says I'm pretty hard to get along with these days." The scene in Lockhart on Thursday is a common one these days as an extreme drought threatens the No. 1 cattle-producing state in the nation, baking pastureland, draining stock tanks and forcing ranchers to either sell off their herds or keep pouring profits into keeping them alive....
Tyson closing will hurt cattle industry in Idaho The closing of Tyson Foods Inc.'s beef-processing plant south of Boise will hurt the cattle industry in Idaho, the Idaho Cattle Association said Friday. "It's a significant loss in the infrastructure of the industry. ... It's always better when you can have a processing facility here in the state to take care of marketing those cattle," said Lloyd Knight, executive vice president of the association. Tyson announced Thursday that it would close the plant in October, leaving 270 employees out of work. The news came a year after Swift & Co. closed its beef-processing plant in Nampa. The J.R. Simplot Co. closed its Nampa plant in 2003. Tyson was the last large-scale commercial beef-processing facility in Idaho, Knight said. Several smaller facilities still are open throughout Idaho, he said, but most ranchers likely will have to ship their cattle to larger plants in the Northwest, including Tyson's facility in Pasco, Wash....
Rancher is still living her dream When the late Bob Isenberger decided to go into ranching 50 years ago, his wife said it was a dream come true. Pat Litton's dream met hard times and challenges, but has managed to live on to celebrate its 50-year anniversary. It's also a dream that resulted in a history of volunteerism for Wyoming youth and the agricultural industry. That contribution was recognized Wednesday during the Wyoming State Fair when Litton was inducted into the Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame. She married rodeo hand Bob Isenberger, and the young couple began working on ranches in the country north of Douglas. “I taught school there, and that's where I got my first lesson with sheep,” she said. The couple lived in a sheepwagon that now can be found in Litton's front yard. They spent that first spring together lambing 3,000 ewes....
Native Americans learn to alter tactics n the beginning, migrants found little to covet in the southeastern vastness of the Oregon Territory. The land was arid, the natives dirt poor and the dirt itself poor in a lot of places. "These were not horse Indians like the Nez Perce, Shoshone, Crow, and Sioux who lived on the well-watered ranges farther north and east," Bill Gulick says in "Roadside History of Oregon." "These were desert Indians who usually traveled on foot, had no buffalo in their country, and lived on roots, nuts, fish, and small game." Decades earlier, Hudson's Bay Co. fur brigade leader Peter Skene Ogden happened on one such group and traded for some roots to feed his own near-starving crew: " . . . from their looks I presume they have nothing else to subsist on, for more starving wretched looking beings I have never beheld, in fact, reduced to skin and bones," says Ogden's journal. These were the Snake, Paiute, Bannock. Settlers for the most part hastened by, put off by the barren state of both the landscape and those living there. But as the lush valleys west of the mountains filled up in the 1850s and '60s, the desert increasingly beckoned as a land of possibility, maybe even riches. Natives increasingly viewed migrants as interlopers and their livestock and civilized impedimenta as fair game....
A paper trail to a Ranger's past Descendants of Samuel McFall knew he had been a prominent rancher in Central Texas, but until about 30 years ago, they knew nothing about his exploits as a scrappy and traveled fighter for the Republic of Texas. McFall, a Kentucky native, served in various Ranger and militia companies in the 1830s and '40s, including the doomed 1842 Mier Expedition into Mexico, which landed him in a prison until he escaped a couple of years later. R.C. McFall, a longtime Johnson County commissioner, said his great-great-grandfather's past was finally revealed in the 1970s when the family opened a long-forgotten safe-deposit box in a bank in West. It contained several historical documents, including an 1845 land grant printed on lambskin. The certificate held an original seal and the signature of Anson Jones, the republic's last president....
Rancher gets help from BLM to ease impact of drilling A Heart Mountain landowner hopes guidelines recently adopted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and changes to Wyoming's split-estate laws, will help mitigate the impact of gas drilling on his property. "I came real close to walking away from the deal," Jim Dager said of his plan to purchase the 2,640-acre Bison Ranch on the south and west slopes of Heart Mountain. Before closing on the property in January, Dager learned of federal mineral rights on the land and plans by Windsor Energy to drill a gas well there. "Two things that encouraged me to go through with it were the new split-estate act and the best management practices that BLM has adopted," he said. Windsor will be required to drill multiple wells directionally from a single pad, maintain a single battery of tanks, use a closed-loop drilling system to avoid open pits, group truck traffic at set times and bury a planned pipeline....
Unhappy hunting grounds The fight to protect the Roan Plateau and Colorado’s roadless areas from energy development has strayed beyond the realm of environmentalists and traditional wilderness advocates. The “hook and bullet” crowd — hunters, anglers, outfitters and other sportsmen — are now claiming wildland protection as their territory, a development that’s being noticed by the energy industry and politicians all over Colorado and the West. The fate of the Roan Plateau and roadless areas on Battlement Mesa is a personal issue for outfitters such as lifelong Republican Jeff Mead, owner of Rifle-based Mamm Peaks Outfitters. Since gas rigs began drilling near Mead’s hunting grounds, he said he’s lost nearly $70,000 in business because gas development is driving away Battlement Mesa’s big game. More than 3,000 acres of natural gas leases within roadless land in the White River National Forest near the Mamm Peaks went on the auction block Aug. 10. Across the Colorado River on the Roan Plateau, dust, noise and a plethora of heavy trucks are a sign of the times. “A year ago, you didn’t see speed limit signs posted on top of the Roan,” said Clare Bastable of the Colorado Mountain Club....
Utah Couple Sues USDA Over Dead Dog A Fillmore couple has filed a tort claim with the U.S. Department of Agriculture after their dog was killed by a cyanide bomb used as part of the agency’s predator control program in western states. Sharyn and Tony Aguiar’s 2-year-old German shepherd, Max, was with Sharyn at the Millard County rock quarry in April, when he disappeared for just minutes and was found dead, a pink foamy substance emanating from his mouth. Sharyn Aguiar now wants the USDA to discontinues use of the meat-scented cyanide bombs, also known as M-44s. “At first I just wanted to go out and post a sign that says ‘Watch your dog on public land,’ “she said. “Now, I want more than a sign. I want this stuff banned.” The intended target of the USDA’s bombs are coyotes that have harassed or killed sheep grazing on public lands....
Underground water will be valuable commodity, some say On a balmy October evening three years ago, Diane Johnson was kicking a soccer ball around the front yard with her two little girls when a stranger rumbled up the driveway in a pickup. Her husband, Steve, who had been cooking supper on a grill, came around the corner to see who had arrived. To the Johnsons' surprise, the stranger, W. Scott Carlson of Brenham, had a check for more than $300 with their names on it. He wanted to lease some of the water beneath their 121/2 acres of Burleson County land. All they had to do was sign a lease and endorse the check, Carlson said, and the bonus money of $25 per acre would be theirs. They also would reap some of the profits when his company sold the water. He was among the first people in the state to bet that water shortages would make groundwater a profitable business — maybe even the next big thing after oil....
Report: Climate change to have significant impact on N.M. water It would likely get hotter and New Mexico's water supply would be significantly impacted over the next century if greenhouse gas emissions continue, according to a report by the state engineer's office. The report released Friday offers a detailed perspective for the state on the international scientific community's latest projections of climate change induced by greenhouse gases. There is widespread agreement among climate scientists that such gases are changing the Earth's climate, the Albuquerque Journal reported Saturday in a copyright story. The report, based on 18 climate simulations by scientists around the world, states New Mexico would likely have an increased risk of drought over the next century and mountain snowpacks in the southern half of the state could be nonexistent by the late 21st century. The findings suggest added pressure that must be considered in a state already grappling with dry conditions and a limited water supply, said Anne Watkins, special assistant to the state engineer and the report's lead author....
A win-win solution Steve Hilde dreams of the time when ranchers have more time and hunters enjoy more access, and he has an idea how to achieve both. Hilde, a Loveland resident who spends his work day as a business development manager for technology giant Hewlett Packard, figures there’s no reason why Colorado can’t mimic other popular public-access on private-land programs available elsewhere, such as Montana’s Block Management and the Access Yes programs of Wyoming and Idaho. Although Hilde talks about the possibilities in terms more familiar with business managers than everyday hunters, tossing around comments about growth strategy, marketing shares, and price elasticity, he brings what might be a past-due new look at today’s big-game hunting situation. His concept is quite simple. Get public hunters on isolated or landlocked parcels of public land or on private land in exchange for helping ranchers do their core business easier and more cost effectively. Hilde’s proposal, which already is garnering immense support from sportsmen around the state, would pay ranchers to open their lands at a cost well within the reach of the average hunter....
Owyhee bill has degree of support Some environmental groups weren't happy with a provision of a proposed new 807-square-mile wilderness in the Owyhee Mountains that gives ranchers $15 million in cash and federal land, but they say the deal is worth the sacrifice. "We felt the appraisal process deviates too much from standard procedure," Craig Gehrke, of the Wilderness Society in Boise, told the Idaho Statesman. "However, from our perspective, the benefits of this package are enormous and we cannot afford to miss this opportunity." The bill being sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, is the second federal land-use measure in Idaho to be put before this session of Congress. It joins a House-passed measure sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, that would create a separate 492-square-mile wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds Mountains in central Idaho. Under the Owyhee deal in southwest Idaho, for $7 million in cash or land exchanges, 15 ranchers would sell four square miles of land outright, sell scenic easements on 2.5 square miles, and sell eight miles of right of way to preserve or open up access to the Owyhee canyon lands. They'd also get $8 million in exchange for reducing or eliminate grazing on protected land....
Desert Fires' Damage Will Last April Sall stood in the charred remnants of a Joshua tree forest, bark peeling off melted black limbs. Above her, ridges once thick with 1,000-year-old piñon and juniper pines were scorched bedrock and stumps. More than 90% of the surrounding Pipes Canyon Preserve was consumed in last month's Sawtooth blaze. It was one of half a dozen fast-moving fires this summer that burned 65,000 acres of the Mojave Desert, fueling debate over whether the desert is burning more frequently and explosively as a result of invasive weeds, smog, development and climate change. "It's heartbreaking to see," said Sall, a biologist who manages the preserve and whose grandmother homesteaded the land a century ago. "We'll never see those piñon or juniper trees again in our lifetimes, nor will our children, nor will their grandchildren. It's a bitter pill…. This land isn't meant to burn." Many scientists agree, saying the recent blazes offer fresh evidence that deserts across the Southwest are undergoing a profound shift, as ancient native pine, shrubs and cactuses give way to young, highly flammable weeds and grasses....
Editorial: Something needs to give, when it comes to wolves and the state of Montana’s ability to manage them. That’s not how it was supposed to be. The wolf management plan that was adopted by Fish, Wildlife and Parks was pitched to the public as a path toward more responsive and flexible wolf management. From one part of the state to another, from one pack to the next, the state was supposed to be far more responsive than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been with its limited team of wolf managers based in Helena. The state was supposed to have the ability to manage packs that have excessive impacts on big-game populations. Livestock owners, in fact, were supposed to have the ability themselves to respond to problem wolves. So how can it be that some of the critics in Ennis were pining for the old days when the Fish and Wildlife Service responded to conflicts?....
Winds of change The thing about West Texas that you can't ignore, that you can never forget, is the wind. On that big, flat stretch of land dotted with scrubby mesquite trees, the wind sweeps through effortlessly, unimpeded. It rakes across acres of ranchland, over cattle and rocks and red dirt, over nearly dry stock tanks and abandoned oil pump jacks. Always, always it whips at your face or pushes at your back. It fills your ears with a high-pitched, wavering whistle. There's always another gust on the way. And that wind brings a lot of things with it. Tumbleweeds, maybe, that scuttle along highways and prairies. Or dirt, picked up and carried through the air, turning the sky red, choking the atmosphere with dust and sand. These days, though, the wind is blowing something else across West Texas: change. Giant turbines are going up by the hundreds, planted all over the prairie to harness that wind and turn it into clean, renewable energy....
Settlement Will Provide Water for Parched River The lower stretch of the San Joaquin filled with runoff and farm drain water so tainted that it came to be known as the "lower colon of California." Now, thanks to a settlement in a tortured, nearly two-decade-long court fight, the San Joaquin is about to get some of its water back. The agreement, in the final stages of approval, is designed to resurrect the salmon run and return year-round flows to the river for the first time since Harry Truman was president. "The San Joaquin was just killed," said Harrison "Hap" Dunning, a UC Davis emeritus law professor and authority on water law. "It's a monumental restoration." It has not come easily. Kole Upton is a 63-year-old Chowchilla grower with a sharp sense of humor, an engineering degree from Stanford, and 1,200 acres of cotton, corn, almonds and wheat that would wither without water from the San Joaquin. He has been one of the leaders in years of off-and-on settlement negotiations involving growers, environmentalists and the federal government, which operates the dam....
Historic use bumps into property rights Above the San Geronimo Valley, a shimmering pastoral getaway in western Marin County, there is a fire road with panoramic views of the rolling, golden countryside. It has been used by hikers and horseback riders for the better part of a century and, in more recent times, by cyclists. The trail, known as the Dickson Ridge or Barnabe Mountain fire road, depending on where you are on it, is a crucial link in a continuous public path to the Pacific Ocean. But the seemingly peaceful trail is now at the center of a furious battle over public access, pitting trail users and county officials against a couple whose property includes a quarter-mile section of the fire road. The couple, David Mease and Catherine Salah, bought the property in 1999 intending to build a winery and their dream house. They didn't particularly like the idea of horses and humans tromping through their private Shangri-la....
Pests infest forests A bumper crop of bugs is chewing through Montana's forests. The bugs, primarily bark beetles and spruce budworms, leave behind patches of damaged trees that have a red and orange hue. But the outbreaks are part of a natural cycle in the forest, according to entomologists. However, that natural process is resulting in a growing number of dead trees, which is raising concerns. The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the U.S. Forest Service collaborate on an annual inventory of "pest" issues in Montana forests. The most recent report, released earlier this month for 2005, shows bark beetle activity on the rise. Throughout the Northern Rockies, overgrown forests stressed by drought are increasingly crawling with beetles. Mild winters also mean more suitable conditions for the insects. Another startling trend over the past several years is how many trees are dying because of the infestations....
Family is leaving Forest Service land A family ordered to vacate U.S. Forest land it claims to have occupied since at least 1912 must be off the property in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest by the end of the month. Dave Stratton calls it "sad," but the Forest Service successfully argued in court that the Strattons do not own the land and an application to homestead the land in 1912 or 1913 was rejected because it was Forest Service land. The family has never paid rent or property taxes. Stratton and his 82-year-old mother, Vady, spent Thursday packing and dismantling their house. "It's a real tough time, but we're a proud family," Dave Stratton said. "We will pick up and move and it will be a new chapter in the family's history." Dave Stratton and his daughter are purchasing a house in Butte, and Vady hopes to get into senior housing in town. The Forest Service filed a lawsuit seeking to evict the Strattons in 2003 after the family rejected a land swap in which they would purchase another parcel of land for the Forest Service and keep the land they occupied....
Fur back in business and in trouble In a drab conference room in a nondescript Renton warehouse last spring, an auctioneer took a podium beneath huge photos of supermodels in mink coats and fur lingerie. He turned on his microphone and began soliciting bids. Before him, dozens of men and women buzzed in a babel of foreign languages — Russian and Italian, Chinese and Korean. But their common language was hanging on racks in the room next door: some 1.7 million shimmering pelts of farm-raised mink, and hundreds of thousands of wild beaver, raccoon, weasel and fox. This is the American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States, where $100 million in business is transacted in a few days. Much as they have for more than a century, merchants from all over the world come to Western Washington to pick over silky skins of North American mammals on behalf of garment manufacturers who will produce next year's lines of boots, hats, gloves, scarves, blankets and coats. After a few rough decades, fur is back....
An extreme drought is taking a heavy toll on Texas ranchers The drought was everywhere at this week's cattle auction. It was in the rows of trailers that swamped the parking lot like a super Wal-Mart. It was in the protruding ribs of skinny cows being sold after months of too little to eat. It was on the tongue of every rancher who'd lost his bet with Mother Nature and was forced to sell long before his cows were ready — at a hefty loss. And despite his joking demeanor, it was in the worried blue eyes of Bodey Langford, 55, who was at his third auction this week, selling off the last of his calves so he can afford to keep feeding their mothers. "Every week, they keep talking about a chance of rain and you hold on and it doesn't rain. Sooner or later you just got to throw in the towel," said Langford, of the nearby Central Texas town of Fentress. "It's emotionally pretty tough. My wife says I'm pretty hard to get along with these days." The scene in Lockhart on Thursday is a common one these days as an extreme drought threatens the No. 1 cattle-producing state in the nation, baking pastureland, draining stock tanks and forcing ranchers to either sell off their herds or keep pouring profits into keeping them alive....
Tyson closing will hurt cattle industry in Idaho The closing of Tyson Foods Inc.'s beef-processing plant south of Boise will hurt the cattle industry in Idaho, the Idaho Cattle Association said Friday. "It's a significant loss in the infrastructure of the industry. ... It's always better when you can have a processing facility here in the state to take care of marketing those cattle," said Lloyd Knight, executive vice president of the association. Tyson announced Thursday that it would close the plant in October, leaving 270 employees out of work. The news came a year after Swift & Co. closed its beef-processing plant in Nampa. The J.R. Simplot Co. closed its Nampa plant in 2003. Tyson was the last large-scale commercial beef-processing facility in Idaho, Knight said. Several smaller facilities still are open throughout Idaho, he said, but most ranchers likely will have to ship their cattle to larger plants in the Northwest, including Tyson's facility in Pasco, Wash....
Rancher is still living her dream When the late Bob Isenberger decided to go into ranching 50 years ago, his wife said it was a dream come true. Pat Litton's dream met hard times and challenges, but has managed to live on to celebrate its 50-year anniversary. It's also a dream that resulted in a history of volunteerism for Wyoming youth and the agricultural industry. That contribution was recognized Wednesday during the Wyoming State Fair when Litton was inducted into the Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame. She married rodeo hand Bob Isenberger, and the young couple began working on ranches in the country north of Douglas. “I taught school there, and that's where I got my first lesson with sheep,” she said. The couple lived in a sheepwagon that now can be found in Litton's front yard. They spent that first spring together lambing 3,000 ewes....
Native Americans learn to alter tactics n the beginning, migrants found little to covet in the southeastern vastness of the Oregon Territory. The land was arid, the natives dirt poor and the dirt itself poor in a lot of places. "These were not horse Indians like the Nez Perce, Shoshone, Crow, and Sioux who lived on the well-watered ranges farther north and east," Bill Gulick says in "Roadside History of Oregon." "These were desert Indians who usually traveled on foot, had no buffalo in their country, and lived on roots, nuts, fish, and small game." Decades earlier, Hudson's Bay Co. fur brigade leader Peter Skene Ogden happened on one such group and traded for some roots to feed his own near-starving crew: " . . . from their looks I presume they have nothing else to subsist on, for more starving wretched looking beings I have never beheld, in fact, reduced to skin and bones," says Ogden's journal. These were the Snake, Paiute, Bannock. Settlers for the most part hastened by, put off by the barren state of both the landscape and those living there. But as the lush valleys west of the mountains filled up in the 1850s and '60s, the desert increasingly beckoned as a land of possibility, maybe even riches. Natives increasingly viewed migrants as interlopers and their livestock and civilized impedimenta as fair game....
A paper trail to a Ranger's past Descendants of Samuel McFall knew he had been a prominent rancher in Central Texas, but until about 30 years ago, they knew nothing about his exploits as a scrappy and traveled fighter for the Republic of Texas. McFall, a Kentucky native, served in various Ranger and militia companies in the 1830s and '40s, including the doomed 1842 Mier Expedition into Mexico, which landed him in a prison until he escaped a couple of years later. R.C. McFall, a longtime Johnson County commissioner, said his great-great-grandfather's past was finally revealed in the 1970s when the family opened a long-forgotten safe-deposit box in a bank in West. It contained several historical documents, including an 1845 land grant printed on lambskin. The certificate held an original seal and the signature of Anson Jones, the republic's last president....
Sunday, August 20, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Modern medicine and the cowboy
By Julie Carter
I told you no one would believe it, many didn't and wrote to tell me about it.
In response to my story about the blind yearling calf loading up in the trailer on his own, one doubter wrote that he suspected the influence of Crown Royal or at the very minimum, an anesthesia overdose not-yet-worn-off the cowboy sporting the $27,000 shoulder surgery.
He called that the second lie. "Greg wouldn't spend $27,000 on shoulder surgery," he said. "He won't spend that on a truck. If you don't believe me, ask him about "old red."
I responded by explaining to him that I trusted his assessment of his close friends but that the Crown Royal was very likely only available for medicinal purposes for those with refined taste preferring it over pain meds.
I also explained to this occasional ranch visitor that cowboys are sometimes the biggest babies-too tough to take the doc's advice or medication but world class at moaning and groaning for the 90-mile-drive back to the ranch. It's not unusual for the Mrs. to grab the pain pill bottle saying "Give me those blasted pills! One of us needs to feel better."
As for the $27,000 shoulder, most cowboys will sell their soul to get a body part fixed so they can go back out and do whatever it was they did to hurt it in the first place.
Another cowboy, on the wise-side of his fifth decade, had a stout three-year old colt buck him off resulting in an emergency room visit. This was followed by time spent with triage nurses, doctors, radiology technicians, family practice physicians, orthopedic specialists and bona fide physical therapist.
His wife carried a dictionary around to translate their diagnosis, prognosis, treatment protocols, medication and device advice. This was followed by a barrage of bills in the mail box that took a fair amount of accounting expertise to decipher.
The real problem at hand was getting to the cure. His actual diagnosis was Type 2 acromioclavicular separation, as in "hurt shoulder." That made logical sense as that is where he landed. If he had just had the foresight to find a soft spot to land all this could have, in theory, been avoided.
Each of the specialists, with a serious direct eye-to-eye gaze, told him to wear the immobilization device. We call that a splint. They advised he not lift anything including his arm and it would be six weeks before he move anything except his lips to moan.
Next came the electric stimulation to the muscles to facilitate healing and a very dedicated physical therapist determined to bring healing no matter the pain level. In a moment's time the cowboy was promoted from complete immobility to lifting weights over his head.
A series of repetitive moves with pulleys, weights and other devices ensued, moving the cowboy into a realm of exercises he couldn't have done before the accident, let alone while on injured reserve.
The cowboy declared there was nothing about roping that was as physically hard as what the therapist had him doing. So he went home from therapy, saddled his good horse and roped a pen of steers just because he could.
"Hee Haw's" multi-talented Archie Campbell played many rolls on the 60s-70s variety program, one of which was the leering doctor giving sage advice to his patients. "If it hurts when you do that, don't do that."
The jist of all the medical advice given to the cowboy is exactly what Dr. Archie was saying. If it hurts, don't do it. If the cowboy had just remembered Hee Haw, he could have saved a lot of money.
© Julie Carter 2006
The Dead Zone
by Larry Gabriel
If you have not heard of it, you will. The mass media is blaming "agriculture" for a predicted increase in the size of the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist Dave Whitehall recently issued a press release predicting that the anaerobic (oxygen depleted) area in the Gulf of Mexico known as "the dead zone" will grow by 40 percent this year due primarily to agricultural nutrient runoff into the Mississippi River.
Congress has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the theory that agricultural practices are primarily responsible for the dead zone. Congress apparently does not know that "agricultural nonpoint source" means everything except point sources, big city runoff and natural sources.
NOAA shut down testing the dead zone shortly after hurricane Katrina. The fishing in that zone boomed to abundance after the hurricane, indicating the anaerobic conditions lifted even though millions of tons of waste washed into the area from cities along the coast.
NOAA and EPA continue to blame "agriculture" and its use of fertilizer as the primary cause of the dead zone, but never point out that the lawns, football fields, baseball fields, soccer fields and golf courses of every town smaller than 50,000 people are deemed an "agricultural non-point source" of water pollution and fertilizer use for which "farmers" take the blame.
Why is that? Maybe it is because farmers are only a tiny percentage of the population and an easy political target, while sports fans, small towns and homeowners are not.
Here is a recent example of the results of the overbroad definition of agricultural sources: Subsidies wreak havoc on the ecosystem. One small example: There's a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, larger than Connecticut. It's so depleted of oxygen because of algae blooms caused by fertilizer runoff that shrimp and crabs at the Louisiana shore literally try to leap from the water to breathe. This is endangering the profitable Gulf fishing industry. Most of the fertilizer comes from a few Midwestern counties that receive billions in subsidies (more than $30 billion from 1997 to 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group), so says columnist Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angles Times newspaper on August 3, 2006, in an article entitle "Welfare Queens on Tractors".
This is portrayed as a national effort to save commercial fishing in the Gulf. A public radio story said, Agricultural runoff in the Mississippi River that flows into the Gulf of Mexico is suffocating sea life and threatening a once-thriving Louisiana industry…Spring runoff from the Mississippi is loaded with nitrogen-based fertilizers from farms. The fertilizer has the same effect in the Gulf as it does on the Midwest fields it came from. But instead of giving corn a growth spurt, the nitrogen fuels massive algae blooms that then die and suck all of the oxygen out of the water as they decompose.
How many millions of acres of heavily fertilized and irrigated lawn-type grass are in the "agricultural nonpoint source" in North America?
Maybe the real "dead zone" threat is simply an area where truth is not welcome.
Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Modern medicine and the cowboy
By Julie Carter
I told you no one would believe it, many didn't and wrote to tell me about it.
In response to my story about the blind yearling calf loading up in the trailer on his own, one doubter wrote that he suspected the influence of Crown Royal or at the very minimum, an anesthesia overdose not-yet-worn-off the cowboy sporting the $27,000 shoulder surgery.
He called that the second lie. "Greg wouldn't spend $27,000 on shoulder surgery," he said. "He won't spend that on a truck. If you don't believe me, ask him about "old red."
I responded by explaining to him that I trusted his assessment of his close friends but that the Crown Royal was very likely only available for medicinal purposes for those with refined taste preferring it over pain meds.
I also explained to this occasional ranch visitor that cowboys are sometimes the biggest babies-too tough to take the doc's advice or medication but world class at moaning and groaning for the 90-mile-drive back to the ranch. It's not unusual for the Mrs. to grab the pain pill bottle saying "Give me those blasted pills! One of us needs to feel better."
As for the $27,000 shoulder, most cowboys will sell their soul to get a body part fixed so they can go back out and do whatever it was they did to hurt it in the first place.
Another cowboy, on the wise-side of his fifth decade, had a stout three-year old colt buck him off resulting in an emergency room visit. This was followed by time spent with triage nurses, doctors, radiology technicians, family practice physicians, orthopedic specialists and bona fide physical therapist.
His wife carried a dictionary around to translate their diagnosis, prognosis, treatment protocols, medication and device advice. This was followed by a barrage of bills in the mail box that took a fair amount of accounting expertise to decipher.
The real problem at hand was getting to the cure. His actual diagnosis was Type 2 acromioclavicular separation, as in "hurt shoulder." That made logical sense as that is where he landed. If he had just had the foresight to find a soft spot to land all this could have, in theory, been avoided.
Each of the specialists, with a serious direct eye-to-eye gaze, told him to wear the immobilization device. We call that a splint. They advised he not lift anything including his arm and it would be six weeks before he move anything except his lips to moan.
Next came the electric stimulation to the muscles to facilitate healing and a very dedicated physical therapist determined to bring healing no matter the pain level. In a moment's time the cowboy was promoted from complete immobility to lifting weights over his head.
A series of repetitive moves with pulleys, weights and other devices ensued, moving the cowboy into a realm of exercises he couldn't have done before the accident, let alone while on injured reserve.
The cowboy declared there was nothing about roping that was as physically hard as what the therapist had him doing. So he went home from therapy, saddled his good horse and roped a pen of steers just because he could.
"Hee Haw's" multi-talented Archie Campbell played many rolls on the 60s-70s variety program, one of which was the leering doctor giving sage advice to his patients. "If it hurts when you do that, don't do that."
The jist of all the medical advice given to the cowboy is exactly what Dr. Archie was saying. If it hurts, don't do it. If the cowboy had just remembered Hee Haw, he could have saved a lot of money.
© Julie Carter 2006
The Dead Zone
by Larry Gabriel
If you have not heard of it, you will. The mass media is blaming "agriculture" for a predicted increase in the size of the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist Dave Whitehall recently issued a press release predicting that the anaerobic (oxygen depleted) area in the Gulf of Mexico known as "the dead zone" will grow by 40 percent this year due primarily to agricultural nutrient runoff into the Mississippi River.
Congress has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the theory that agricultural practices are primarily responsible for the dead zone. Congress apparently does not know that "agricultural nonpoint source" means everything except point sources, big city runoff and natural sources.
NOAA shut down testing the dead zone shortly after hurricane Katrina. The fishing in that zone boomed to abundance after the hurricane, indicating the anaerobic conditions lifted even though millions of tons of waste washed into the area from cities along the coast.
NOAA and EPA continue to blame "agriculture" and its use of fertilizer as the primary cause of the dead zone, but never point out that the lawns, football fields, baseball fields, soccer fields and golf courses of every town smaller than 50,000 people are deemed an "agricultural non-point source" of water pollution and fertilizer use for which "farmers" take the blame.
Why is that? Maybe it is because farmers are only a tiny percentage of the population and an easy political target, while sports fans, small towns and homeowners are not.
Here is a recent example of the results of the overbroad definition of agricultural sources: Subsidies wreak havoc on the ecosystem. One small example: There's a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, larger than Connecticut. It's so depleted of oxygen because of algae blooms caused by fertilizer runoff that shrimp and crabs at the Louisiana shore literally try to leap from the water to breathe. This is endangering the profitable Gulf fishing industry. Most of the fertilizer comes from a few Midwestern counties that receive billions in subsidies (more than $30 billion from 1997 to 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group), so says columnist Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angles Times newspaper on August 3, 2006, in an article entitle "Welfare Queens on Tractors".
This is portrayed as a national effort to save commercial fishing in the Gulf. A public radio story said, Agricultural runoff in the Mississippi River that flows into the Gulf of Mexico is suffocating sea life and threatening a once-thriving Louisiana industry…Spring runoff from the Mississippi is loaded with nitrogen-based fertilizers from farms. The fertilizer has the same effect in the Gulf as it does on the Midwest fields it came from. But instead of giving corn a growth spurt, the nitrogen fuels massive algae blooms that then die and suck all of the oxygen out of the water as they decompose.
How many millions of acres of heavily fertilized and irrigated lawn-type grass are in the "agricultural nonpoint source" in North America?
Maybe the real "dead zone" threat is simply an area where truth is not welcome.
Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
OPINION/COMMENTARY
The Western Property Rights Wildfire
The stakes are high for property owners this November, as voters in at least five Western states will decide on ballot measures designed to protect private property rights from the expanding reach of regulators. Taking their cue from a similar initiative passed by Oregon voters in 2004, all of these measures aim to provide landowners relief from regulatory takings – the de facto "taking" of private property via restrictions on the ability of property owners to use their land in ways legal at the time they bought their property. In other words, regulatory takings occur when government changes the rules of the game, adopting regulations that prevent landowners from realizing the economic potential of their property investment. Imagine if government were to pass a law that prevented citizens from accessing half of the 401K funds they've accumulated after years of work. The outrage would be swift and vociferous. Yet, states and local governments nationwide routinely enact land use regulations that artificially dampen private property values. The difference is that the impacts of land use regulation tend to go unnoticed unless your property happens to be one of the ones affected. While the state ballot measures share a common intention with Measure 37—protecting landowners from regulatory takings—each measure takes a unique approach (see Table 1 below):....
'Cane Mutiny
What a difference one year makes. With the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall (August 29, 2005) rapidly approaching, who would have predicted that we would now be in the middle of a near-normal Atlantic hurricane season? Weren't the global warming pundits' predictions for this hurricane season that it would be just as bad -- maybe even worse! -- than last year? Yet, now at mid-August, we have had only three named tropical storms, compared to nine by this date last year. Normally, we would have had one hurricane by now, and we have not had any so far, so by that measure we are actually below normal. Hurricanes require warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and last year the tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures were running well above normal. Global warming was the explanation given by most 'experts' the media interviewed. And since global warming will only get worse, those SSTs were expected to just keep on increasing. But now those same regions that had anomalously warm SSTs last year are -- gasp! -- near normal. The accompanying graphic shows large areas in the tropical Atlantic even a little cooler than normal....
How Green Is Your Church?
In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are commanded to "tend and keep" the Garden of Eden, as well as to "fill the Earth", and "subdue" and "have dominion" over the creation. It is clear that mankind is given a dominant role in the biblical creation, with God's permission to use the Earth's natural resources to serve our needs. Yet, we now know that it is possible to damage the creation in ways that makes portions of it unfit for further use for many years. Some chemicals we have developed are very hazardous to humans. For instance, the generation and safe storage of nuclear waste from power plants remain challenges. The Earth is marvelously resilient, constantly cleansing our air and water, yet we know from experience that there are limits to this resiliency. The tension over what constitutes environmental "stewardship" has led to a wide range of opinions within the Christian church on the subject. Some churches have been actively involved in the environmental movement since the 1970's. The concern has been expressed in ways as small as recycling waste, to what can only be called "Earth worship", elevating the value of the creation to a position above that of mankind. The past several months have had considerable activity in the Christian church on the subject of climate change. On February 1st of this year, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) announced that they would not adopt a position statement on global warming that they had been considering since 2004. The NAE, which claims to represent 30 million church members, noted that there is considerable disagreement within the church regarding the causes and severity of, as well as the responses to, the global warming threat. The NAE decision greatly disappointed environmentalists. Then, later in the month, 86 evangelical leaders calling themselves the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) issued a statement at a press conference that called for action to fight global warming. The ECI claimed that the threat from global warming was greatest for the world's poor, and so Christians must be involved in the issue....
MONTANA GROUP ALERTS FEDS TO LIKELY GRIZZLY BEAR LAWSUIT
A community-based, nonprofit group today notified several federal officials and their agencies of a likely lawsuit as a result of several violations of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) involving the grizzly bear. Communities for a Great Northwest (CGNW), which is based in Libby, Montana, in the northwestern corner of the State, advised the officials that the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to protect grizzly bears on the basis of so-called “distinct population segments” rather than their total population violates the ESA and federal regulations. Specifically at issue is the 2004 Biological Opinion for the Kootenai, Idaho Panhandle, and Lolo National Forests Land and Resource Management Plans Amendment for Motorized Access within the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Recovery Zones; however, the group alleges that other opinions and federal plans are implicated by the violations regarding the grizzly bear population. “The people of northwestern Montana and northern Idaho have been whipsawed by the ever increasing demands of federal officials regarding the grizzly bear,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “It is now clear that those demands are illegal and must end.” The ESA requires all federal agencies to consult with the FWS on any future agency action if there is reason to believe that a protected species is present in the area and “implementation of such action will likely affect such species.” Thereafter, the FWS issues an opinion on whether the continued existence of the entire species is likely to be jeopardized. In 1986, however, the FWS decided to protect species, not on the basis of an entire population, but based on separate populations; no legal authority was cited. Although the ESA does permit listing “Distinct Population Segments” (“DPSs”) separately from the remainder of a species, each such DPS must be listed in full compliance with the ESA. The FWS has failed to comply with these statutory requirements in naming distinct populations segments even though Congress, “aware of the potential for abuse,” intended this authority to be used “sparingly” and only with “biological evidence” warranting action....
Gore Sea Levels?
Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth says human-emitted CO2 will boost the earth’s temperatures enough to melt the Arctic ice cap—and suddenly raise sea levels by 20 feet. Phooey. First of all, let’s understand just how cold the Antarctic is. Winter temperatures on its high, cold interior plateau range from 40 to 95 degrees F below zero! In the summer (December) it “warms,” with temperatures dipping only to 49 degrees F below zero—and sometimes rising within 25 degrees F of the melting point (32 degrees F). But even then, the ice reflects virtually all of the sun’s rays back out into space. However, the world’s warming in the past 150 years has produced a change in Antarctica. The huge East Antarctic ice sheet, which contains nearly 90 percent of the world’s ice, has been thickening. European satellites measured the ice sheet’s thickness 347 million times between 1992 and 2003, and found it is gaining about 45 billion tons of water per year because the planet has warmed enough for snow to fall at the coldest place on earth. The study, “Snowfall-driven Growth in East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mitigates Recent Sea-level Rise” was led by Curt Davis of the University of Missouri, and reported in Science on June 24, 2005. Thickening ice in the Antarctic, in fact, is just about offsetting the meltwater being released from the edges of the Greenland ice sheet—which has also been thickening in its center. This leaves us with a global warming sea level gain of about 1.8 millimeters per year—or 4 inches per century. The rise has remained constant during the 20th century despite the moderate 0.6 degree C warming of the planet....
Deadly Intentions: The New (Old) Animal-Rights Philosophy
Law enforcement in England is celebrating after the man one police department calls "the Animal Liberation Front’s top bomber" entered guilty pleas in court yesterday. Long-time British activist Donald Currie, first arrested in March, admitted that he set an arson fire at a house occupied by a woman and her young daughter. He also pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing explosives "with intent to endanger life." The Animal Liberation Front publicly claimed responsibility for both crimes (see here and here). So much for the animal rights movement’s oft-heard pious boast of being fundamentally nonviolent. The Times of London reports that Currie already had a string of previous convictions for criminal damage, assault, and other offenses. And The Sun, another London paper, adds that Currie "admitted having an arsenal of explosives he planned to use on further targets." It’s becoming clearer that the notion of animal rights extremists going out of their way to avoid shedding human blood is a quaint misconception -- and not just a British one. In this country, Animal Liberation Front spokesperson (and long-time former Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine front-man) Dr. Jerry Vlasak has talked openly about killing people to save animals. And former People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals "National Lecturer" Gary Yourofsky has insisted that he would "unequivocally support" the murder of medical researchers during an animal-rights arson....
The Western Property Rights Wildfire
The stakes are high for property owners this November, as voters in at least five Western states will decide on ballot measures designed to protect private property rights from the expanding reach of regulators. Taking their cue from a similar initiative passed by Oregon voters in 2004, all of these measures aim to provide landowners relief from regulatory takings – the de facto "taking" of private property via restrictions on the ability of property owners to use their land in ways legal at the time they bought their property. In other words, regulatory takings occur when government changes the rules of the game, adopting regulations that prevent landowners from realizing the economic potential of their property investment. Imagine if government were to pass a law that prevented citizens from accessing half of the 401K funds they've accumulated after years of work. The outrage would be swift and vociferous. Yet, states and local governments nationwide routinely enact land use regulations that artificially dampen private property values. The difference is that the impacts of land use regulation tend to go unnoticed unless your property happens to be one of the ones affected. While the state ballot measures share a common intention with Measure 37—protecting landowners from regulatory takings—each measure takes a unique approach (see Table 1 below):....
'Cane Mutiny
What a difference one year makes. With the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall (August 29, 2005) rapidly approaching, who would have predicted that we would now be in the middle of a near-normal Atlantic hurricane season? Weren't the global warming pundits' predictions for this hurricane season that it would be just as bad -- maybe even worse! -- than last year? Yet, now at mid-August, we have had only three named tropical storms, compared to nine by this date last year. Normally, we would have had one hurricane by now, and we have not had any so far, so by that measure we are actually below normal. Hurricanes require warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and last year the tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures were running well above normal. Global warming was the explanation given by most 'experts' the media interviewed. And since global warming will only get worse, those SSTs were expected to just keep on increasing. But now those same regions that had anomalously warm SSTs last year are -- gasp! -- near normal. The accompanying graphic shows large areas in the tropical Atlantic even a little cooler than normal....
How Green Is Your Church?
In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are commanded to "tend and keep" the Garden of Eden, as well as to "fill the Earth", and "subdue" and "have dominion" over the creation. It is clear that mankind is given a dominant role in the biblical creation, with God's permission to use the Earth's natural resources to serve our needs. Yet, we now know that it is possible to damage the creation in ways that makes portions of it unfit for further use for many years. Some chemicals we have developed are very hazardous to humans. For instance, the generation and safe storage of nuclear waste from power plants remain challenges. The Earth is marvelously resilient, constantly cleansing our air and water, yet we know from experience that there are limits to this resiliency. The tension over what constitutes environmental "stewardship" has led to a wide range of opinions within the Christian church on the subject. Some churches have been actively involved in the environmental movement since the 1970's. The concern has been expressed in ways as small as recycling waste, to what can only be called "Earth worship", elevating the value of the creation to a position above that of mankind. The past several months have had considerable activity in the Christian church on the subject of climate change. On February 1st of this year, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) announced that they would not adopt a position statement on global warming that they had been considering since 2004. The NAE, which claims to represent 30 million church members, noted that there is considerable disagreement within the church regarding the causes and severity of, as well as the responses to, the global warming threat. The NAE decision greatly disappointed environmentalists. Then, later in the month, 86 evangelical leaders calling themselves the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) issued a statement at a press conference that called for action to fight global warming. The ECI claimed that the threat from global warming was greatest for the world's poor, and so Christians must be involved in the issue....
MONTANA GROUP ALERTS FEDS TO LIKELY GRIZZLY BEAR LAWSUIT
A community-based, nonprofit group today notified several federal officials and their agencies of a likely lawsuit as a result of several violations of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) involving the grizzly bear. Communities for a Great Northwest (CGNW), which is based in Libby, Montana, in the northwestern corner of the State, advised the officials that the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to protect grizzly bears on the basis of so-called “distinct population segments” rather than their total population violates the ESA and federal regulations. Specifically at issue is the 2004 Biological Opinion for the Kootenai, Idaho Panhandle, and Lolo National Forests Land and Resource Management Plans Amendment for Motorized Access within the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Recovery Zones; however, the group alleges that other opinions and federal plans are implicated by the violations regarding the grizzly bear population. “The people of northwestern Montana and northern Idaho have been whipsawed by the ever increasing demands of federal officials regarding the grizzly bear,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “It is now clear that those demands are illegal and must end.” The ESA requires all federal agencies to consult with the FWS on any future agency action if there is reason to believe that a protected species is present in the area and “implementation of such action will likely affect such species.” Thereafter, the FWS issues an opinion on whether the continued existence of the entire species is likely to be jeopardized. In 1986, however, the FWS decided to protect species, not on the basis of an entire population, but based on separate populations; no legal authority was cited. Although the ESA does permit listing “Distinct Population Segments” (“DPSs”) separately from the remainder of a species, each such DPS must be listed in full compliance with the ESA. The FWS has failed to comply with these statutory requirements in naming distinct populations segments even though Congress, “aware of the potential for abuse,” intended this authority to be used “sparingly” and only with “biological evidence” warranting action....
Gore Sea Levels?
Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth says human-emitted CO2 will boost the earth’s temperatures enough to melt the Arctic ice cap—and suddenly raise sea levels by 20 feet. Phooey. First of all, let’s understand just how cold the Antarctic is. Winter temperatures on its high, cold interior plateau range from 40 to 95 degrees F below zero! In the summer (December) it “warms,” with temperatures dipping only to 49 degrees F below zero—and sometimes rising within 25 degrees F of the melting point (32 degrees F). But even then, the ice reflects virtually all of the sun’s rays back out into space. However, the world’s warming in the past 150 years has produced a change in Antarctica. The huge East Antarctic ice sheet, which contains nearly 90 percent of the world’s ice, has been thickening. European satellites measured the ice sheet’s thickness 347 million times between 1992 and 2003, and found it is gaining about 45 billion tons of water per year because the planet has warmed enough for snow to fall at the coldest place on earth. The study, “Snowfall-driven Growth in East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mitigates Recent Sea-level Rise” was led by Curt Davis of the University of Missouri, and reported in Science on June 24, 2005. Thickening ice in the Antarctic, in fact, is just about offsetting the meltwater being released from the edges of the Greenland ice sheet—which has also been thickening in its center. This leaves us with a global warming sea level gain of about 1.8 millimeters per year—or 4 inches per century. The rise has remained constant during the 20th century despite the moderate 0.6 degree C warming of the planet....
Deadly Intentions: The New (Old) Animal-Rights Philosophy
Law enforcement in England is celebrating after the man one police department calls "the Animal Liberation Front’s top bomber" entered guilty pleas in court yesterday. Long-time British activist Donald Currie, first arrested in March, admitted that he set an arson fire at a house occupied by a woman and her young daughter. He also pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing explosives "with intent to endanger life." The Animal Liberation Front publicly claimed responsibility for both crimes (see here and here). So much for the animal rights movement’s oft-heard pious boast of being fundamentally nonviolent. The Times of London reports that Currie already had a string of previous convictions for criminal damage, assault, and other offenses. And The Sun, another London paper, adds that Currie "admitted having an arsenal of explosives he planned to use on further targets." It’s becoming clearer that the notion of animal rights extremists going out of their way to avoid shedding human blood is a quaint misconception -- and not just a British one. In this country, Animal Liberation Front spokesperson (and long-time former Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine front-man) Dr. Jerry Vlasak has talked openly about killing people to save animals. And former People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals "National Lecturer" Gary Yourofsky has insisted that he would "unequivocally support" the murder of medical researchers during an animal-rights arson....
Friday, August 18, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Bipartisan effort for Oregon wilderness Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith on Thursday proposed a large increase in the acreage the House approved last month for the first wilderness expansion on Mount Hood and along the Columbia River Gorge in more than 20 years. Wyden, a Democrat, joined his Republican colleague Smith to ask that 125,000 acres be designated wilderness. That would amount to about 195 square miles and represent a 70 percent increase from the areas currently protected as wilderness. In July, the House approved 77,000 acres, or 120 square miles, of new wilderness area. The House bill had similar bipartisan backing from Republican Greg Walden and Democrat Earl Blumenauer. The senators also proposed adding nearly 80 miles of river for wild and scenic rivers protection — more than triple the 25 miles approved by the House....
Editorial - Blaming wolves: Ranchers' claims need further proof Most ranchers and sheepherders don't like wolves. You might even say they are the predators' natural enemies. That, of course, is because wolves occasionally dine on a calf or lamb and sometimes even on an adult animal, and that means a financial loss to the rancher. Advocates for the reintroduction of wolves in the West don't dispute that ranchers can prove some wolf depredation. But their claims that range animals are failing to gain weight because wolves are lurking seem implausible and in need of further study. Ingrained and often overblown animosity toward wolves resulted in their eradication from the West by cattlemen, sheepmen and their hired guns, who trapped the animals, shot them and poisoned them until the last wolf was killed off in the early 20th century. More than a decade ago, wolves were reintroduced to rebalance the ecosystems that were upset when the species at the top of the food chain was eliminated. Conservationists and biologists predicted that wolves would reorder natural, beneficial relationships among plants and animals. Studies have proven them right....
Church wary of Nevada water deal The LDS Church has waded into the battle over a controversial groundwater pumping project in Nevada. The church, which owns a 4,000-acre cattle ranch in eastern Nevada's White Pine County and is a senior water rights holder in the Spring Valley, has through its attorneys asked the state engineer to delay awarding a project permit to the Southern Nevada Water Authority until an ongoing U.S. Geological Survey study of the region's groundwater resources is completed next year. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to Las Vegas and Clark County, has proposed taking groundwater out of Spring Valley and surrounding areas - including the Snake Valley, which straddles the Nevada-Utah border - and pumping it to Las Vegas via a 200-mile pipeline network to meet that area's growing water needs. Ranchers on both sides of the state line, and environmental groups, have dug in against the project, fearing it will dry up water tables and destroy the area's ecosystem and ranching industry....
Huge Marijuana Operation Linked to Mexican Mafia The Mexican Mafia in Utah's Garfield County? Authorities say illegal immigrants, working as drug runners grew a huge marijuana garden on federal land in Utah. And two men, both Mexican nationals and in the United States illegally, are in jail without bail tonight. Sheriff's deputies caught them yesterday in Panguitch. Augustine Tesco and Juan Carlos Garcia face federal drug charges. Investigators say both men may have ties to the Mexican Mafia. They say their job was simple, grow the marijuana plants then guard the pot with guns. Authorities seized more than five thousand plants this week near Bryce Canyon. Many people who visit Garfield County in southern Utah do so for the relative peace and quiet. Those same qualities also appeal to those up to go good. We've all heard of marijuana busts before, but very few are as big as this one. Even Keith Millet, with the Iron County/Garfield County drug task force has never seen this much pot all at once. When he was first told about it, he had to see it to believe it....
Squatter numbers drop, Forest Service announces For years, local officials have been grappling with the issue of unauthorized long-term camping on national forest land. Along with the potential fire danger, so-called squatters sometimes cause a disproportionate impact to natural resources, including concentrations of human waste and garbage. A couple of years ago, for example, rangers and volunteers hauled truckloads of trash from favored squatter sites along Montezuma Road, including mattresses and miscellaneous pieces of furniture. But Dillon District Ranger Rick Newton said recently that the Forest Service has been diligently enforcing camping regulations and education public land users to tackle the problem. Those ongoing management efforts have made a difference....
Where there's fire, there's global warming Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony Westerling began obsessively poring over the meticulously detailed invoices that U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service land managers use to itemize firefighting expenses. "These things will have 170-plus fields," says Westerling - including information on when a fire was first reported, when firefighters finally controlled it, and how many acres were burned. Westerling, who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (which also studies climate and earth sciences) in La Jolla, Calif., didn't aspire to be an accountant, nor was he searching for fraud in government spending. He was hoping to answer a question that had not been seriously asked before: How do rising global temperatures affect wildfire behavior? Along with fellow researchers in La Jolla and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Westerling wove the information in the invoices together with data from streamflow gauges, soil moisture measures, and temperature and precipitation records to form a comprehensive picture of the driving forces behind the West's fires. The group will present its findings in the journal Science next month; a preliminary article appeared in the July 6 issue of Science Express. The basic conclusion may not startle: Large forest fires increased beginning in the mid-1980s - particularly in the Northern Rockies, the Sierra Nevada and the southern Cascades - and the changes closely correlated with an increase in spring and summer temperatures during the same time period....
Record energy pace With about four months left in 2006, Colorado's booming energy industry is on track to surpass an earlier estimate and log yet another record year. The state issued 3,022 permits to drill oil and gas wells from Jan. 1 through Aug. 1, according to a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission report released this week. At that pace, Colorado is projected to issue a record 5,178 permits by year's end, higher than the commission's April estimate of 4,650 permits. The new estimate would be a 19 percent jump from the record 4,363 permits approved in 2005. And last year was nearly 50 percent higher than the 2,917 permits approved in 2004. "That's pretty big," said Ken Wonstolen, a senior vice president for the Colorado Oil & Gas Association. "Even though there has been some moderation in natural gas prices, there has been no reduction in the activity levels."....
BLM sells Utah drilling leases Oil-and-gas players bid up to $475 an acre for drilling rights on public land Tuesday, but some were still angry over a judge's decision two weeks ago that they say robbed them of parcels they'd already won in areas of Utah considered worthy of wilderness protection. At a fast clip, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned 226,471 acres of federal land, much of it in central Utah where a wildcat gusher has intensified interest, for $8 million -- half of which goes to the state. The auction, however, did not include nearly 20,000 acres of land the bureau held back in response to a court ruling that found it had acted illegally in leasing similar wilderness-quality lands three years ago. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball reversed the lease of 16 parcels in an Aug. 2 decision, angering exploration companies like Denver-based Tidewater Oil and Gas Co., which stands to lose drilling rights on a half-dozen of those parcels. Tidewater's leases are in the wild Book Cliffs region of eastern Utah. "We don't want our money back. We want our leases," said Tidewater manager James S. Jones, who was bidding Tuesday for more drilling rights to add to the company's portfolio of about 470,000 acres in Utah....
BLM notices increase in vandalism on public lands An increase in vandalism on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management has led the agency to authorize reward money for information resulting in the identification and prosecution of suspects. “Overall, we're seeing an increase in vandalism and graffiti,” said Mike Marquart, chief area ranger for law enforcement with the BLM. While it is not uncommon for BLM signs and property to be vandalized, the vandalism has recently been spreading beyond signs and buildings to the protected lands themselves. At the Trona Pinnacles, one of the rock formations itself was recently defaced with graffiti. “This particular incident was actually of the national natural landmark itself,” said Marquart. “It's a tragedy to see something like this happen to such a landmark.”....
Prairie Dogs Causing Trouble for Golfers Golfers in Cedar City are facing an unusual hazard on the course, prairie dogs. Instead of manicured lawns, dirt mounds spot the fairways at Cedar Ridge Golf Course. The Utah Prairie Dog is on the endangered species list, so the golf course can't remove the animals. The course managers say the biggest problem is the holes the prairie dogs create. John Evans, Director of Golf, Cedar Ridge Golf Course: "The danger is of people stepping in the holes and the balls getting lost in the holes. I have a hard time running golf tournaments because I have to have so many special rules because of lost balls." Ralph Mortensen, Parawon Resident: "It is a big problem. I like to see the little critters, but they tear up the fairways and things."....
"Ride Around the World": Tracing the trail of the modern cowboy So this is what IMAX was made for: 70mm, six-story-high images of horses and their riders thundering through grassy plains. That iconic American vision is captured in the spectacular documentary "Ride Around the World," a new, supersized IMAX production that celebrates horse culture in the West — not just in the U.S., but also in Canada and all the way down to the southern tip of South America. The full story of the working collaboration between people and horses — herding cattle, roping calves, capturing feisty bulls — begins, the film tells us, 1,200 years ago in Morocco. There, Moorish horsemen rode through deserts on light, fast horses, the same animals that helped them conquer Spain. Hopping to Spain, "Ride" explains how cattle herders crossed Moroccan horses with native breeds and came up with an ideal hybrid for managing livestock. The men who rode these horses became the first cowboys. Conquistadors brought horse culture to the New World; director Harry Lynch captures, with great energy and beauty, the hard work of modern gauchos in Argentina and Mexico, baqueanos riding on the icy slopes of Patagonia and ranchers in Texas and British Columbia....
Bipartisan effort for Oregon wilderness Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith on Thursday proposed a large increase in the acreage the House approved last month for the first wilderness expansion on Mount Hood and along the Columbia River Gorge in more than 20 years. Wyden, a Democrat, joined his Republican colleague Smith to ask that 125,000 acres be designated wilderness. That would amount to about 195 square miles and represent a 70 percent increase from the areas currently protected as wilderness. In July, the House approved 77,000 acres, or 120 square miles, of new wilderness area. The House bill had similar bipartisan backing from Republican Greg Walden and Democrat Earl Blumenauer. The senators also proposed adding nearly 80 miles of river for wild and scenic rivers protection — more than triple the 25 miles approved by the House....
Editorial - Blaming wolves: Ranchers' claims need further proof Most ranchers and sheepherders don't like wolves. You might even say they are the predators' natural enemies. That, of course, is because wolves occasionally dine on a calf or lamb and sometimes even on an adult animal, and that means a financial loss to the rancher. Advocates for the reintroduction of wolves in the West don't dispute that ranchers can prove some wolf depredation. But their claims that range animals are failing to gain weight because wolves are lurking seem implausible and in need of further study. Ingrained and often overblown animosity toward wolves resulted in their eradication from the West by cattlemen, sheepmen and their hired guns, who trapped the animals, shot them and poisoned them until the last wolf was killed off in the early 20th century. More than a decade ago, wolves were reintroduced to rebalance the ecosystems that were upset when the species at the top of the food chain was eliminated. Conservationists and biologists predicted that wolves would reorder natural, beneficial relationships among plants and animals. Studies have proven them right....
Church wary of Nevada water deal The LDS Church has waded into the battle over a controversial groundwater pumping project in Nevada. The church, which owns a 4,000-acre cattle ranch in eastern Nevada's White Pine County and is a senior water rights holder in the Spring Valley, has through its attorneys asked the state engineer to delay awarding a project permit to the Southern Nevada Water Authority until an ongoing U.S. Geological Survey study of the region's groundwater resources is completed next year. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to Las Vegas and Clark County, has proposed taking groundwater out of Spring Valley and surrounding areas - including the Snake Valley, which straddles the Nevada-Utah border - and pumping it to Las Vegas via a 200-mile pipeline network to meet that area's growing water needs. Ranchers on both sides of the state line, and environmental groups, have dug in against the project, fearing it will dry up water tables and destroy the area's ecosystem and ranching industry....
Huge Marijuana Operation Linked to Mexican Mafia The Mexican Mafia in Utah's Garfield County? Authorities say illegal immigrants, working as drug runners grew a huge marijuana garden on federal land in Utah. And two men, both Mexican nationals and in the United States illegally, are in jail without bail tonight. Sheriff's deputies caught them yesterday in Panguitch. Augustine Tesco and Juan Carlos Garcia face federal drug charges. Investigators say both men may have ties to the Mexican Mafia. They say their job was simple, grow the marijuana plants then guard the pot with guns. Authorities seized more than five thousand plants this week near Bryce Canyon. Many people who visit Garfield County in southern Utah do so for the relative peace and quiet. Those same qualities also appeal to those up to go good. We've all heard of marijuana busts before, but very few are as big as this one. Even Keith Millet, with the Iron County/Garfield County drug task force has never seen this much pot all at once. When he was first told about it, he had to see it to believe it....
Squatter numbers drop, Forest Service announces For years, local officials have been grappling with the issue of unauthorized long-term camping on national forest land. Along with the potential fire danger, so-called squatters sometimes cause a disproportionate impact to natural resources, including concentrations of human waste and garbage. A couple of years ago, for example, rangers and volunteers hauled truckloads of trash from favored squatter sites along Montezuma Road, including mattresses and miscellaneous pieces of furniture. But Dillon District Ranger Rick Newton said recently that the Forest Service has been diligently enforcing camping regulations and education public land users to tackle the problem. Those ongoing management efforts have made a difference....
Where there's fire, there's global warming Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony Westerling began obsessively poring over the meticulously detailed invoices that U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service land managers use to itemize firefighting expenses. "These things will have 170-plus fields," says Westerling - including information on when a fire was first reported, when firefighters finally controlled it, and how many acres were burned. Westerling, who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (which also studies climate and earth sciences) in La Jolla, Calif., didn't aspire to be an accountant, nor was he searching for fraud in government spending. He was hoping to answer a question that had not been seriously asked before: How do rising global temperatures affect wildfire behavior? Along with fellow researchers in La Jolla and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Westerling wove the information in the invoices together with data from streamflow gauges, soil moisture measures, and temperature and precipitation records to form a comprehensive picture of the driving forces behind the West's fires. The group will present its findings in the journal Science next month; a preliminary article appeared in the July 6 issue of Science Express. The basic conclusion may not startle: Large forest fires increased beginning in the mid-1980s - particularly in the Northern Rockies, the Sierra Nevada and the southern Cascades - and the changes closely correlated with an increase in spring and summer temperatures during the same time period....
Record energy pace With about four months left in 2006, Colorado's booming energy industry is on track to surpass an earlier estimate and log yet another record year. The state issued 3,022 permits to drill oil and gas wells from Jan. 1 through Aug. 1, according to a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission report released this week. At that pace, Colorado is projected to issue a record 5,178 permits by year's end, higher than the commission's April estimate of 4,650 permits. The new estimate would be a 19 percent jump from the record 4,363 permits approved in 2005. And last year was nearly 50 percent higher than the 2,917 permits approved in 2004. "That's pretty big," said Ken Wonstolen, a senior vice president for the Colorado Oil & Gas Association. "Even though there has been some moderation in natural gas prices, there has been no reduction in the activity levels."....
BLM sells Utah drilling leases Oil-and-gas players bid up to $475 an acre for drilling rights on public land Tuesday, but some were still angry over a judge's decision two weeks ago that they say robbed them of parcels they'd already won in areas of Utah considered worthy of wilderness protection. At a fast clip, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned 226,471 acres of federal land, much of it in central Utah where a wildcat gusher has intensified interest, for $8 million -- half of which goes to the state. The auction, however, did not include nearly 20,000 acres of land the bureau held back in response to a court ruling that found it had acted illegally in leasing similar wilderness-quality lands three years ago. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball reversed the lease of 16 parcels in an Aug. 2 decision, angering exploration companies like Denver-based Tidewater Oil and Gas Co., which stands to lose drilling rights on a half-dozen of those parcels. Tidewater's leases are in the wild Book Cliffs region of eastern Utah. "We don't want our money back. We want our leases," said Tidewater manager James S. Jones, who was bidding Tuesday for more drilling rights to add to the company's portfolio of about 470,000 acres in Utah....
BLM notices increase in vandalism on public lands An increase in vandalism on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management has led the agency to authorize reward money for information resulting in the identification and prosecution of suspects. “Overall, we're seeing an increase in vandalism and graffiti,” said Mike Marquart, chief area ranger for law enforcement with the BLM. While it is not uncommon for BLM signs and property to be vandalized, the vandalism has recently been spreading beyond signs and buildings to the protected lands themselves. At the Trona Pinnacles, one of the rock formations itself was recently defaced with graffiti. “This particular incident was actually of the national natural landmark itself,” said Marquart. “It's a tragedy to see something like this happen to such a landmark.”....
Prairie Dogs Causing Trouble for Golfers Golfers in Cedar City are facing an unusual hazard on the course, prairie dogs. Instead of manicured lawns, dirt mounds spot the fairways at Cedar Ridge Golf Course. The Utah Prairie Dog is on the endangered species list, so the golf course can't remove the animals. The course managers say the biggest problem is the holes the prairie dogs create. John Evans, Director of Golf, Cedar Ridge Golf Course: "The danger is of people stepping in the holes and the balls getting lost in the holes. I have a hard time running golf tournaments because I have to have so many special rules because of lost balls." Ralph Mortensen, Parawon Resident: "It is a big problem. I like to see the little critters, but they tear up the fairways and things."....
"Ride Around the World": Tracing the trail of the modern cowboy So this is what IMAX was made for: 70mm, six-story-high images of horses and their riders thundering through grassy plains. That iconic American vision is captured in the spectacular documentary "Ride Around the World," a new, supersized IMAX production that celebrates horse culture in the West — not just in the U.S., but also in Canada and all the way down to the southern tip of South America. The full story of the working collaboration between people and horses — herding cattle, roping calves, capturing feisty bulls — begins, the film tells us, 1,200 years ago in Morocco. There, Moorish horsemen rode through deserts on light, fast horses, the same animals that helped them conquer Spain. Hopping to Spain, "Ride" explains how cattle herders crossed Moroccan horses with native breeds and came up with an ideal hybrid for managing livestock. The men who rode these horses became the first cowboys. Conquistadors brought horse culture to the New World; director Harry Lynch captures, with great energy and beauty, the hard work of modern gauchos in Argentina and Mexico, baqueanos riding on the icy slopes of Patagonia and ranchers in Texas and British Columbia....
FLE
Judge Finds NSA Program Unconstitutional
A federal judge decision's to strike down President Bush's warrantless surveillance program was the first ruling over its legality, but surely not the last. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Thursday that the program violated the rights to free speech and privacy, as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Taylor was the first judge to rule on the legality of the National Security Agency's program, which the White House says is a key tool for fighting terrorism that has already stopped attacks. "Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion. The administration said it would appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. "We're going to do everything we can do in the courts to allow this program to continue," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference in Washington....go here to read the decision.
Judge refuses New Orleans' request to dismiss lawsuit by gun owners' lobbying groups
A federal lawsuit accusing the city of illegally confiscating firearms during the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina was kept alive by a federal judge Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied a motion by the city of New Orleans to dismiss a suit by the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation. The groups sued Mayor Ray Nagin and New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley over the confiscation of guns following Hurricane Katrina. The city asked the judge to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction, saying "the states, and by extension their political subdivisions, are free to proscribe the possession of firearms." The court rejected the motion, ruling the city did nothing to back up "the brazen assertion" that the second amendment did not apply. "I'm delighted to see that the second amendment still applies in Louisiana," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. The suit says that during and after the Aug. 29 storm, "Mayor Nagin ordered the New Orleans police and other law enforcement entities under his authority to evict persons from their homes and to confiscate the lawfully possessed firearms."....
Judge Finds NSA Program Unconstitutional
A federal judge decision's to strike down President Bush's warrantless surveillance program was the first ruling over its legality, but surely not the last. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Thursday that the program violated the rights to free speech and privacy, as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Taylor was the first judge to rule on the legality of the National Security Agency's program, which the White House says is a key tool for fighting terrorism that has already stopped attacks. "Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion. The administration said it would appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. "We're going to do everything we can do in the courts to allow this program to continue," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference in Washington....go here to read the decision.
Judge refuses New Orleans' request to dismiss lawsuit by gun owners' lobbying groups
A federal lawsuit accusing the city of illegally confiscating firearms during the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina was kept alive by a federal judge Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied a motion by the city of New Orleans to dismiss a suit by the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation. The groups sued Mayor Ray Nagin and New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley over the confiscation of guns following Hurricane Katrina. The city asked the judge to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction, saying "the states, and by extension their political subdivisions, are free to proscribe the possession of firearms." The court rejected the motion, ruling the city did nothing to back up "the brazen assertion" that the second amendment did not apply. "I'm delighted to see that the second amendment still applies in Louisiana," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. The suit says that during and after the Aug. 29 storm, "Mayor Nagin ordered the New Orleans police and other law enforcement entities under his authority to evict persons from their homes and to confiscate the lawfully possessed firearms."....
Thursday, August 17, 2006
FLE
A new role for the undermanned Border Patrol
National Guard troops deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of President Bush's plan to free U.S. Border Patrol agents have been assigned bodyguards -- some of the same agents the soldiers were sent to relieve. Several veteran Border Patrol agents in Arizona told The Washington Times they were issued standing orders to be within five minutes of National Guard troops along the border and that Border Patrol units were pulled from other regions to protect the Guard units -- leaving their own areas short-handed. The agents, who refer to the assignment as "the nanny patrol," said most of the Guard troops are not allowed to carry loaded weapons, despite a significant increase in border violence directed at Border Patrol agents and other law-enforcement personnel over the past year. The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), which represents all 10,000 of the agency's nonsupervisory agents, said the presence of more than 6,000 Guard troops on the border has allowed a few hundred agents to be reassigned from administrative to field duties, but that "about the same number are now assigned to guard the National Guard troops.". "Other agents are being assigned to supervise the National Guard troops, who are performing different administrative tasks," said NBPC President T.J. Bonner, a 28-year Border Patrol veteran. "Overtime has been authorized for these duties, but was not authorized for patrolling the border prior to the arrival of the National Guard."....
Feds Nab Mexican Drug Kingpin Responsible for Border Tunnels
Mexican drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix has been apprehended after Drug Enforcement Administration officials were tipped off that the kingpin was aboard a boat in international waters near the U.S.-Mexican border. Federal drug agents and the Coast Guard arrested Arellano-Felix, 37, on a private vessel in the Sea of Cortez off La Paz, Mexico, federal officials said Wednesday. Arellano-Felix is a leader of a violent gang responsible for digging elaborate tunnels to smuggle drugs under the U.S. border, a Justice Department official said. Arrellano-Felix is wanted in both the United States and Mexico for his role as a leader in the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix gang, which includes seven brothers and four sisters from the Arellano family....
A new role for the undermanned Border Patrol
National Guard troops deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of President Bush's plan to free U.S. Border Patrol agents have been assigned bodyguards -- some of the same agents the soldiers were sent to relieve. Several veteran Border Patrol agents in Arizona told The Washington Times they were issued standing orders to be within five minutes of National Guard troops along the border and that Border Patrol units were pulled from other regions to protect the Guard units -- leaving their own areas short-handed. The agents, who refer to the assignment as "the nanny patrol," said most of the Guard troops are not allowed to carry loaded weapons, despite a significant increase in border violence directed at Border Patrol agents and other law-enforcement personnel over the past year. The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), which represents all 10,000 of the agency's nonsupervisory agents, said the presence of more than 6,000 Guard troops on the border has allowed a few hundred agents to be reassigned from administrative to field duties, but that "about the same number are now assigned to guard the National Guard troops.". "Other agents are being assigned to supervise the National Guard troops, who are performing different administrative tasks," said NBPC President T.J. Bonner, a 28-year Border Patrol veteran. "Overtime has been authorized for these duties, but was not authorized for patrolling the border prior to the arrival of the National Guard."....
Feds Nab Mexican Drug Kingpin Responsible for Border Tunnels
Mexican drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix has been apprehended after Drug Enforcement Administration officials were tipped off that the kingpin was aboard a boat in international waters near the U.S.-Mexican border. Federal drug agents and the Coast Guard arrested Arellano-Felix, 37, on a private vessel in the Sea of Cortez off La Paz, Mexico, federal officials said Wednesday. Arellano-Felix is a leader of a violent gang responsible for digging elaborate tunnels to smuggle drugs under the U.S. border, a Justice Department official said. Arrellano-Felix is wanted in both the United States and Mexico for his role as a leader in the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix gang, which includes seven brothers and four sisters from the Arellano family....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rich countries like poor face water crisis Rich countries have to make drastic changes to policies if they are to avoid the water crisis that is facing poorer nations, the WWF environmental organization said on Wednesday. In a survey of the situation across the industrialized world, it said many cities were already losing the battle to maintain water supplies as governments talked about conservation but failed to implement their pledges. "Supporting large-scale industry and growing populations using water at high rates has come close to exhausting the water supplies of some First World cities and is a looming threat for many, if not most, others," the report warned. It suggested that agriculture in the richer countries should have to pay more for water and be held responsible more actively for its efficient use and for managing wastes, like salt, especially in intensive livestock farming. From Seville in Spain to Sacramento in California and Sydney in Australia, the report said, water had become a key political issue at local, regional and national levels as climate change and loss of wetlands dramatically reduce supplies....
Billions face water shortages, crisis looms A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday. Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra. Globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture, said Frank Rijsberman, the institute's director-general. Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of poor water management, he said....
Las Vegas bids to fuel growth by tapping into farmers' water Nothing in the history of the American West epitomises the unscrupulous greed and ambition of its settlers more than the story of Los Angeles sucking the water supply out from under the farmers of the Owens Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains a century ago. The fertile valley was reduced to a dustbowl so the City of Angels could expand and turn into the sprawling metropolis it is today. Now history is threatening to repeat itself - this time in the neighbouring state of Nevada, where the insatiable growth of Las Vegas and its satellite cities is sparking a new water war with the farmers and ranchers of the remote and beautiful Snake Valley straddling the border of Nevada and Utah. Water officials in Las Vegas are lobbying to build a pipeline to carry more than one billion cubic feet of extra groundwater into their city every year, at an cost of $1bn. The pipeline would be the starting point of a larger project to pump almost eight times that much water into Las Vegas from a large swath of central and eastern Nevada....
Governor looks to tackle water problems in coming session Gov. Bill Richardson has already called the 2007 legislative session the Year of Water, and on Tuesday, he called for ``big ideas'' to take on the state's water problems. ``I don't want little ideas. I want far-reaching ideas to address New Mexico's water issues,'' Richardson told a group of the state's water thinkers and policy-makers gathered Tuesday in Albuquerque for a free-wheeling discussion. Reclaim millions of gallons of wastewater from New Mexico dairies with new technology, offered Annette Morales, a rural-development advocate. Revise state regulations so they don't hamper farmers' efforts to use innovative water-saving technology, suggested Los Lunas dairy farmer Janet Jarrat. ``It's like pulling teeth to get anyone to look at anything innovative,'' she said....
Wolf traps set after death of calf in Gravelly Mountains Federal wildlife officials have set traps in the area where a wolf killed a calf on a grazing allotment in the Gravelly Mountains, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services said. The calf kill in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest was investigated Sunday. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks trapped two wolves in the area in May and fitted them with radio collars. Radio signals were not heard during the investigation Sunday nor during a monitoring flight Monday. The tracks of a single wolf were found near the carcass, and federal wildlife officials believe a single animal without a collar killed the calf....
Car hits, kills grizzly bear A grizzly bear that had recently lost its radio collar was hit and killed by a car last week in Grand Teton National Park. Park officials said the Chevrolet Cavalier was southbound on U.S. 26/89/191 Friday night when it hit the bear south of Moran Junction. The bear, a 4-year-old male, survived the initial impact but died along side the road. None of the three people in the car was injured, but the car sustained extensive damage to the hood and windshield. The park said the grizzly was captured last summer and given a radio collar as part of a research project. The bear dropped the collar this June, but data collected during the 11 months it was collared showed the bear mostly stayed in the park, roaming occasionally into the Teton Wilderness....
On the Mountain: Vanishing species About 20 miles east of Meeker is a tributary of the White River named North Elk Creek, a valley of lush undergrowth and tall pines, steep hillsides and long approaches to the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. And until only a decade ago or so, it was a sanctuary from civilization, peopled by ranchers, visited by a select few fishers and boaters. Like everywhere in Colorado, though, things are changing. Invited by some friends whose family has maintained a small hunting camp on North Elk for half a century, Anne and I trucked our way up from Carbondale through a rainy Friday evening to bed down in a two-room, rustic cabin to one side of the valley. We slept to the sound of North Elk Creek as it babbled a few feet away each night. Other cabins, a decent distance apart, made up the hunting camp, each occupied by a separate part of the larger party. By day, everyone did his or her own thing, hiking out of the valley into the surrounding high country. Anne and I spent most of one day exploring the East Fork of North Elk, passing by a venerable cow camp that seemed still to be at least partially in use. A nearby corral, in good repair, showed that the cowboys still came up to the valley to gather their herds in the fall or scatter them in the spring....
Rancher wants first conservation plan Dean Roberts plans to become the first rancher in Chaffee County to place his ranch in a conservation easement. Chaffee County Commissioners unanimously pledged support for the idea Tuesday during a regular meeting in Buena Vista. They donated $30,000 from the conservation trust fund and agreed to apply for a Great Outdoors Colorado grant on Roberts' behalf. He plans to put 303 acres and several high quality water rights into conservation along the South Arkansas River about a mile west of Poncha Springs. Poncha Springs Trustees offered support for the plan during their meeting Monday. Under the easement, Roberts forfeits his right to develop the property while maintaining ownership and allowing his family to continue agricultural operations. He will be paid approximately $700,000 to finalize the easement, which will be held in perpetuity by the Colorado Cattlemen's Association....
Xcel invests in 'clean' coal Xcel Energy on Tuesday committed $3.5 million through next year to develop Colorado's first "clean" coal power plant, signaling the utility's keen interest in pursuing the multimillion-dollar project. The money will be used to conduct engineering studies and project development activities for the 300- to 350-megawatt power plant, which could supply electricity to about 350,000 households. Xcel wants to build the plant itself rather than open it to competitive bids from independent power producers. The plant could cost between $500 million and $1 billion, depending on the location, size and infrastructure, such as transmission lines, as well as technology. The utility wants to recover that investment from its 1.3 million electric ratepayers in Colorado, if the state Public Utilities Commission approves the project....
Off-road dispute In 1988, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated a 19,200-acre swath of ruggedly steep hills between Chimayo and Alcalde as El Palacio Fun Valley, where dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles could zoom around on established trails. Now opponents are gearing up to fight what they predict will be expanded, unmanaged off-roading in the area as the BLM Taos Field Office rewrites its 20-year-old management plan for all the land it manages in Northern New Mexico, including El Palacio Fun Valley. They say off-roaders are already cutting fences along the park's boundary and trespassing on private land, leaving trash, increasing erosion and robbing archaeological sites scattered throughout the area. ``They have no regard for fences or private property, much less archaeological sites,'' said John Chavez, a Truchas native and board member of two land-grant associations....
Aspen tree deaths leave experts stumped Something is killing the quaking aspen trees of the Rocky Mountain West. The slender, white-barked trees that paint the hills gold every autumn are dying, some scientists say, leaving bald patches across the Rockies. Experts are scrambling to figure out what's happening. "As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a Forest Service restoration ecologist based in northern Utah. Bartos thinks a fungus may be to blame, while others suggest everything from hungry caterpillars to drought to man's interference with the natural cycle of forest fires and even resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death. Aspen stands have been hard hit in southwestern Colorado and northern Arizona. A conservative estimate is that about 10 percent of the aspen in Colorado may have died or become afflicted with something in the past five to 10 years, Bartos said....
Conservation groups sue over forest management plan The U.S. Forest Service is being sued by a coalition of conservation groups over a management plan they say threatens the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northeastern Minnesota. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis Tuesday, the coalition contends that a 2004 plan to manage the Superior National Forest would harm the wilderness values of the BWCA. The Forest Service plan would allow clear-cut logging within a quarter of a mile of the lake-dotted wilderness area. The lawsuit also challenges a method the Forest Service is proposing to estimate the logging plan's impact on wildlife....
Governor Murkowski's Road to Nowhere Challenged Conservation and transportation groups filed suit today challenging a proposed road project to nowhere. The road would cut through a large roadless area north of Juneau on the east side of Lynn Canal and end in the wilderness roughly across the canal from Haines. The road project calls for the construction of a new ferry terminal at the end of the road. The entire project is expected to cost the state about $250 million and comes as the governor has instituted a state hiring freeze due to budgetary woes. The organizations filed suit in federal court in Juneau against the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service. The lawsuit focuses on the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service's failure to consider alternative methods of improving transportation between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway, and on their failure to fairly assess the effects the road would have on wildlife and other resources in Berners Bay and Lynn Canal. The organizations contend that the Highway Administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by refusing to consider an alternative in which travel in Lynn Canal is improved by more effectively managing the existing ferry system....
Column: Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains As several fires burn in the Klamath Backcountry of northern California and southern Oregon and as tens of millions of taxpayer dollars continue to be expended in efforts to "suppress" these fires, the time is opportune to examine the history of fire and fire suppression in the Klamath Mountains in order to determine if there are lessons for today that can be learned from the experiences of the past 25 years of fire suppression in these mountains. For local residents and "newcomers" to the Klamath Mountains our first experience with large fires and large Forest Service fire suppression was the Hog Fire of 1977. The jobs and income that flowed from that suppression effort and the salvage logging that followed were seen by most forest residents as an unexpected boon. But a few of us who had worked in the suppression effort also were alarmed by the size and destructive force of the massive backfires which Forest Service managers ordered lit in a futile attempt to stop the wildfire. This alarm was reinforced by natives and old timers who had lived with fire for many decades without resort to bringing in an army of non-local firefighters and massive amounts of equipment. We did not know it then but what we experienced with the Hog Fire was an early stage in the militarization, industrialization and nationalization of fire fighting....
Company eyes access for mine Agribusiness conglomerate J.R. Simplot Co. may try to get a judge to condemn part of an eastern Idaho couple's 467-acre property so the company can build a road for a proposed expansion of its phosphate mine near here. So far, Peter and Judy Riede have refused to sell rights-of-way to any portion of their land in rural Caribou County to Simplot. They say a haul road for ore from the Smoky Canyon Mine would damage their land, which has two creeks featuring 20-inch Yellowstone cutthroat trout. After the Riedes declined an offer of $2.1 million from Simplot, the company suggested in public documents filed with the U.S. Forest Service that it could simply use 110-year-old provisions in the Idaho Constitution that give mining companies the right to cross private lands to reach their properties. Simplot, which has $3 billion in annual revenue, also broached eminent domain in a June 9 letter to the couple. It asked them to reconsider the offer, and said if they didn't the company would "move forward with pursuing alternatives that allow Simplot to appropriately develop our phosphate mineral leases."....
Federal judge leaves roads dispute unresolved Inside the sprawling Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, signs posted by Kane County allow driving on some roads where the federal government has banned all vehicles. That conflict was left unresolved Wednesday when a federal judge dismissed a 10-year-old lawsuit brought by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance that sought to force the federal government to defend its own turf. U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins ruled that because the Bureau of Land Management was unwilling to get involved, the wilderness group didn't have a case. "It was a lot of work and motion for an eventual dismissal," said Ralph Finlayson, an assistant Utah attorney general....
Despite uproar over Alaska spill, US to open land to drilling The Interior Department is set to open a vast area of environmentally sensitive wetlands in Alaska to oil drilling, but opponents point to corroding pipelines to the east at Prudhoe Bay as a reason to keep the area off-limits. The tens of thousands of acres in and around Lake Teshekpuk on Alaska's North Slope are part of the oil-rich Barrow Arch, which includes the Prudhoe Bay fields that have kept oil flowing for decades. The lease sale, opposed by environmentalists and some members of Congress, is occurring as federal regulators and a House committee investigate inspection and maintenance programs of BP Alaska, where widespread pipeline corrosion forced the partial shutdown of Prudhoe Bay oil production Aug. 6. BP Alaska is a subsidiary of London-based BP PLC. Government geologists contend that at least 2 billion barrels of oil and huge amounts of natural gas lie beneath the coastal lagoons, deltas, and sedge grass meadows -- an area where caribou give birth and thousands of geese migrate each summer. Within days, the Interior Department will open tracts in the area for leasing, with the winning bids to be announced in September....
River Rescue The San Pedro River's meandering journey toward survival enjoyed a welcome twist recently, when a scheme to revive rail cargo along its banks was dropped. Now conservationists want to take that victory to the bank. Literally. They hope to begin a process called rail banking, which would turn the old rail route lining the San Pedro into a bucolic walking trail. And that would pay proper tribute to this last fragment of a complex riparian river system once coursing through the Southwest. The saga began in February, when the San Pedro Railroad Operating Co. received federal permission to abandon its 76.2 mile route through Cochise County. About 40 miles of that line slices through the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, which is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management....
Gene-Altered Crops Denounced Environmental groups yesterday called for a moratorium on open-air tests of crops genetically engineered to produce medicines and vaccines, citing a federal court's conclusion last week that the Agriculture Department repeatedly broke the law by allowing companies to plant such crops on hundred of acres in Hawaii. In a toughly worded 52-page decision released without fanfare late last week, a U.S. District judge in Hawaii concluded that USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which grants permits for the planting of genetically engineered crops, should have first investigated whether the plants posed a threat to any of that state's hundreds of endangered species. The corn and sugar cane plants, already harvested because the experiments involving them were completed before the case was decided, had been modified to produce human hormones, drugs and ingredients for vaccines against AIDS and hepatitis B....
Grass Created in Lab Is Found in the Wild An unapproved type of genetically engineered grass has been found growing in the wild in what scientists say could be the first instance in the United States in which a biotechnology plant has established itself outside a farm. Ecologists at the Environmental Protection Agency said they had found a small number of the grass plants growing in central Oregon near the site of field tests that took place a few years ago. The E.P.A. scientists and others said the grass would probably not pose an ecological threat. Still, it could provide fodder for critics who say that agricultural biotechnology cannot be adequately controlled. “It is a cautionary tale that you have to think about the possibility of plants escaping into populations where there are wild relatives present,” said Jay Reichman, an agency ecologist who is the lead author of a study to be published in the journal Molecular Ecology....
Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue There are many human activities that contribute to global warming. Among the biggest contributors are electrical generation, the use of passenger and other vehicles, over-consumption, international shipping, deforestation, smoking and militarism. (The U.S. military, for example, is the world’s biggest consumer of oil and the world’s biggest polluter.) What many people do not know, however, is that the production of meat also significantly increases global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, substantially contributing to “global scorching.” According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Unit on Climate Change, “There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.” The 2004 State of the World is more specific regarding the link between animals raised for meat and global warming: “Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16 percent of the world’s annual production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.” The July 2005 issue of Physics World states: “The animals we eat emit 21 percent of all the CO2 that can be attributed to human activity.” Eating meat directly contributes to this environmentally irresponsible industry and the dire threat of global warming. ...
Ranchers rewarded for conservation Four Arizona ranchers in Coconino County have cared for our beautiful, fragile land for generations, most tracing their families back to settling the West and European roots. According to them, the longevity of their operations is testament to their commitment to the land. Because of that commitment, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will pay them $172,030 combined next year and a total of $1,341,322 in the next 10 years through the Conservation Security Program (CSP). CSP is a voluntary conservation program administered by NRCS that rewards private landowners for their ongoing care of natural resources on working lands. Some of the practices that put the Arizona producers on top include using vigorous grazing management strategies along with providing wildlife watering facilities, solar energy generation, recycling used motor oils, reducing dust on dirt roads and providing barrier-free land for antelope habitat....
Mystery of San Antonio tree may be solved SAN ANTONIO Officials may have solved the mystery of a San Antonio tree that's gurgled water from its trunk for months. The site has attracted a stream of pilgrims who consider it holy water. The San Antonio Express-News reports city water system officials shut off service to Lucille Pope's home -- and found that the tree stopped leaking. Her son, Lloyd Pope, says authorities think the roots had gotten into the waterline. Lucille Pope had sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries -- with no results. Meanwhile, visitors have come from as far as Laredo, Dallas and Georgetown to see the red oak that's spouted water in the midst of the drought.
Governor Brad Henry Lifts Some Load Regulations Gov. Brad Henry has issued an executive order waiving load regulations to help drought-weary farmers and ranchers get hay and other supplies. The 90-day order also will make it easier for firefighters to transport equipment to battle wildfires. It waives road and licensing regulations for oversized vehicles that haul agricultural loads and firefighting equipment. ``We're doing everything we can to protect Oklahomans from wildfires and deliver relief to farmers and ranchers who are hurting because of the drought,'' Henry said. ``This executive order is just one small piece of the puzzle, but it will make it easier to deliver help to the areas that need it most.'' Besides expediting agriculture shipments within the state, the governor is working to cut through red tape that may hinder transports from surrounding states. At his direction, officials are working with their counterparts in other states in the region to encourage similar rule waivers on agriculture transports....
Supervisors keep open range idea alive An open range proposal is not dead. With a 3-2 vote, the Tehama County Board of Supervisors voted to continue discussions about a proposed ordinance that would designate almost two-thirds of the county as chiefly devoted to grazing. Tehama County Cattlemen's Association President Matt Pritchard echoed some of his previous comments from past public meetings, saying that the ordinance was less about fencing and zoning and more about liability. "Ranchers need to stay in good standing with insurance companies," he said. If passed, the ordinance would label almost two-thirds of the unincorporated county as chiefly devoted to grazing. It would establish the right of cattlemen to graze livestock, and, the cattlemen argued, it is necessary to help the county's $17 million cattle industry afford insurance and continue business in the county....
Protecting the Truth About Grass-Fed Meats What does the term grass-fed mean to you? To millions of consumers it means pasture-raised, unconfined animals. Now, a few greedy companies have lined up lobbyists to change the meaning --- and, with it, the truth --- in grass-fed labeling. Back in the 1990s, after years of pressure from the emerging organic-food industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally offered a proposed definition of the term organic. Unfortunately, industrial-scale food producers saw the potential in a market that they didn't have a piece of, and hijacked the proposed rule before it reached the public. Fortunately for us, the leadership of the organic industry rallied its legion of consumers to wage a pitched battle in the form of letters, e-mail and telephone calls. And won. The USDA received more comments on a proposed rule than ever before or since. The intended meaning of organic survived. We face a similar hijacking again --- but this time the term is "grass fed," and the food is meat, milk and cheese. Factory-system food producers, who seek to profit from the burgeoning market for grass-fed protein, are attempting to steal the meaning and therefore the market. The USDA has proposed a rule that now would allow "grass fed" to include animal confinement and the feeding of corn and other grains in the final stages of an animal's life....
Going for the Gold It’s a hot August day in the South Hills and the pine needles crunch underfoot. It hasn’t rained in weeks and the forest holds the heat close to the ground. There’s little shade to be found, unless you slither into an old mining tunnel where the temperature drops 30 degrees and the air is damp and dewy. It’s not the safest refuge from the sun, nor is it recommended, but for those with a curious heart, the temptation to explore Helena’s historic mines is hard to resist. No one knows for certain how many tunnels, shafts, pits and adits lay scattered across Helena’s South Hills. Some mines date back 140 years. Others were created as late as the 1940s, when mining dwindled in the Helena area. Old-timers still tell stories about the dredges that once skimmed gravel for gold in the valley. Just last summer, rumors of a lingering pocket of quartz stirred cries of gold across Downtown as crews excavated the Jackson Street garage. Of course, they never found any gold....
Adventurers traded ship to build up Oregon herds In the summer of 1840, cattle were almost impossible to come by for Oregon settlers. The Hudson Bay Company was willing to lend cows, but all calves reverted to the company. Ewing Young, a wealthy rancher, and the Methodist Mission each owned cattle, but would not sell them. A small group of ex-trappers hatched an audacious plan. These "mountain men" decided to build an ocean-going ship, sail it to California, trade it for cattle and then drive the cattle back to the Willamette Valley. Now, no American ship had ever been built in Oregon and none of the group had ever sailed, but this did not deter them. Joseph Gale, a mountain man with seagoing experience, promised to join them later if they could show progress. Felix Hathaway, a ship's carpenter from Willamette Falls, agreed to supervise construction....
It’s The Pitts: Lemonade Lessons Like many kids of my generation, I learned about running a business by having my own lemonade stand. It was a single owner proprietorship and I had no employees, fancy stationery or business license. I picked the lemons from our very own tree and my mother helped me make the lemonade using an old family recipe; one part lemon extract, four parts water, one part sugar and 10 parts of pride my mother had in me for my enthusiastic entrepreneurship. I set up a card table by the road out in front of our house, arranged the tools of my trade and started waving my sign at those passing by, offering fresh squeezed lemonade for only ten cents a glass. It was a bit slow at first but then I got the bright idea to throw in a free cookie with every glass and business began to trickle in. A neighbor I’d never met stopped by on his walk and said he was tired and hot and guessed he’d try a glass of my lemonade. He tossed the glass back, smacked his lips and said, “I’ll have another.” I asked him for 20 cents and he gave me a quarter and from then on he was my favorite old man in the neighborhood....
Rich countries like poor face water crisis Rich countries have to make drastic changes to policies if they are to avoid the water crisis that is facing poorer nations, the WWF environmental organization said on Wednesday. In a survey of the situation across the industrialized world, it said many cities were already losing the battle to maintain water supplies as governments talked about conservation but failed to implement their pledges. "Supporting large-scale industry and growing populations using water at high rates has come close to exhausting the water supplies of some First World cities and is a looming threat for many, if not most, others," the report warned. It suggested that agriculture in the richer countries should have to pay more for water and be held responsible more actively for its efficient use and for managing wastes, like salt, especially in intensive livestock farming. From Seville in Spain to Sacramento in California and Sydney in Australia, the report said, water had become a key political issue at local, regional and national levels as climate change and loss of wetlands dramatically reduce supplies....
Billions face water shortages, crisis looms A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday. Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra. Globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture, said Frank Rijsberman, the institute's director-general. Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of poor water management, he said....
Las Vegas bids to fuel growth by tapping into farmers' water Nothing in the history of the American West epitomises the unscrupulous greed and ambition of its settlers more than the story of Los Angeles sucking the water supply out from under the farmers of the Owens Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains a century ago. The fertile valley was reduced to a dustbowl so the City of Angels could expand and turn into the sprawling metropolis it is today. Now history is threatening to repeat itself - this time in the neighbouring state of Nevada, where the insatiable growth of Las Vegas and its satellite cities is sparking a new water war with the farmers and ranchers of the remote and beautiful Snake Valley straddling the border of Nevada and Utah. Water officials in Las Vegas are lobbying to build a pipeline to carry more than one billion cubic feet of extra groundwater into their city every year, at an cost of $1bn. The pipeline would be the starting point of a larger project to pump almost eight times that much water into Las Vegas from a large swath of central and eastern Nevada....
Governor looks to tackle water problems in coming session Gov. Bill Richardson has already called the 2007 legislative session the Year of Water, and on Tuesday, he called for ``big ideas'' to take on the state's water problems. ``I don't want little ideas. I want far-reaching ideas to address New Mexico's water issues,'' Richardson told a group of the state's water thinkers and policy-makers gathered Tuesday in Albuquerque for a free-wheeling discussion. Reclaim millions of gallons of wastewater from New Mexico dairies with new technology, offered Annette Morales, a rural-development advocate. Revise state regulations so they don't hamper farmers' efforts to use innovative water-saving technology, suggested Los Lunas dairy farmer Janet Jarrat. ``It's like pulling teeth to get anyone to look at anything innovative,'' she said....
Wolf traps set after death of calf in Gravelly Mountains Federal wildlife officials have set traps in the area where a wolf killed a calf on a grazing allotment in the Gravelly Mountains, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services said. The calf kill in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest was investigated Sunday. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks trapped two wolves in the area in May and fitted them with radio collars. Radio signals were not heard during the investigation Sunday nor during a monitoring flight Monday. The tracks of a single wolf were found near the carcass, and federal wildlife officials believe a single animal without a collar killed the calf....
Car hits, kills grizzly bear A grizzly bear that had recently lost its radio collar was hit and killed by a car last week in Grand Teton National Park. Park officials said the Chevrolet Cavalier was southbound on U.S. 26/89/191 Friday night when it hit the bear south of Moran Junction. The bear, a 4-year-old male, survived the initial impact but died along side the road. None of the three people in the car was injured, but the car sustained extensive damage to the hood and windshield. The park said the grizzly was captured last summer and given a radio collar as part of a research project. The bear dropped the collar this June, but data collected during the 11 months it was collared showed the bear mostly stayed in the park, roaming occasionally into the Teton Wilderness....
On the Mountain: Vanishing species About 20 miles east of Meeker is a tributary of the White River named North Elk Creek, a valley of lush undergrowth and tall pines, steep hillsides and long approaches to the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. And until only a decade ago or so, it was a sanctuary from civilization, peopled by ranchers, visited by a select few fishers and boaters. Like everywhere in Colorado, though, things are changing. Invited by some friends whose family has maintained a small hunting camp on North Elk for half a century, Anne and I trucked our way up from Carbondale through a rainy Friday evening to bed down in a two-room, rustic cabin to one side of the valley. We slept to the sound of North Elk Creek as it babbled a few feet away each night. Other cabins, a decent distance apart, made up the hunting camp, each occupied by a separate part of the larger party. By day, everyone did his or her own thing, hiking out of the valley into the surrounding high country. Anne and I spent most of one day exploring the East Fork of North Elk, passing by a venerable cow camp that seemed still to be at least partially in use. A nearby corral, in good repair, showed that the cowboys still came up to the valley to gather their herds in the fall or scatter them in the spring....
Rancher wants first conservation plan Dean Roberts plans to become the first rancher in Chaffee County to place his ranch in a conservation easement. Chaffee County Commissioners unanimously pledged support for the idea Tuesday during a regular meeting in Buena Vista. They donated $30,000 from the conservation trust fund and agreed to apply for a Great Outdoors Colorado grant on Roberts' behalf. He plans to put 303 acres and several high quality water rights into conservation along the South Arkansas River about a mile west of Poncha Springs. Poncha Springs Trustees offered support for the plan during their meeting Monday. Under the easement, Roberts forfeits his right to develop the property while maintaining ownership and allowing his family to continue agricultural operations. He will be paid approximately $700,000 to finalize the easement, which will be held in perpetuity by the Colorado Cattlemen's Association....
Xcel invests in 'clean' coal Xcel Energy on Tuesday committed $3.5 million through next year to develop Colorado's first "clean" coal power plant, signaling the utility's keen interest in pursuing the multimillion-dollar project. The money will be used to conduct engineering studies and project development activities for the 300- to 350-megawatt power plant, which could supply electricity to about 350,000 households. Xcel wants to build the plant itself rather than open it to competitive bids from independent power producers. The plant could cost between $500 million and $1 billion, depending on the location, size and infrastructure, such as transmission lines, as well as technology. The utility wants to recover that investment from its 1.3 million electric ratepayers in Colorado, if the state Public Utilities Commission approves the project....
Off-road dispute In 1988, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated a 19,200-acre swath of ruggedly steep hills between Chimayo and Alcalde as El Palacio Fun Valley, where dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles could zoom around on established trails. Now opponents are gearing up to fight what they predict will be expanded, unmanaged off-roading in the area as the BLM Taos Field Office rewrites its 20-year-old management plan for all the land it manages in Northern New Mexico, including El Palacio Fun Valley. They say off-roaders are already cutting fences along the park's boundary and trespassing on private land, leaving trash, increasing erosion and robbing archaeological sites scattered throughout the area. ``They have no regard for fences or private property, much less archaeological sites,'' said John Chavez, a Truchas native and board member of two land-grant associations....
Aspen tree deaths leave experts stumped Something is killing the quaking aspen trees of the Rocky Mountain West. The slender, white-barked trees that paint the hills gold every autumn are dying, some scientists say, leaving bald patches across the Rockies. Experts are scrambling to figure out what's happening. "As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a Forest Service restoration ecologist based in northern Utah. Bartos thinks a fungus may be to blame, while others suggest everything from hungry caterpillars to drought to man's interference with the natural cycle of forest fires and even resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death. Aspen stands have been hard hit in southwestern Colorado and northern Arizona. A conservative estimate is that about 10 percent of the aspen in Colorado may have died or become afflicted with something in the past five to 10 years, Bartos said....
Conservation groups sue over forest management plan The U.S. Forest Service is being sued by a coalition of conservation groups over a management plan they say threatens the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northeastern Minnesota. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis Tuesday, the coalition contends that a 2004 plan to manage the Superior National Forest would harm the wilderness values of the BWCA. The Forest Service plan would allow clear-cut logging within a quarter of a mile of the lake-dotted wilderness area. The lawsuit also challenges a method the Forest Service is proposing to estimate the logging plan's impact on wildlife....
Governor Murkowski's Road to Nowhere Challenged Conservation and transportation groups filed suit today challenging a proposed road project to nowhere. The road would cut through a large roadless area north of Juneau on the east side of Lynn Canal and end in the wilderness roughly across the canal from Haines. The road project calls for the construction of a new ferry terminal at the end of the road. The entire project is expected to cost the state about $250 million and comes as the governor has instituted a state hiring freeze due to budgetary woes. The organizations filed suit in federal court in Juneau against the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service. The lawsuit focuses on the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service's failure to consider alternative methods of improving transportation between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway, and on their failure to fairly assess the effects the road would have on wildlife and other resources in Berners Bay and Lynn Canal. The organizations contend that the Highway Administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by refusing to consider an alternative in which travel in Lynn Canal is improved by more effectively managing the existing ferry system....
Column: Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains As several fires burn in the Klamath Backcountry of northern California and southern Oregon and as tens of millions of taxpayer dollars continue to be expended in efforts to "suppress" these fires, the time is opportune to examine the history of fire and fire suppression in the Klamath Mountains in order to determine if there are lessons for today that can be learned from the experiences of the past 25 years of fire suppression in these mountains. For local residents and "newcomers" to the Klamath Mountains our first experience with large fires and large Forest Service fire suppression was the Hog Fire of 1977. The jobs and income that flowed from that suppression effort and the salvage logging that followed were seen by most forest residents as an unexpected boon. But a few of us who had worked in the suppression effort also were alarmed by the size and destructive force of the massive backfires which Forest Service managers ordered lit in a futile attempt to stop the wildfire. This alarm was reinforced by natives and old timers who had lived with fire for many decades without resort to bringing in an army of non-local firefighters and massive amounts of equipment. We did not know it then but what we experienced with the Hog Fire was an early stage in the militarization, industrialization and nationalization of fire fighting....
Company eyes access for mine Agribusiness conglomerate J.R. Simplot Co. may try to get a judge to condemn part of an eastern Idaho couple's 467-acre property so the company can build a road for a proposed expansion of its phosphate mine near here. So far, Peter and Judy Riede have refused to sell rights-of-way to any portion of their land in rural Caribou County to Simplot. They say a haul road for ore from the Smoky Canyon Mine would damage their land, which has two creeks featuring 20-inch Yellowstone cutthroat trout. After the Riedes declined an offer of $2.1 million from Simplot, the company suggested in public documents filed with the U.S. Forest Service that it could simply use 110-year-old provisions in the Idaho Constitution that give mining companies the right to cross private lands to reach their properties. Simplot, which has $3 billion in annual revenue, also broached eminent domain in a June 9 letter to the couple. It asked them to reconsider the offer, and said if they didn't the company would "move forward with pursuing alternatives that allow Simplot to appropriately develop our phosphate mineral leases."....
Federal judge leaves roads dispute unresolved Inside the sprawling Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, signs posted by Kane County allow driving on some roads where the federal government has banned all vehicles. That conflict was left unresolved Wednesday when a federal judge dismissed a 10-year-old lawsuit brought by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance that sought to force the federal government to defend its own turf. U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins ruled that because the Bureau of Land Management was unwilling to get involved, the wilderness group didn't have a case. "It was a lot of work and motion for an eventual dismissal," said Ralph Finlayson, an assistant Utah attorney general....
Despite uproar over Alaska spill, US to open land to drilling The Interior Department is set to open a vast area of environmentally sensitive wetlands in Alaska to oil drilling, but opponents point to corroding pipelines to the east at Prudhoe Bay as a reason to keep the area off-limits. The tens of thousands of acres in and around Lake Teshekpuk on Alaska's North Slope are part of the oil-rich Barrow Arch, which includes the Prudhoe Bay fields that have kept oil flowing for decades. The lease sale, opposed by environmentalists and some members of Congress, is occurring as federal regulators and a House committee investigate inspection and maintenance programs of BP Alaska, where widespread pipeline corrosion forced the partial shutdown of Prudhoe Bay oil production Aug. 6. BP Alaska is a subsidiary of London-based BP PLC. Government geologists contend that at least 2 billion barrels of oil and huge amounts of natural gas lie beneath the coastal lagoons, deltas, and sedge grass meadows -- an area where caribou give birth and thousands of geese migrate each summer. Within days, the Interior Department will open tracts in the area for leasing, with the winning bids to be announced in September....
River Rescue The San Pedro River's meandering journey toward survival enjoyed a welcome twist recently, when a scheme to revive rail cargo along its banks was dropped. Now conservationists want to take that victory to the bank. Literally. They hope to begin a process called rail banking, which would turn the old rail route lining the San Pedro into a bucolic walking trail. And that would pay proper tribute to this last fragment of a complex riparian river system once coursing through the Southwest. The saga began in February, when the San Pedro Railroad Operating Co. received federal permission to abandon its 76.2 mile route through Cochise County. About 40 miles of that line slices through the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, which is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management....
Gene-Altered Crops Denounced Environmental groups yesterday called for a moratorium on open-air tests of crops genetically engineered to produce medicines and vaccines, citing a federal court's conclusion last week that the Agriculture Department repeatedly broke the law by allowing companies to plant such crops on hundred of acres in Hawaii. In a toughly worded 52-page decision released without fanfare late last week, a U.S. District judge in Hawaii concluded that USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which grants permits for the planting of genetically engineered crops, should have first investigated whether the plants posed a threat to any of that state's hundreds of endangered species. The corn and sugar cane plants, already harvested because the experiments involving them were completed before the case was decided, had been modified to produce human hormones, drugs and ingredients for vaccines against AIDS and hepatitis B....
Grass Created in Lab Is Found in the Wild An unapproved type of genetically engineered grass has been found growing in the wild in what scientists say could be the first instance in the United States in which a biotechnology plant has established itself outside a farm. Ecologists at the Environmental Protection Agency said they had found a small number of the grass plants growing in central Oregon near the site of field tests that took place a few years ago. The E.P.A. scientists and others said the grass would probably not pose an ecological threat. Still, it could provide fodder for critics who say that agricultural biotechnology cannot be adequately controlled. “It is a cautionary tale that you have to think about the possibility of plants escaping into populations where there are wild relatives present,” said Jay Reichman, an agency ecologist who is the lead author of a study to be published in the journal Molecular Ecology....
Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue There are many human activities that contribute to global warming. Among the biggest contributors are electrical generation, the use of passenger and other vehicles, over-consumption, international shipping, deforestation, smoking and militarism. (The U.S. military, for example, is the world’s biggest consumer of oil and the world’s biggest polluter.) What many people do not know, however, is that the production of meat also significantly increases global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, substantially contributing to “global scorching.” According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Unit on Climate Change, “There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.” The 2004 State of the World is more specific regarding the link between animals raised for meat and global warming: “Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16 percent of the world’s annual production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.” The July 2005 issue of Physics World states: “The animals we eat emit 21 percent of all the CO2 that can be attributed to human activity.” Eating meat directly contributes to this environmentally irresponsible industry and the dire threat of global warming. ...
Ranchers rewarded for conservation Four Arizona ranchers in Coconino County have cared for our beautiful, fragile land for generations, most tracing their families back to settling the West and European roots. According to them, the longevity of their operations is testament to their commitment to the land. Because of that commitment, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will pay them $172,030 combined next year and a total of $1,341,322 in the next 10 years through the Conservation Security Program (CSP). CSP is a voluntary conservation program administered by NRCS that rewards private landowners for their ongoing care of natural resources on working lands. Some of the practices that put the Arizona producers on top include using vigorous grazing management strategies along with providing wildlife watering facilities, solar energy generation, recycling used motor oils, reducing dust on dirt roads and providing barrier-free land for antelope habitat....
Mystery of San Antonio tree may be solved SAN ANTONIO Officials may have solved the mystery of a San Antonio tree that's gurgled water from its trunk for months. The site has attracted a stream of pilgrims who consider it holy water. The San Antonio Express-News reports city water system officials shut off service to Lucille Pope's home -- and found that the tree stopped leaking. Her son, Lloyd Pope, says authorities think the roots had gotten into the waterline. Lucille Pope had sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries -- with no results. Meanwhile, visitors have come from as far as Laredo, Dallas and Georgetown to see the red oak that's spouted water in the midst of the drought.
Governor Brad Henry Lifts Some Load Regulations Gov. Brad Henry has issued an executive order waiving load regulations to help drought-weary farmers and ranchers get hay and other supplies. The 90-day order also will make it easier for firefighters to transport equipment to battle wildfires. It waives road and licensing regulations for oversized vehicles that haul agricultural loads and firefighting equipment. ``We're doing everything we can to protect Oklahomans from wildfires and deliver relief to farmers and ranchers who are hurting because of the drought,'' Henry said. ``This executive order is just one small piece of the puzzle, but it will make it easier to deliver help to the areas that need it most.'' Besides expediting agriculture shipments within the state, the governor is working to cut through red tape that may hinder transports from surrounding states. At his direction, officials are working with their counterparts in other states in the region to encourage similar rule waivers on agriculture transports....
Supervisors keep open range idea alive An open range proposal is not dead. With a 3-2 vote, the Tehama County Board of Supervisors voted to continue discussions about a proposed ordinance that would designate almost two-thirds of the county as chiefly devoted to grazing. Tehama County Cattlemen's Association President Matt Pritchard echoed some of his previous comments from past public meetings, saying that the ordinance was less about fencing and zoning and more about liability. "Ranchers need to stay in good standing with insurance companies," he said. If passed, the ordinance would label almost two-thirds of the unincorporated county as chiefly devoted to grazing. It would establish the right of cattlemen to graze livestock, and, the cattlemen argued, it is necessary to help the county's $17 million cattle industry afford insurance and continue business in the county....
Protecting the Truth About Grass-Fed Meats What does the term grass-fed mean to you? To millions of consumers it means pasture-raised, unconfined animals. Now, a few greedy companies have lined up lobbyists to change the meaning --- and, with it, the truth --- in grass-fed labeling. Back in the 1990s, after years of pressure from the emerging organic-food industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally offered a proposed definition of the term organic. Unfortunately, industrial-scale food producers saw the potential in a market that they didn't have a piece of, and hijacked the proposed rule before it reached the public. Fortunately for us, the leadership of the organic industry rallied its legion of consumers to wage a pitched battle in the form of letters, e-mail and telephone calls. And won. The USDA received more comments on a proposed rule than ever before or since. The intended meaning of organic survived. We face a similar hijacking again --- but this time the term is "grass fed," and the food is meat, milk and cheese. Factory-system food producers, who seek to profit from the burgeoning market for grass-fed protein, are attempting to steal the meaning and therefore the market. The USDA has proposed a rule that now would allow "grass fed" to include animal confinement and the feeding of corn and other grains in the final stages of an animal's life....
Going for the Gold It’s a hot August day in the South Hills and the pine needles crunch underfoot. It hasn’t rained in weeks and the forest holds the heat close to the ground. There’s little shade to be found, unless you slither into an old mining tunnel where the temperature drops 30 degrees and the air is damp and dewy. It’s not the safest refuge from the sun, nor is it recommended, but for those with a curious heart, the temptation to explore Helena’s historic mines is hard to resist. No one knows for certain how many tunnels, shafts, pits and adits lay scattered across Helena’s South Hills. Some mines date back 140 years. Others were created as late as the 1940s, when mining dwindled in the Helena area. Old-timers still tell stories about the dredges that once skimmed gravel for gold in the valley. Just last summer, rumors of a lingering pocket of quartz stirred cries of gold across Downtown as crews excavated the Jackson Street garage. Of course, they never found any gold....
Adventurers traded ship to build up Oregon herds In the summer of 1840, cattle were almost impossible to come by for Oregon settlers. The Hudson Bay Company was willing to lend cows, but all calves reverted to the company. Ewing Young, a wealthy rancher, and the Methodist Mission each owned cattle, but would not sell them. A small group of ex-trappers hatched an audacious plan. These "mountain men" decided to build an ocean-going ship, sail it to California, trade it for cattle and then drive the cattle back to the Willamette Valley. Now, no American ship had ever been built in Oregon and none of the group had ever sailed, but this did not deter them. Joseph Gale, a mountain man with seagoing experience, promised to join them later if they could show progress. Felix Hathaway, a ship's carpenter from Willamette Falls, agreed to supervise construction....
It’s The Pitts: Lemonade Lessons Like many kids of my generation, I learned about running a business by having my own lemonade stand. It was a single owner proprietorship and I had no employees, fancy stationery or business license. I picked the lemons from our very own tree and my mother helped me make the lemonade using an old family recipe; one part lemon extract, four parts water, one part sugar and 10 parts of pride my mother had in me for my enthusiastic entrepreneurship. I set up a card table by the road out in front of our house, arranged the tools of my trade and started waving my sign at those passing by, offering fresh squeezed lemonade for only ten cents a glass. It was a bit slow at first but then I got the bright idea to throw in a free cookie with every glass and business began to trickle in. A neighbor I’d never met stopped by on his walk and said he was tired and hot and guessed he’d try a glass of my lemonade. He tossed the glass back, smacked his lips and said, “I’ll have another.” I asked him for 20 cents and he gave me a quarter and from then on he was my favorite old man in the neighborhood....
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Industry braces for political fallout For years a number of residents of the Line Creek Wilderness subdivision west of Clark in Park County have fought deep-well natural gas development in the area, often expressing concern that gases and chemicals might seep into the local water supply. Then a major leak did happen. While drilling at 8,030 feet on the Crosby Ranch Friday afternoon, a crew working for Windsor Wyoming LLC shut off gas flow through the well bore. Gas and mud began oozing out of a nearby hillside, and the crew didn't have enough heavy mud to pump down the bore and stop the leak. The event led to a voluntary evacuation of 25 residences and a major "I told you so" from some locals who have been opposed to oil and gas activity in the area. "We've been asking for safety plans over and over again," said Deb Thomas, an evacuee who had formed the Clark Resource Council to fight the industry. "Do we have to wait until somebody gets killed? Is our water safe to drink? Who is now responsible?" On Monday, folks in Wyoming's oil and gas industry prepared for public opinion fallout from the event....
New BLM Rules will Provide Long-Term Benefits for Rangeland Health A federal district court judge decided August 11 to move forward with substantial portions of new grazing regulations released last month by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In Western Watersheds Project v. Kraayenbrink, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction blocking only the part of the grazing rules that deal with public participation in the rulemaking. But Judge Winmill upheld all other aspects of the regulations - a victory for public lands ranchers. "BLM's new regulations strike a balance between resource conservation and sustainable public lands ranching," says Jeff Eisenberg, executive director of the Public Lands Council. "The Western Watersheds Project fails to recognize the progress that can be made on the land by promulgating these new rules. It's unfortunate that they want to waste time with a frivolous lawsuit, but we are pleased that Judge Winmill decided to allow substantial portions of the regulations to be implemented." The PLC, an organization of public lands ranchers throughout the West, has joined BLM in the lawsuit to help defend the final grazing regulations. The PLC represents the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the American Sheep Industry and the Association of National Grasslands....
U.S. Army Wants Your Colorado Ranchland Western states are no longer the remote havens for industries and military exercises they used to be. The nuclear waste repository planned for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is still tied up in protests and litigation. The proposed “Divine Strake” exercise set for June at the Nevada Test Site, which was to test the bunker-busting ability of 700 tons of the same explosive mixture that was used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was also torpedoed by both public and political opposition. With energy development proceeding great guns, even some political stalwarts who have normally been on the side of such development, have come out against drilling on all public lands, i.e., Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas' opposition to drilling on the Wyoming Range and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' agreement that no drilling be allowed on that state's Rocky Mountain Front. Two stories today reflect a change in attitude about some areas of the West being used as testing grounds for military firepower and as the nation’s source of domestic energy. In Colorado, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports that the small towns and ranches in the southeastern corner of the state are definitely not putting out the welcome mat to the U.S. Army’s proposed expansion of its existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site. When the Army built the site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to condemn the 250,000 acres just south of LaJunta that it needed for the military training grounds. But a lot has changed in the last couple of decades, and the resistance to the expansion plans has already begun to grow, despite the Army’s insistence that such resistance is premature. The Army still needs to secure funding for the expansion and Army officials have promised the public will be allowed to comment on the plan once the Pentagon approves it....
Forest thinning in Western states comes under fire The U.S. Forest Service spends about $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, mostly in the West. But when it comes to thinning forests to help them withstand fire, the Forest Service is all over the map. The Forest Service cleared flammable brush and small trees from more acres in Kentucky last year than it did in Nevada, where 17 times more land was burned by wildfires. It did more thinning in Mississippi than in California and about as much in Arkansas as in Oregon. "The only way you can describe the system, as it's been related to us, is it's bizarre," said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "Clearly some areas of great need have been shorted." Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth explained his agency distributes thinning dollars based on the individual forests' ability to get the work done, the amount of hazardous vegetation and how close the forestland is to developed areas....
Editorial - A ruinous land rush NEAR THE majestic canyons of Zion National Park in southern Utah is the fifth-fastest-growing county in the United States, a monument to suburban sprawl and strip development. To help Washington County grow even faster, one of Utah's senators, Republican Robert Bennett, is sponsoring a bill that would sell off a parcel of federal land almost as large as the city of Boston to developers. Some of the proceeds would go not for conservation but to such local projects as an off-road-vehicle trail and a water pipeline. The bill has set off alarm bells all over the West for the worrisome example it sets. Because Utah was originally a territory, the federal government owns about two-thirds of it, and the Bureau of Land Management periodically sells off properties. The money from the sale is supposed to be spent on conservation projects in the affected state. Instead, this bill encourages the wasteful use of land. It specifically earmarks money for an off-road-vehicle trail, which would destroy fragile desert habitat, and for a portion of the cost of a $500 million, 120-mile pipeline to draw water from Lake Powell in Arizona. Getting a straw into Lake Powell would spur further growth in Washington County, a center for resorts and retirement homes. A spokesman for Bennett points to a similar federal land sale in Nevada as a precedent for this kind of allocation of land-sale funds. Conservationists say the Utah proposal is worse than the Nevada one because the proceeds would directly benefit local government, giving local officials a strong incentive to push for the sale of lands that would be better left under the protection of the federal government....
Ranch beckons them home Along the back living room wall of the Springsteen home in Browns Valley, Dick Springsteen points to a strip of wood branded with the marks of neighboring ranches. Among the series of squiggles, numbers, letters and lines are the letters “SV,” the brand his grandfather used during his days as a cattle rancher. Springsteen's brand is also on the wall, marked as an “S” laying back. The strip was given to him in honor of his 60th birthday. The brands are more than just marks, however. They are a sign of a close-knit community and a way of life that they've come to know and love. “I don't really know where I'd go to,” said Springsteen, 70, when asked if he ever thought of leaving the hills where he grew up. Dick and his wife, Roberta, have lived in other places, but they were needed to work the ranch with other family members, so they moved back....
Not much out there, plus been having a problem with my browser all night. Will catch up tomorrow night.
Industry braces for political fallout For years a number of residents of the Line Creek Wilderness subdivision west of Clark in Park County have fought deep-well natural gas development in the area, often expressing concern that gases and chemicals might seep into the local water supply. Then a major leak did happen. While drilling at 8,030 feet on the Crosby Ranch Friday afternoon, a crew working for Windsor Wyoming LLC shut off gas flow through the well bore. Gas and mud began oozing out of a nearby hillside, and the crew didn't have enough heavy mud to pump down the bore and stop the leak. The event led to a voluntary evacuation of 25 residences and a major "I told you so" from some locals who have been opposed to oil and gas activity in the area. "We've been asking for safety plans over and over again," said Deb Thomas, an evacuee who had formed the Clark Resource Council to fight the industry. "Do we have to wait until somebody gets killed? Is our water safe to drink? Who is now responsible?" On Monday, folks in Wyoming's oil and gas industry prepared for public opinion fallout from the event....
New BLM Rules will Provide Long-Term Benefits for Rangeland Health A federal district court judge decided August 11 to move forward with substantial portions of new grazing regulations released last month by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In Western Watersheds Project v. Kraayenbrink, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction blocking only the part of the grazing rules that deal with public participation in the rulemaking. But Judge Winmill upheld all other aspects of the regulations - a victory for public lands ranchers. "BLM's new regulations strike a balance between resource conservation and sustainable public lands ranching," says Jeff Eisenberg, executive director of the Public Lands Council. "The Western Watersheds Project fails to recognize the progress that can be made on the land by promulgating these new rules. It's unfortunate that they want to waste time with a frivolous lawsuit, but we are pleased that Judge Winmill decided to allow substantial portions of the regulations to be implemented." The PLC, an organization of public lands ranchers throughout the West, has joined BLM in the lawsuit to help defend the final grazing regulations. The PLC represents the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the American Sheep Industry and the Association of National Grasslands....
U.S. Army Wants Your Colorado Ranchland Western states are no longer the remote havens for industries and military exercises they used to be. The nuclear waste repository planned for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is still tied up in protests and litigation. The proposed “Divine Strake” exercise set for June at the Nevada Test Site, which was to test the bunker-busting ability of 700 tons of the same explosive mixture that was used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was also torpedoed by both public and political opposition. With energy development proceeding great guns, even some political stalwarts who have normally been on the side of such development, have come out against drilling on all public lands, i.e., Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas' opposition to drilling on the Wyoming Range and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' agreement that no drilling be allowed on that state's Rocky Mountain Front. Two stories today reflect a change in attitude about some areas of the West being used as testing grounds for military firepower and as the nation’s source of domestic energy. In Colorado, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports that the small towns and ranches in the southeastern corner of the state are definitely not putting out the welcome mat to the U.S. Army’s proposed expansion of its existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site. When the Army built the site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to condemn the 250,000 acres just south of LaJunta that it needed for the military training grounds. But a lot has changed in the last couple of decades, and the resistance to the expansion plans has already begun to grow, despite the Army’s insistence that such resistance is premature. The Army still needs to secure funding for the expansion and Army officials have promised the public will be allowed to comment on the plan once the Pentagon approves it....
Forest thinning in Western states comes under fire The U.S. Forest Service spends about $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, mostly in the West. But when it comes to thinning forests to help them withstand fire, the Forest Service is all over the map. The Forest Service cleared flammable brush and small trees from more acres in Kentucky last year than it did in Nevada, where 17 times more land was burned by wildfires. It did more thinning in Mississippi than in California and about as much in Arkansas as in Oregon. "The only way you can describe the system, as it's been related to us, is it's bizarre," said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "Clearly some areas of great need have been shorted." Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth explained his agency distributes thinning dollars based on the individual forests' ability to get the work done, the amount of hazardous vegetation and how close the forestland is to developed areas....
Editorial - A ruinous land rush NEAR THE majestic canyons of Zion National Park in southern Utah is the fifth-fastest-growing county in the United States, a monument to suburban sprawl and strip development. To help Washington County grow even faster, one of Utah's senators, Republican Robert Bennett, is sponsoring a bill that would sell off a parcel of federal land almost as large as the city of Boston to developers. Some of the proceeds would go not for conservation but to such local projects as an off-road-vehicle trail and a water pipeline. The bill has set off alarm bells all over the West for the worrisome example it sets. Because Utah was originally a territory, the federal government owns about two-thirds of it, and the Bureau of Land Management periodically sells off properties. The money from the sale is supposed to be spent on conservation projects in the affected state. Instead, this bill encourages the wasteful use of land. It specifically earmarks money for an off-road-vehicle trail, which would destroy fragile desert habitat, and for a portion of the cost of a $500 million, 120-mile pipeline to draw water from Lake Powell in Arizona. Getting a straw into Lake Powell would spur further growth in Washington County, a center for resorts and retirement homes. A spokesman for Bennett points to a similar federal land sale in Nevada as a precedent for this kind of allocation of land-sale funds. Conservationists say the Utah proposal is worse than the Nevada one because the proceeds would directly benefit local government, giving local officials a strong incentive to push for the sale of lands that would be better left under the protection of the federal government....
Ranch beckons them home Along the back living room wall of the Springsteen home in Browns Valley, Dick Springsteen points to a strip of wood branded with the marks of neighboring ranches. Among the series of squiggles, numbers, letters and lines are the letters “SV,” the brand his grandfather used during his days as a cattle rancher. Springsteen's brand is also on the wall, marked as an “S” laying back. The strip was given to him in honor of his 60th birthday. The brands are more than just marks, however. They are a sign of a close-knit community and a way of life that they've come to know and love. “I don't really know where I'd go to,” said Springsteen, 70, when asked if he ever thought of leaving the hills where he grew up. Dick and his wife, Roberta, have lived in other places, but they were needed to work the ranch with other family members, so they moved back....
Not much out there, plus been having a problem with my browser all night. Will catch up tomorrow night.
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